• Hey All! Lately there has been more and more scammers on the forum board. They register and replies to members requests for guns and/or parts or other things. The reply contains a gmail or hotmail address or similar ”anonymous” email addresses which they want you to reply to. DO NOT ANSWER ANY STRANGE MESSAGES! They often state something like this: ”Hello! Saw your post about purchasing a stock for a Safari. KnuckleheadBob has one. Email him at: [email protected]” If you receive any strange messages: Check the status of whoever message you. If they have no posts and signed up the same day or very recently, stay away. Same goes for other members they might refer to. Check them too and if they are long standing members, PM them and ask if the message is legit. Most likely it’s not. Then use the report function in each message or post so I can kick them out! Beware of anything that might seem fishy! And again, for all of you who registered your personal name as username, please contact me so I can change it to a more anonymous username. You’d be surprised of how much one can find out about a person from just a username on a forum such ad our! All the best! And be safe! Jim

Short Actions Sako A1 Deluxe VS. L461 Vixen Manlicher

Sako Collectors Club Discussion Forum

Tracy Redpath

Well-Known Member
I own an A1 Deluxe in .222 that i bought last year. And i saw a Vixen Manlicher stocked .222 Mag today. Question is I really want that Vixen but i would have to do some trading to get it because $$$. Is the .222 Mag an accurate round as the triple duece. I figure you enablers will say buy it you need them both.
 
One of the short comings of the mag is the brass availability. Can be hard to find and expensive when found. Not quite as accurate but for all to say very close. The 223 all but killed the mag.
 
The .222 Magnum is a very accurate cartridge in a good rifle. In an older rifle like a Vixen Mannlicher, accuracy may depend on whether the stock has warped over time through drying out. Sometimes you have to refit an older wooden stock to eliminate unwanted pressure on the barrel. That said, for me it's worth the trouble. I have three Sakos in .222 Mag and they all shoot very well, although one of them is fussy about ammo.

Factory loaded ammo is available for the .222 Magnum. Nosler makes it, as do a number of small, semi-custom ammo makers that you can find on the Internet. Graf's and Midway usually have some .222 Mag ammo in stock. The Nosler is superb, but a bit pricey. Ignore the Remington except for plinking. Brass isn't found on every street corner, but it's not hard to find if you know where to look.

A Vixen carbine in .222 Magnum would be an extremely cool thing to have and shoot - at a right price. In your other post, you say it's at a LGS for $2000. IMHO that's way high. See my reply to that post.
 
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"You need them both" -- an enabler.

I love the .222 Magnum, as well as the .222. Nosler recently had (and may still have) their .222 Magnum brass on sale very reasonable. Unlike Icebear, I've had no difficulties with Remington brass, for that matter, but it is only made very occasionally and is hard to find.

The .222 Magnum can be very accurate as evidenced by its popularity on the benchrest circuit back in the late '50's and into the early 70's. I doubt there's any real difference between the inherent accuracy of it and its smaller parent. It has about 5% more case capacity than the popular .223, so loaded to the same pressures it will generate very slightly higher velocities. (However, its arbitrarily assigned SAAMI pressure limit is lower than the .223, so loading manual data won't reflect this.) Put another way, velocities identical to the .223 can be achieve at lower pressures.
 
I'm envious. When I got my .222 carbine a year or two ago, the same seller had another one in .222 Magnum, which went for a couple of hundred less than I paid for the .222 (the difference was the wood, I think). I should have bought it, too, but at the time I had been spending a lot on guns and thought I should exercise a bit of moderation. Well, in the words of Robert Heinlein, moderation is for monks. I should have bought it.

I do, however have this gem, which I picked up at a show in Richmond, Virginia in the late 90's. It's an L469 with detachable magazine in the Mannlicher carbine configuration. It is extremely accurate - I managed to find a half box of very old Sako brand ammo to test fire it and got groups around half an inch. Scope is a 4-12x Leupold.

The gun has the newer style Sako stock with the raised Monte Carlo, as does every L469 .222 Mag I have ever seen. It appears that Sako brought out the stretch action after the change in stock design. That's unfortunate; I much prefer the earlier, classic-style design with the straight comb and more conservative cheekpiece. However, that's a minor thing compared to the pleasure of owning this great-shooting rarity. I wonder what it's worth these days?

L469-222 Mag 1.JPG L469-222 Mag 3.JPG L469-222 Mag 4.JPG
 
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