Buy once, cry once or?

[jrh84]

What do you recommend for a trainer 22lr? How would a nicer 10/22 fit the bill?

I shoot my CZ452 Varmint at 200 yards quite often. After getting it set up, my 10/22 gets left in the safe quite a bit more nowadays. It has no doubt helped my centerfire shooting.

A 10/22 can be made to shoot like a much nicer bolt action, but not without spending a fair amount of money in upgrades (stock, barrel, trigger).

 

[CountryBoy19]

I'd stick to shooting 600yds and under. If you want to shoot 1000yds, then be ready to pony up serious cash. You'll have probably in the neighborhood of $1500+ just in a barrel and glass to shoot well at that range. Best bet is to jump over to sniper hide forum and read up. Not trying to be discouraging, but realistic for a college kid

He said he wants to shoot 1000 yards, not compete with the best at 1000 yards. IMHO, there is no reason a person cannot shoot decent at 1000 yards for $1,000-1500. My long-range gun is right around the $1,000 mark. Wait, how could I possibly have a long-range gun at that price? I bought a cheap, off-the shelf Rem 700 SPS Varmint for ~$450 OTD, ditched the crappy stock, cut the barrel down to a more reasonable 20", put a good, but not overly expensive stock on it, didn't spend gobs of money on DBM system, bought a quality scope that doesn't have all the bells & whistles, bought quality base/rings second-hand.

All told my costs look about like this:
Rem 700, $450
Bell & Carlson Stock, $220
Super Sniper Fixed power Scope, $300
Leupold MK4 2nd-hand Base/Rings, $90
Bipod, $60
Sand-sock, $1 (home-made)
Total: $1121 (not including suppressor, ammo, custom paint-job etc)

BTW, does anybody remember years ago when live.com was running their promotion with ebay? I stole MANY of these compenents off ebay at 30% off through the live.com cash-back promo. While prices have increased a bit and you likely couldn't build a similar gun for under $1400 today, there is no reason that a frugal person couldn't build a nice, long-range gun on a budget.