The Scout concept came about through the efforts of Jeff Cooper in an attempt to design the perfect rifle. I’ve talked about it before. Basically, it is a lightweight (less than 7 pounds) magazine fed bolt-action rifle with a decent caliber (.308) with a forward of the receiver, long eye-relief scope.
I totally bought into this concept, but as I learn more about shooting, the more I hedge. I just don’t know.
Oh it’s still a great concept I respect, I just don’t know if it is ALL for me. And clearly it wasn’t for everyone else, or they’d still be making them to keep up with the demand.
I am drifting away from finding the perfect bolt action rifle for me (lefty, naturally) and settling on the next big rifle I get for a LONG time to be the M1A with a 10x NON-scout scope. And if I DID get a bolt action rifle, I’d get a 10x scope for that too. Not a scout scope at a mere 2.5x. So the scout concept isn’t realized here.
I like the scout scope I have mounted on my Garand, (I need to test it out a lot more, shooting) but that’s a Garand. Heavy, semi-auto rifle, only the scope and the basic reliability are features it shares with a true scout. But I am striking out on my own a little bit. I’m not willing to discard many, or ANY, of Colonel Cooper’s ideas, permanantly. That would foolish, as he was a wealth of info. But I’m not in lock-step, certainly. A scout style bolt action is furthest from my gun-acquisition mind, now though. But would I have a scout scope mounted on a Garand without Cooper’s prodding? No. The jury is still out on how I’ll like that setup.
So see? I adopt from Cooper what works for me and file away his ideas, just in case.
Where is my mind drifting now that diverges from Cooper opinion? Well, some of the modern optics intrigue. Red-Dot scope combinations, and the like. Night vision stuff, too. Cooper wasn’t impressed with them, as he heard of supply line troubles providing batteries to the troops, and when you run out Duracell juice, you are out of the fight. The market is addressing this deficiency, with 10,000 hour battery life, and swing-away scopes and the new buzz term "co-witness" with iron sights. Some optics work in daylight with no batteries, as you can see a permanent reticle. So coopers concerns are being addressed there. I am unaware of advances in night-vision scopes and helmet mounted night vision and the little gun mounted laser that goes with them that can only be seen (I think) with night-vision, but I am sure someone is trying to extend battery life there, too.
And I am thinking about those long battery life red-dot. We’ll see. Maybe just a simple EOTech type one on something like a Camp Carbine .45. I’ll have to see what I want for the M1A after I get it, but long-range scope and iron sights backup is what I hope for.
Cooper wouldn’t disapprove. He was conservative in his doctrines, but was always willing to change those doctrines if something demonstrably better came along. His problem was that very few ‘better’ things came along. He’d grab onto the good like a gold nugget washing past in a stream.
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