To chop or not

I am thinking of chopping the barrel of my Remington 700 VS in .308win. Has anyone ever had this done by a gunsmith, and if so what did you pay to have it done? The only reasons i would do this is to take some weight off the gun and to make it a little more handy in the woods. One downside to doing this is that I will lose anywhere from 180-300fps.

IMO, if the woods are thick enough that you need to remove barrel length then that means your going to get closer shots and the extra 300 fps isn't going to make enough of a difference.

I would be more worried about barrel twist rate for the new barrel length.

Not sure but I dont think the twist rate will be too big of an issue. Remington uses a 1/12" twist in their .308's including the 20" police/tactical versions.

The local gunsmith here charges $40. I'm going to have it done to a Nagant.

My local 'smith here charges $100 but that includes an 11 deg target crown.

Our local Sheriff uses the M1A SOCOM with its stubby 16" (or 18"?) barrel. Even out to 600 yards not a real noticable difference between their rifles and my Rem 700 with its 24" barrel.

The Sheriff depart had some old Black Hills ammo they needed to burn before the end of the year, so they called a few locals who are friendly with them to help burn up excess ammo.

(BTW our Sheriff office is short-handed as two of our deputies are in Afghanistan with their Guard unit.)

I thought there would be a larger difference as my barrel is so much longer. But other than very noticable less muzzle blast, and maybe a half inch or so of dope, the rifles shoot about the same.

We even swapped scopes. We left the dope the same and just swapped the scopes and could still hit the poppers at 600 yards.

I have noticed that a lot of the newer varmint rifles especially in HOWA are coming factory with 20" barrels.... my long range 30-06 HOWA is 22" and I never had any issues after it was shortened 4" it was 26 from the factory....

In my youth I really liked the longer barrels. My .338-378 Wby wears a 30" tube and both my .300 WSM and .338 RUM wears a 28" tube.

I have learned that longer is not always better. While a few more FPS is nice if you can't hit shite than it is worthless.

The short thick barrel does not flex or whip as much as the longer barrels. The short barrel tends to vibrate identically more than a whip action of the longer barrels.

While losing a few FPS is a small price to pay, the gained accuracy is far worth the price. Only with the really overbore cartrdiges like the .338-378 Wby (and .50 BMG) and .22 Eargsplitten Loudenboomer where a long tube is needed to burn a prodigious powder charge, most rounds do just fine with a 24" tube.

When I need to replace the stock barrel on my Rem 700 .308 I will go with a fluted, stiff medium weight 20" barrel from one of the better barrel makers like Hart, Lilja, Krieger or Shilen.

My A-Bolt .30-06 has its stock 22" barrel and it is still my fav rifle and the one that I still shoot the best.