Let me preface this by saying that I remain a big fan of the Scout Rifle concept and the Steyr Scout in particular. When I ordered a copy of Richard Mann’s “The Scout Rifle Study”, I was hoping to find a critical assessment of the concept. I was hoping to see pros and cons of the forward-mounted optic in particular, and the inclusion of an AR-10 on the cover made me think that there might be serious discussion of the modern lightweight self loading rifle in the context of the Scout Rifle concept. Basically, I was hoping for a book that would independently critique Cooper’s concept, and bring fact-based conclusions about where it was suitable or unsuitable.
Instead, the book is much more a compilation of the primary source material of the Scout Rifle, as a one-stop-shop for those who are already happily convinced that it is a universal general-purpose rifle needing no defense. If the Scout Rifle is considered a cult, this book would be its Nicene Creed, not its Ninety-Five Theses. Of course, for the person who is a devotee of the concept, this is a great book, compiling all of Cooper’s original definitions and detailing the history of Gunsite and the various Scout Rifle Conferences.
As one might expect, the various pseudo-Scout rifles made by Ruger, Savage, Mossberg, and others are discussed, but ultimately deemed underserving of the title for various violations of Cooper’s standards (ignoring the fact that the Steyr Scout fails to make the required weight, because Cooped deemed it worthy). The entire realm of self-loading platforms are rejected on the basis that they are too heavily regulated in some places (and more importantly, not legal to use on African safari).
I was particularly curious to see discussion of the forward-mounted optic and its characteristics, as this it really the only thing that distinguishes a true Scout Rifle from a light and handy rifle with iron sights. While Cooper’s original reasons for the choice are well explained (balance, situational awareness, and access to reload from the top), they are not challenged but simply accepted as dogma. To my mind, the proliferation of detachable magazines that load from the bottom (including the anointed Steyr Scout) make the access reason moot. I think the balance of low-light performance and magnification against peripheral situational awareness is a discussion worth having as it applies to traditional scopes versus forward mounted ones, but the book does not include this. Mann does include a series of benchmark tests of various essential Scout Rifle shooting tests, though, and of the rifles that come out in the top three by his scores, two had traditional scopes and one had only iron sights.
That all said, the book remains a useful and valuable reference for the dogma of the Scout Rifle, although at $45 I think it is a bit overpriced for what appears to be a print-on-demand paperback.
For an example of a “Pseudo-Scout”, try a Marlin lever-action with a 1.5-5X Bushnell scope mounted over the action on see-through mounts.
With the scope set at minimum magnification, it can be used much like an Aimpoint sight. Keep both eyes open, throw the rifle up to mount, and you see the crosshair superimposed over the target. This fulfills the first requirement of the Scout principle.
See-through mounts allow the use of the regular iron sights, thus fulfilling the second Scout requirement.
Reloading is of course done through the loading gate, thus fulfilling Scout requirement number three.
I did it once with a Marlin M1895 in .45-70. If I were doing it today, I’d use one in .450 Marlin, thus resulting in a true “Lion Scout” with a considerably faster second shot than the Steyr or any other bolt-action version.
The Scout Rifle concept is a good one for a general-purpose “knockaround” or “survival” rifle. In a substantial enough chambering, it can also be a reasonable short-range “stopping” rifle for dangerous game.
On the modern battlefield, its place is debatable at best. As Major John Plaster points out, the problem with a sniper having a highly-specialized sniping rifle of the bolt-action persuasion is that when he finds himself in close contact, he needs a high-firepower backup weapon more than most soldiers do.
A typical Scout Rifle would put a military scout in the same situation. And if he has to carry an SMG or M4 carbine equivalent for such eventualities, why does he need the Scout Rifle?
cheers
eon
I’ve thought about the same setup except with the BLR or Savage 99. I’d think It’d be just about perfect for in the woods shots out of a deer stand. I think it would just about fit the same criteria debated here.
Seems like InRange could do a test of various long-eye-relief scopes vs. red dot vs. irons vs. traditional scopes in various scenarios and show what works well in each case.
Unconditional love and uncritical / unquestioning praise have no point in productive, rational discussion. I’m glad you provided the critical thought where the book failed to.
You’ve framed exactly what the book should have been. I’m not a dedicated Scout Rifle fan (though I once built a “pseudo” on an SKS), but if you wrote the book you outlined, I would definitely buy and read it.
Another potential gap (granting the semiauto / overseas legality argument) is other manual repeaters. I just saw Eon’s levergun comment; additionally, several major manufacturers make / made pump rifles that fire powerful cartridges with spitzer bullets from detachable box magazines, which would / could probably meet Scout criteria.
Should have said “no place” in the first sentence.
We have a guy here that on almost every Ians video addition posts a lot but more often than not corrects himself, such petty mistakes, in this manner. At first I thought its him again, until I saw a name 🙂
Hopfully Ill lern too pAy mor attension 😉
FYI: lefting errors unattended in English language is dangerous, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet_Flight_592#Investigation
The general theme of things seems to harken back to earlier sporting rifles, having barrel length iron sights and a 4 power scope over the reciever. Any event that would render a scope useless would not be a serious game changer to the practical huntsman taking a yearling elk or deer in the fall.
So long as war making is off the table, most any mid century sporting rifle will do the job as well as any scout rifle.
I think much of what is driving the scout rifle movement is the remarkably poor feeding of typical modern hunting rifles, such as the Remington 700, savage 11, or winchester 70 to name a few. They all rely on push feed bolts and spring loaded plungers to extract. This has saved many surplus rifles from being sporterized, yet many mid century surplus rifles feed more reliably and smoothly, and are more friendly to top loading, despite the heavy springs and triggers.
At the price point, scout rifles. Certainly have their place along side other current production guns at the price point but in overall function and polish, I think any properly sporterized surplus rifle will out perform. (Even at the same price point)
Most modern semiauto rifles also rely on push feed bolts, and spring-loaded plungers to eject, and yet fire as many rounds between stoppages as many hunting bolt-actions will fire in their lifetimes. I’m not saying their reliability is perfect, but their jams tend to be magazine- or fouling-related rather than through shortcomings of the two components you mentioned.
The only bolt-gun jams I ever experienced were with a [controlled-feed / inertial-eject] Spanish Mauser in .308. It was so-so with 150gr spitzers, but the blunter Core-Lokt 180s would always hang up on the feed ramp. This isn’t a criticism of Mauser or Oviedo, who didn’t design or build the rifle for that load (or even that caliber), but it is something to consider unless you want to limit your Scout to FMJ.
What have Remington 700, Savage 11 and Winchester 70 in common? They are cheap and it shows in the problems. Buy a properly designed and manufacured action and build a rifle around it and all these problems are gone. The price is of course higher and often surpasses some self-loaders nowadays. Buy once cry once. The days of really cheap bolt actions are gone and were the result of two world wars dumping their surplus on the market.
Would you consider mounting a red dot on the scout rifle?
i think a variable magnification scope is the way to go nowadays with these scopes having improved so much in recent years. When Cooper drew up his concept variable optics were barely useable for a weekend hunter. Today I would dare going into africa with one.
For a driven hunt a red dot is the way to go. The purpose the original Aimpoint sight was designed for actually. Military picked it up later.
I read almost everything Col. Cooper ever wrote on the concept, and some of his “requirements” were more advisory than etched in stone.
The real problem with the scout concept is not that the requirements can’t be met, but as the military/hunting/general purpose firearm, the concept is largely obsolete. In the days when scouts wandered free from the military, trying to locate an enemy force while living off the land, the Scout rifle would have filled the bill perfectly. Today a military scout is probably using a drone to locate the enemy from a desk. Sure there’s plenty of reason to have a nice, short, handy, hunting rifle with a bipod — but there’s lots of ways to achieve that.
The top-loading is linked to that obsolete military concept — Cooper envisioned using stripper clips.
Basically, Jeff Cooper, who I greatly admired and actually got to meet at the 2000 NRA convention came up with an ingenious solution to a non-existent problem (a phrase he used to describe the various “wonder nines” back in the 80s.
Regarding the use of stripper clips, the early Scout rifles were sometimes rebuilt Mausers with fixed magazines. In that context, I would gladly keep the capability of reloading via stripper clips. Cooper did not seem to mind the detachable magazine Styer not having them.
As I recall, he used the expression, “ingenious solution to a non-existent problem”, to describe double action pistols.
He also considered the double-action revolver outdated, superseded by the 1911-type self-loader. Myself, I consider the DA revolver the best all-around “utility” handgun ever conceived, especially in .357 Magnum.
He objected to the Glock system in that it encouraged unsafe handling and resultant ADs. I’ve always believed that keeping your finger off the trigger until your sights were on the target was just common sense, and with a Glock, it’s a necessity. Yes, I have used Glocks and similar “Safe Action” self-loaders; no, I am not a fan of them.
I would note that a DA revolver (or self-loader) with a 12-lb DA pull is less likely to result in accidents. The Glock “New York trigger” with a 20-lb pressure is more-or-less an admission that the revolver designers had the right idea to begin with.
cheers
eon
“. . . [A] DA revolver (or self-loader) with a 12-lb DA pull is less likely to result in accidents” – or hits!
As to your next sentence, the facts that:
A. The New York trigger is actually 8.5lb;
B. Of the thousands of departments, agencies, and militaries that have adopted Glocks or comparable pistols, only a small minority have adopted the NY trigger;
C. Pistolsmithing to give DA revolvers ~6lb triggers is considered desirable (albeit not overly common due to expense); and
D. It would be cheap and easy to give Glocks 12lb triggers, but no one really does;
Perhaps YOU had the right idea (“keeping your finger off the trigger until your sights were on the target was just common sense”)?
Throw in the facts that Glocks hold 3x as many rounds, are easier to reload, and don’t leak, and it sounds like Glock might’ve been onto something too!
This is not to say that the inventors of DA revolvers were “wrong”; they were great in the 1850s, right up until people discovered the concept of using the pistol’s recoil (while mitigating it in the process!) to accomplish the same function.
In their book Shooting to Live with the One-Hand Gun, W.E. Fairbairn and Eric Sykes maintained that a service sidearm should replicate a machine gun as much as possible. Their idea being that the whole “stopping power” and “one-shot stop” theory, born of Hatcher’s work and the Thompson-LaGuarde tests, was pretty much nonsense. Instead, you should keep shooting until the adversary is down, period.
So a high-capacity pistol would be very much in line with their thinking.
They had a rather jaundiced view of cartridge power, as well. Pointing out that the only “one-shot stop” on record with the Shanghai Municipal Police was when one of their officers shot a miscreant squarely in the heart- with a Colt M1903 in .32 ACP.
That said, the DA revolver in .357 Magnum is about the most foolproof relatively high-powered handgun most people can handle without intensive training. No, I do not consider IPSC competition a reliable simulation of someone’s actual ability to cope with a defensive emergency. Frankly, “cowboy action shooting” is probably closer to reality.
The 1986 FBI Miami shootout was probably the most realistic example ever seen. Being an actual life or death encounter.
And FBI agent Mireles brought it to an end with a S&W Model 10 M&P .38 Special.
cheers
eon
Eon,
Interesting that you brought up the Fairbairn / Sykes quote, given that the .357’s claim to fame was its first-shot-stop rate (mid 90s%). Different era, different projectiles.
.357 is an amazing round, and its powder capacity gives it the edge in a carbine. In a service-size handgun, though, .357 SIG or even the much-maligned .40S&W (for those who don’t insist on treating it like a skinny .45) can beat it because they don’t leak. Even 9mm+P wins from a subcompact for the same reason. All else being equal, the lack of unsprung recoil means they’ll kick less too.
I don’t really buy the foolproof argument. No gun is perfect, and each has its quirks. To me, the fact that a semiauto’s challenges (loading and inserting the magazine, racking the slide) are over and done with before the fight make it more suitable for the inexperienced user (Not that I recommend it, but two ladies in my CCW class said their husbands load their EDCs!). The need to apply 12lbf to a 1-2lb object is the “gift” that keeps on sucking (even for me as a fairly large, strong, and experienced shooter). An expert can mitigate it, though no one short of Jerry Miculek will ever shoot equally well in DA (and you can bet that even his DA triggers are custom jobs much closer to the Glock’s than to 12lb).
DAs were very uncommon in the 1850s, though that is when they began to appear.
Yep – and more prevalent in the UK than the US at that time.
I have to agree, Eon. Of all my handguns, my old .357 is what’s beside my bed, and the one I strap on when walking the property. I used revolvers my entire career, as my Department didn’t convert to Glocks until 2017, the year I retired. Honestly, for whatever reason, I have always hit what I wanted with that revolver. I certainly miss my share of shots, just never with that one. I don’t believe most revolvers have 12 lb triggers either. I have met one 1917 Colt that took two hands to press the darn thing though!
“The real problem with the scout concept is not that the requirements can’t be met, but as the military/hunting/general purpose firearm, the concept is largely obsolete.”
Quoted for truth. A “modern sporting rifle” in several different calibers would do basically everything that Cooper was looking to do, but we all know….the one gun to rule them all doesn’t exist. Some of his criteria are simply dated, as, in his day, variable scopes were often bad, a red dot wasn’t a precision hunting tool, plastic or polymer parts were questionable, QD systems weren’t repeatable, BUIS weren’t a thing, and “enough” bullet always involved a 3 or a 4 in front…unless it was the awe inspiring .270, of course.
Hmmm…the Scout Rifle concept(s) have been an interesting study these past few years since Cooper described it. I have found my Enfield No.5 has pretty much fulfilled my “Scout” requirements from the get-go. Light, handy, adequate power, reliable feed and extraction, easy to maintain. Just no ‘scope. And it’s loud. But such is compromise….
“(…)Enfield No.5(…)”
Did anybody attempted turning Krag–Jørgensen carbine? As loading is different from most bolt-action repeating rifles (NOT directly from top) this may allow greater flexibility regarding scope installation.
They had them as a cavalry weapon. VERY rare. And people created them later for hunting. The Krag was VERY popular as a hunting rifle in some areas.
Seems to me that Cooper was an African fantasist, who wanted to both hunt big game and terrorists.
This rifle was influenced by his ideals of a man by himself, looking for lions or two legged beasts on the plain, when the two legged beasts would have had AsK and, probably cut him and his party to pieces.
In full disclosure, I’ve never liked Cooper. His ideas on shooting were perhaps the genesis of some things, but his other, more right wing ideas were kind of nasty.
Or I could be wrong, as our friend says.
Tell Tom Hocking to give me a email back in a very important family matter.
rockview123@gmail.com
I know Tom and passed on your request
What’s that character your shirt? Looks like some kind of chicken.
It looks like a well armed kiwi to me.
Just wondering…
And no one thought that there was no higher meaning and “philosophical concept of a scout rifle”?
But is there, turned by merchants into a cult, life hack from shooter with senile farsightedness, in the absence of red dots in his time? 😉
In general, IMHO, the idea of a “scout rifle” was embodied in M4A1.
No, 556 is too lightweight for most game. A KAC SR-25 is more like it and still relatively lightweight.
I have that book and agree.
I had a scout rifle. Ruger 77 lightweight carbine in 30-06, three sling points, forward Leupold Scout scope on a modified Mk1 rib. Great little rifle that held 1MOA. After one deer season I retired the scout scope and fitted a regular Leupold 1.5-6×32. It made it much better.
Methinks Cooper was heavily influenced by the K98k equipped with forward mounted Zf41.
One of the less well-liked sighting systems the Wehrmacht had to deal with, having neither the advantages of a practical telescopic sight or the ruggededness of iron sights.
The quick pickup that would normally be associated with a 1.5X optical sight was negated by the small exit pupil, i.e. the shooter had to “hunt” for it to get his eye “in the scope”. And once he had, 1.5X was really no improvement over iron sights.
And in the end, only a few issue rifles could mount the scope, thus negating the idea of using it to turn any rifle into a DMR (in modern terms) by just replacing the rear sight.
The later combination of the Zf4 with the G43/K43 semi-automatic rifle turned out to be the better idea. Most DMRs today are more-or-less built along the same lines.
cheers
eon
Certainly, the overall configuration remained conceptually fascinating in spite of its deeply flawed first incarnation.
Excellent review, more this stuff please. Maybe InRange could have a deep dive into this subject someday?
Basically I´ve owned kind of a Scout rifle since 1991, a Tikka in 308 win caliber. It has a 1.5-5 scope over the receiver, still has the back-up irons but I never needed them. Heard about the Scout concept over ten years after I bought the rifle. I have shot pretty much anything with that rifle, from different birds to moose. And from about 20 meters till up to 250 meters. I have proper ex-army shooting sling in it, which helps a lot offhand shooting. But because scope is mounted over the receiver, purists would argue that it isn´t true scout rifle. But it´s used like a scout rifle. Carried a lot, shot a little bit less.
To my experience, scout rifle concept is fine from deer size game to bigger. If you´re going to shoot a birds with it(like we do a lot in Nordic countries), typical scout scope doesn´t have enough magnification for precise shot placement. Besides a lot of hunting happens early in the morning, or late in the evening when scout scope is almost useless, for reasons what Ian pointed out.
But I like the scout rifle idea. It´s great for carrying around in the woods of Scandinavia.
You have to go back to the 1980’s, when the idea was that any rife could be judged on a sort of point system, usually velocity and accuracy. Buy this rifle and not that rifle because that one had a 0.1″ better group when so-and-so tested a factory sample. Think of an annoying History Channel type show on military armor — “tanks get 3 points for armor, 4 for the size of the gun, etc., now here are the top 10.” Never mind ergonomics, if the crew can bail out quickly, speed of reloading, turret traverse speed, ease of acquiring targets, reliability, radios that work, ease of maintenance, if the tracks could get across marshy ground, etc. Never mind where the tanks were to be deployed or against what they were to fight. If it can not be turned into a data point, it does not matter seems to be the mentality. In reality, it is how the whole thing works together to accomplish a particular goal.
The main rifle projects going on, even among private citizens, at the time were coming up with new wildcat cartridges that usually did little that existing cartridges did not. The vanity license plate equivalent in the gun culture.
What Cooper did was start a project that focused on the whole system of a rifle, and not just bench rest accuracy and velocity and the other data points that were always tabulated in the gun magazines at the time. And the rifle was supposed to be good for more than one purpose. Being able to nearly instantly acquire and hit a pie-plate sized target at 100 yards is almost infinitely more useful than bench rest accuracy for nearly all shooters. He pointed out that people might actually have to carry the darn thing, so why not be light and compact? In WWII he served on a battle ship and noted that, compared to bullet diameter, the big guns on the ship did not have long barrels, yet were incredibly accurate. So why not shorten rile barrels?
The Scout had some goals set down for size and weight and such, and that got people thinking outside the box as nothing was already around that met those goals. Whether or not the exact goals were met, that is not the point, it got people thinking and trying things out.
Fan of the Scout Rifle or not, I think the the point was looking at the idea of firearms as overall systems to address multiple scenarios, rather than things designed to incrementally optimize whatever one is capable of quantifying.
i always get a kick out of Ian pointing to himself as he says “I’m Ian”. Yeah dude we get it You’re Ian theres no one else in frame. And also his dipshitty up talking. Other than that, love the guy.
Colonel Cooper did a lot of good AND bad.
That said, the Scout Rifle is one of his better ideas. Although a lever gun with a forward mounted pistol scope is a better North American rig. I’ll eventually mount pistol scopes on my Marlin 1894 and Hi-Point carbine.
I know a 2x scope works great mounted on my Benjamin air rifle.
Forward mounted sight systems is indeed not new.
Verney & Carron developed a system in which the front post is replaced with holographic sights.
Did someone tested a similar system?
Does it really help to reduce aiming time up to 100m?
(It would be interesting to know if this setting could be useful for scout rifle concept)
If you are a college student, you know that balancing your social, academic, and health life is highly important. Besides focusing on that, you must also respect all of your school’s requirements and deadlines.
This is going to be a very long post which will not be well received by those who have pastures stocked with sacred Scout Rifle and Jeff Cooper cows. Bottom line up front: the Scout Rifle abjectly fails its primary mission as defined and created by Jeff Cooper both in concept and reality.
Before I go further I am a big fan of Coopers “Modern Technique” and every tactical and “Tacti-cool” shooting school in the country owes Jeff Cooper a debt of gratitude for founding Gunsite. The shooting curriculum under Coopers supervision at Gunsite taught me a great of useful and practical shooting techniques. Following his departure from API/Gunsite the curriculum and classes began a slow steady decline. I don’t have a “Love me” or “see how great I am” wall in my home, however the API 250 certificate he signed in 1988 does hang from one. Having said this Cooper was not perfect, and he wasn’t always right. Even brilliant men can push ridiculous ideas when propelled by their egos as historically demonstrated by Edison’ misguided belief that direct current was superior to Tesla’s alternating current. The Scout Rifle is the firearm world equivalent of direct current power and people keep extolling the virtues of the Scout Rifle irrespective of the truth.
I’m very familiar with the Scout Rifle concept beginning in 1988 when I took API 250 from Jeff Cooper. Following the shoot off and the awarding of class certificates we were all invited to the Sconce, Coopers home for home baked cookies and orange juice. Inside Coopers walk in gun vault located in his basement he described and talked at length about the Scout Rifle ( as well as numerous other subjects). From his lips he described the primary purpose of the Scout Rifle (SR) was a rifle utilized by a lone military scout performing reconnaissance in front of friendly lines. The scouts primary purpose was not to engage in combat but to gather information. If he should have to fire his first shot must be, quick, accurate, and decisive. The secondary role for the SR was as an all-purpose rifle. In both cases the only rifle Cooper considered as fit for this mission was a bolt action. Period. This is the first fact about the SR you need to understand.
Time passed and several years later I took an API 260 shotgun course at Gunsite and following the end of class we were again invited to the Sconce and again Cooper discussed the SR. The raison d etre’ for the SR remained unchanged: it was a bolt action rifle which was the primary arm for a lone military scout and secondarily a jack of all trades outdoors gun.
In September 1993 I took a Gunsite 270 rifle class. Cooper sold Gunsite to Rich Jee the year before and part of the sales agreement stipulated Cooper would maintain a presence in the classes i.e. a lecture or range time to ease in the transition. Cooper may not have always been right but he always was Cooper. To that end there are numerous stories and rumors of what happened next but Jee and Cooper had a massive and epic falling out which resulted in Cooper being banned from Gunsite (save for his house). All of this happened a short time before I arrived for 270. Too bad, I would have loved to see Cooper’s reaction to my weapon during the rifle class.
To wit, I took a bone stock 50.00 FN FAL for the rifle class and every other student brought a bolt action; most being custom made Scout Rifles. Some of the more notable students in the class were Bill Jeans, Peter Kokalis, and Gabe Suarez. I use this analogy with regard to how my FAL performed in the class: the cheapest production Stihl chainsaw will cut more wood than the most lovingly hand crafted expensive ax. On the last day my FAL easily out shot every other rifle and I quickly won the shoot off. Impressed, Gabe Suarez told me, “If I ever take 270 again I’m bringing my M1A.” At least two (and probably more) of my classmates were far better shots than I (neither of which were Peter Kokalis) however they were handicapped by their obsolete equipment, which brings up the second fact about an SR: a semi-auto rifle can always fire as slow as a Scout Rifle, but a Scout Rifle can never fire as fast as a semi-auto rifle.
I do not take personal credit for my performance in 270. If I had been armed like the rest of the class with an obsolete, glitzy, LER, bolt action, custom Scout Rifle, which I must add was the politically correct rifle to use at Gunsite, I would have been just another mediocre shot in the crowd. The FAL did it-not me.
People miss. In the real world most of your shots will be misses not matter how much you wish otherwise. Why do you think when you go to a public shooting range that has range benches almost everybody shoots their rifles from the bench? Because most rifle owners suck at firing from the standing, kneeling, sitting, or prone positions. People want gratification and shooting from a bench makes them believe they are good shots.
After the shoot-off we were told on the down low that Cooper had invited us to the Sconce as was the custom. Shortly after we assembled in his vault Cooper asked, “So who won the shoot off”. I was standing in the back and said nothing. A pregnant pause hung in the air and when it was obvious I wasn’t going to speak somebody said, “Tyler did.”
“Where’s Tyler?” asked Cooper.
I raised my hand, “Over here.”
“What rifle did you use?”
I looked him in the eye and proudly stated, “An FAL.”
Gawd, you shoulda seen Coopers expression, he looked like he was weaned on a sour dill pickle.
Cooper again waxed eloquent about the SR, same message, same mission, same bolt action however since last I attended a Gunsite class I had the First Gulf War under my belt. With a modicum of experience I now realized his views regarding the Scout Rifle weren’t just wrong, they were stubbornly naive. However through his force of personality, erudite writing style, and legions of followers he was able to convince many the emperor actually was wearing clothes provided he was armed with a Scout Rifle.
To truly understand the Scout Rifle you have to understand the man who conceived it. Jeff Cooper flat out hated semi-automatic rifles. Yes, you can find several quotes from him to the contrary but the overwhelming amount of his words and actions leave no doubt of his disdain for self-loading rifles. He has stated in his “Cooper Commentaries” several times that a man in the standing position who is an experience bolt gun guy can fire the weapon only slightly slower than a self-loader to the point the difference in speed is not a consideration. Apparently Cooper never considered there are other positions than offhand in which one cannot fire a bolt gun rapidly at all. In his book “The Art of the Rifle” he does not even mention semi-auto rifles nor do any of the pictures depict anybody with a semi-auto.
At Gunsite there were two arroyo’s cutting through it: one called the “Donga” and the other the “Vlei”. Each was a zig zagging jagged cut in the ground with sharp turns and numerous blind corners. The student would enter the downstream end of these arroyo’s and then proceed towards the head of the arroyo engaging hostile Pepper Poppers. Along the way poppers could/would be emplaced above you are at a distance. This course of fire were designed by Cooper.
The odd thing is that when I went down the Vlei and Donga in 250 and 260 there were many times when I engaged multiple targets. However in the 270 rifle class, there were no multiple targets to shoot in the Vlei and Donga, only single targets. The reason for that was if a bolt gun student was forced to engage multiple targets the shortcomings of weapon would be readily apparent.
Here’s how much Cooper loathed semi-automatic rifles. At Gunsite the “E ticket”, that is an Expert diploma, was the highest ranking diploma you could receive in a course and much coveted. After that was “Marksman First Class” and then “Marksman”. I don’t recall if there was something below marksman but if so who cares? A good friend of mine who was a Viet Nam vet, former Marine (like Cooper), police SWAT sergeant, AND a longtime Gunsite instructor took an API 270 class as a student with his favorite rifle, a para FN FAL. Not only did he earn the highest score of the class in the marksmanship test, he also won the shoot off. So what diploma did Cooper give him? A marksmanship first class. Two of his fellow student which he bested received expert diplomas. Why? Because they used bolt rifles and he did not.
After spending a bit of time running the roads in Iraq and on a PSD team I am of the opinion this concept of a lone soldier roaming in front of the FEBA with a SR is utterly moronic. Cooper’s ideas of rifle craft are rooted in mythic nonsense from the 19th century. On the Gunsite List I once challenged anybody if they could name one soldier or marine in the last 30 years who ever willingly went on a solo scouting mission in enemy territory. Nobody could, however I note this was before Bowe Bergdahl’ antics in Afghanistan. If any officer gave an order commanding a soldier to go in front of the wire alone on a scouting mission he would have been told “F**K YOU SIR!” If that same officer ordered a troop to go on a solo mission with nothing but a Scout Rifle he’d face a mutiny.
Now, to really raise peoples ire, in my opinion Cooper did not really understand the concept of the modern rifle and by “modern rifle” I mean starting with the M-1 Garand. For Chrissakes one of his favorite rifles was the 30/40 Krag! The Scout Rifle is useless in trying to gain fire superiority if you are ambushed. Yes, I know in a perfect world of Ninja Scout Rifle shooters you never will be ambushed. If one needs to put a lot of bullets into a vehicle or aircraft to stop it you can’t with a Scout Rifle. Again I know the Ninja’s armed with SR’s will only need ONE perfect bullet. If I need to blast a lot of rounds through a wall to take out an enemy I can’t with a Scout. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know an expert rifleman with a Scout Rifle can just walk through those walls. If one gets wounded in an arm at least with a semi-auto you can keep firing until the magazine is empty. Oh, wait-that’s an invalid point as Scout Rifle guys are bulletproof.
Yet again I say, “If your damn Scout Rifle was so good my FAL never should have won the shoot off against it at Gunsite!”
I believe Coopers hatred of semi-auto’s was rooted in the belief he considered himself a patrician and as such certain skills and knowledge must separate elites from the lower classes. Elites such as himself were possessed of remarkable rifle craft skills and abilities best utilized by the precision tool of the bolt action rifle. People in classes and stations on lower rungs in his mind did possess the necessary mental skills and disciplines required to be proper riflemen. Cooper distrusted the masses (which is most of America) and often contemptuously labeled our present time as “The Era of the Common Man”.
Cooper believed that cultural, political, technological, economic forces were all being driven in support of and pursuant to the masses i.e. “the common man”. In his mind deference to the mediocrity of the masses instead of excellence (which was the milieu of the patricians and elites), had denigrated the more high-brow pursuits of art, literature, consumerism, film, music, culture, and yes, even rifle craft. Therefore the lower classes were not pursuing excellence of marksmanship with semi-auto firearms but rather firepower. If these lower classes used rifles such as semi-autos which made them more effective the elites were challenged. As an aside Cooper had nothing but contempt for the AK-47 the ultimate weapon of the masses.
Strangely, as a rabid 1911 advocate, Cooper never saw the inconsistency of his beliefs’. That is the .45 ACP 1911 handgun was to the semi-auto rifle, what the .45 Long Colt Single Action Army was to the bolt action rifle. My point is that applying Coopers same logic regarding rifles to pistols he should have been against carrying a 1911 automatic pistol. If you correctly and accurately place your first bullet you don’t need a second follow up, but if you do need one a single action can be cocked very quickly-even faster than a bolt can be worked.
What? You say that when an adversary is close even the briefest amounts of delays can cost you your life? Well-if you had been situational aware utilizing the proper Cooper color code this would not be an issue. Also the standard Single Action is more accurate than a 1911 therefore why carry a less accurate pistol? So what if you only have six rounds? Just as there were no multiple targets on the Vlei or Donga to prove the deficiencies in bolt actions, I don’t have to address this issue other than by saying there are enough rounds to enable a skilled Patrician to kill six opponents. Cooper himself didn’t bring a 1911 .45 Automatic with him to the Pacific in WWII………..he brought a .45 Single Action Army. If these arguments appear obtuse and closed minded, well, they are exactly the kinds of rationales I’ve heard Cooper address issues with.
When the Steyr Scout came out there were some readily apparent problems with the rifle which Cooper brushed aside. For instance as a universal rifle the Steyr didn’t care for military ammunition. Half the time the firing pin wouldn’t strike the hard military primers with enough to detonate them. When the rifle was adjusted to impart more force to the firing pin the trigger pull became much heavier. Coopers remedy was basically don’t use military ammo. When it was pointed out that the 19 inch barrel of a Scout creates a large muzzle flash (read fireball) which would reveal your position to the enemy and that just maybe it should have a flash hider, Cooper dismissed this flaw, “If you hit your target with the first shot you don’t need to worry about revealing your position.” That statement alone should cause people to wonder just how much time Cooper spent in the field and question his tactical prowess.
All during this time Cooper still clung to the belief the SR was a combat weapon first and foremost. Then came the War in Kosovo during the summer of 1999. When a Kosovo Liberation Army rebel armed with a Scout rifle had his photo taken Cooper was ecstatic. FINALLY some fighting man had validated his Scout Rifle concept! Hallelujah, praise Jesus! However that validation was at best spurious. Just because one or two guys in a combat zone carries a chrome plated Klingon Disrupter, Uday Hussein’s personal gold plated Tabuk assault rifle, or a much vaunted Steyr Scout Rifle doesn’t mean a damn thing. Having spent a good part of time of my life in some dangerous areas of the world I saw irregular forces armed with all manner of goofy shit. I swear during my first year in Iraq it seemed like half the Iraqi Police had removed the stocks from their AK’s and I knew guys who went out in the Red Zone armed with nothing more than a Tariq pistol, Glock 19, Czech Skorpian, or nothing at all.
Now here’s a little tidbit that has been kept quiet for quite some time. This is for all you Scout Rifle lovers who say the SR was never intended to be a combat rifle.
In September of 1999 Cooper gave a lecture at the Soldier Of Fortune convention in Las Vegas of which the topic was “The Scout Rifle in Combat”. On a table next to him he had his Scout Rifle. After the lecture was over people were crowding around the table and handling the rifle when “WHAM!” Somehow a .308 round found its way into the chamber of the Scout Rifle and when a bystander pulled the trigger a bullet went into the ceiling. My point here is not to lay fault at Coopers feet for an ND, (he didn’t bust the cap) but rather to emphasize the subject of his lecture.
In the ensuing years I have watched how the true origins of the Scout Rifle have been obscured, glossed over, and rewritten like Soviet history. Over time people finally acknowledged, tacitly or otherwise, that the SR as a military rifle is a dimwitted concept. As a hunting arm it does what it should. However people who never even met Cooper have told me to my face that the SR was never intended for a military role and that “Scout” was just a name-nothing more which is unmitigated BS.
The odd thing is at times I wonder if even Cooper didn’t have some doubts and hedge his bets on whether the Scout Rifle was really valid. After I informed Cooper I used a FAL in the 270 class my eyes cast around the interior of his gun vault. On one side was a long work bench and on the wall were mounted a dozen or so long arms, most predictably of the boltish type. There was a wall dividing the room and I peeked my head through the open doorway to see what was inside. I noted this part of the vault was a storage area for boxes, and gun cases, things like that. However in the far corner, partially obscured by junk was a scoped HK-91, lonely and exiled from the “real” guns in the other room. It was the poster child the kind of rifle Cooper hated. So why did he have that HK? Why indeed……………
Interesting writeup. I don’t really get the right and left pull on the whole Scout Rifle concept. I see it as a handy tool, somewhere between mountain rifle and carbine.
As a “weapon” it may have been useful maybe as late as between the Wars? Of course in that Era optics weren’t so “thought out” as they are on today’s Scout Rifle…Anyway.
I have one, it’s really no more than a hunting rifle, light, handy, easy for snap shots. All the little gadgets are handy to a degree.
I can say I know of one still living gent that was a “Scout” during the War. Yes, a lone man in the bush of the South Pacific with a Radio and a rifle. Too bad he didn’t have a “Scout Rifle!” Probably no handier than his M1903 in all truth?
Mann himself is an interesting character. At heart, he is a self-proclaimed West Virginia villager. He is a former police officer, railroad detective, firearms instructor, army tank commander, several GunSite alumni, an internationally renowned big game hunter, and editor-in-chief of the widely published 13th edition of Ammo. World. He also has a yellow pickup, which I have not seen anywhere else, and a Rhodesian Ridgeback that killed and ate several people. He is a ruthless hunter and his own Scout rifle is a very cool custom version based on the Forbes rifle.
I’m a big fan of him and even wrote about this man in my author’s essay for the website european resource for students. Since hunting there is unthinkable. And our hunting experience is simply shocking.
You may or may not be a supporter of the Scout Rifle (for the record, me), but there is so much information here about weapons, accuracy, lack thereof, hunting, snipers, and Jeff Cooper in general that you will find it worthwhile and then a little. It’s great reading / browsing or whatever you call it and you can’t beat the price. And if you find yourself in the West with the Virginia God, stay away from the dog.
great info