re: Question regarding rifle specs and Ammo

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I am wanting to put a suppressor on it and that means the barrel needs to be short. 16” tops and overall length, with roughly a 6” suppressor, would preferably be shorter than 40”.

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There’s not a whole lot of off the shelf bolt options for what you’ve laid out, at least not to get under the 40” overall suppressed. A lot more if that suppressor is a little shorter or you could stand 44” overall. Look at the Witt Machine SME, it is not a true suppressor and doesn’t require a tax stamp, but reduces recoil and directs sound out in front to reduce what you hear, which is typically a shitload in a shorter barrel.

At 16” barrel length the cartridge selection gets narrowed down a decent bit. You need fast burning powder in a short case to make use of it, so that means 300blk, 308, 7mm-08, or 6.5CM. If you want to handload that opens up the door to short magnums like the SAUMs and WSMs, but it’s gonna get sketchy fast on stabilization and velocity loss unless you do your homework on the load. Any custom bolt gun with a carbon wrapped 16” barrel can be made to do what you want in the 308/7-08 though. A chassis gun could weigh next to nothing and would be under 40”.

I don’t know near as much about 300blk as others but the numbers don’t suggest it would be a reliable deer killer at 150 yards with subsonic ammo. I could be wrong, but the only real benefit of 300blk supersonic over 308 is you can fit it in a lighter ar-15 over a heavier ar-10. With your budget there are ar-10s that will come close on weight.