Snowy Mountain Custom Rifles Review

Each project rifle build is a review of a custom rifle built by some of the industry’s leading custom gun makers, utilizing the highest quality components manufacturers. I select premium components from these top manufacturers; some may be brand new, and others may be tried and true favorites. I may not be the first to publish a review on a new product, but I will gladly be second or third with reliable and factual data from a year of use in the field, testing products. All that said, let’s jump into the next Project rifle build.

A Full-Service Rifle Maker with Custom Sensibilities

I chose Snowy Mountain Rifles to be the builder on this project based on reader questions and requests for my opinion on their rifles. Having not shot or handled a specific rifle personally, I withhold my opinion on it. I have a long list of builders I want to review rifles from so I can offer the largest base of information on custom rifles, and Snowy Mountain was one of the top rifle shops on my list. Snowy Mountain Rifles being a Montana-based shop made it easy for me to schedule a tour and meet with Paul Donaldson, the owner.

Snowy Mountain is a fast-growing gun shop, offering “Smith Shop” builds that are rifles built on customer-supplied parts and “Custom Shop” builds that are comprised of components selected or manufactured for or by Snowy Mountain rifles. They recently began machining their own floor plates and DBMs in-house and are expanding into other components in the near future. I was very excited to see their new titanium, self-timing muzzle brake. This was a very innovative part that had a great look on the rifle. Their gunsmith shop was full of rifles, barreled actions, stocks, and plenty of projects to attest to the high quantity and quality of work the shop is capable of producing. After the meeting, I dropped off my components and eagerly waited to see what they would create as I gave them creative freedom to build something unique.

Action and Caliber

The receiver I selected for this rifle was the Defiance Machine AnTi in a short action (medium to Defiance) with a standard bolt face. The AnTi receiver is skeletonized to reduce weight and compete with the titanium receivers on the market without the added cost of titanium. Additionally, being built from stainless steel, the AnTi doesn’t have the gritty feel of titanium actions that are prone to gawling when the bolt is slid inside the receiver without proper lubrication. As with every Defiance Machine action, tolerances are the name of the game, and this action would be a great base for the lightweight hunting rifle I had envisioned.

I decided to complicate my life and choose a new wildcat cartridge, the 25 Creedmoor - basically, a 6.5 Creedmoor case, necked down to 25 caliber. It has been years since I owned a 25-caliber rifle, and with the new fast twist rifles and heavy-for-caliber bullets made by Black Jack and Berger, it was time to try something new. Thanks to both Petersen Cartridge for producing 25 Creedmoor brass and Jake at Unknown Munitions, they made this venture much easier.

Barrel

I have grown very fond over the years of PROOF Research barrels and have yet to find a reason to switch to any of the many new carbon fiber barrels on the market. I have tested a staggering number of PROOF barrels and have found exceptional accuracy in every one without a single issue. PROOF has taken its cut rifling and lapping techniques to new levels and delivers barrels that are extremely consistent. I have found many of the PROOF barrels to shoot the same load data from barrel to barrel with minimal, if any, changes in accuracy. Why mess with perfection?

I selected a .257 bore, 7 twist barrel in a 22” length for this rifle, as it just seems to be a great length for a well-balanced rifle. The 25 Creedmoor case would get ample velocity from a 22” barrel to keep the bullets expanding reliably out to beyond 600 yards; ideal for the Antelope and Whitetail Deer I intended to hunt with this rifle. The blank was threaded and chambered by Snowy Mountain with a custom reamer I purchased from Black Jack Bullets, which specializes in 25-caliber wildcat rifles. Snowy Mountain installed their Ti muzzle brake after threading and crowning the muzzle. I should note, for those interested, that Snowy Mountain rifles cut their chambers and threads on manual machines.

Furniture

AG Composites has been a growing contender for carbon fiber stocks in the industry and offers a wide variety of innovative stock designs. I had been considering trying the AG Chalk Branch Adjustable stock for some time. I dropped the hammer on one with a custom LOP of 14” and kept the exposed carbon fiber shell for this project. Snowy Mountain custom paints their stocks in-house and had some ideas for a carbon camo Cerakote job that would wrap the rifle build together.

The Adjustable Chalk Branch stock weighs 40 ounces (2 lb 8 oz) and includes machined aluminum pillars, 1” Pachmayr Recoil Pad, and is CNC-inlet for your action and bottom metal of choice. For this build, I selected the Defiance AnTi receiver, PROOF Research Sendero barrel contour, and a Hawkins M5 floor plate inlet. The stock would be pillar-and-glass, bedded by Snowy Mountain with a superb fit and finish before it received their custom camouflage Cerakote paint job.

I finished up the components for the build with Hawkins Precision M5 Oberndorf bottom metal in a short-action length and cut for a Wyatt’s Extended mag box. I have become a huge fan of Hawkins Precision DBMs and bottom metals for my entire collection of rifle builds. They offer great products that are well-engineered and purpose-driven for the modern rifleman.

Hawkins Precision also manufactures scope rings, including their Long Range Hybrid, which is a one-piece ring/base solution that includes a 25-MOA cant and Anti-Cant level ring cap. The 25-MOA cant machined into the ring base allows for the lightest-weight combination for mounting a scope and getting every click of adjustment you could ever need. The ring cap bubble is a nice added extra, as a bubble level is paramount for accurate rifle shooting. These features have become standard requirements for the rifleman looking to extend his rifle capabilities.

I finished this build off with a HIT trigger from Timney Triggers. This trigger, with a straight shoe set at 1.5 lb, has become my go-to trigger for its reliability over the years. I have one in every rifle I own that accepts it. I feel that having the same trigger in every rifle is crucial for consistency, and this has now become my SOP (standard of practice). I also prefer the straight shoe to a curved shoe, as I feel I get a cleaner break on the straight due to a constant linear surface.

Initial Testing

A few months after my tour and dropping off components, I got the call that the rifle was ready. I loaded up the truck with shooting gear and ammo from Unknown Munitions and headed to Hamilton, Montana. I had selected a Swarovski Z8i 2-16x50 optic with the 4W-i reticle for this rifle, as the glass would be ultra-bright and perfect for low-light, late-season hunting in the dark timber. The 4W-i reticle offers simple windage hold marks coupled with a brilliant illuminated dot in the center crosshair for pinpoint aiming. The guys in the shop mounted up the optic and took the time to level everything properly before we headed to the range for zero.

Snowy Mountain Rifles offers a full load development option for its customers and has a large supply of components on hand to meet nearly any hunter’s needs. After confirming the zero at 100 yards and the muzzle velocity of the ammunition, we hit the long-range course and started working out the data on the steel targets. Snowy Mountain Rifles has a private range that they were in the early stages of developing at the time, but we still had plenty of steel from 500-900 yards to work over. In no time at all, the steel was ringing with impacts from the 25 CM, slinging 131-grain bullets at 2,800 FPS. I was impressed by the initial results but was interested in seeing what I could work up with hand loads for the rifle with the new 25-caliber projectiles.

Load Development

Initially, I was unable to locate any of the new Berger 25-caliber bullets and had Unknown Munitions work me up a test batch with the first run of Berger 135-grain Hybrids they had received. As usual, the test box produced numerous promising loads and put me in a great place to choose a charge weight to load up 50 rounds for testing. I worked up a variety of loads with 131-grain Blackjack Aces, 133-grain Berger Elite Hunters, and Berger 135-grain Hybrids using Varget, H4350, and Vihtavouri N555 propellants with great results that I had gathered from the initial test box from Unknown.

Utilizing Redding Competition dies and neck bushings, I was able to use 6.5 CM dies and .285 neck bushings to resize the brass down to the proper neck diameter for the 25 CM (currently, no one makes 25 Creedmoor dies). Throughout my testing, I was able to produce loads with all the projectiles under ½-MOA with muzzle velocities around 2,800 FPS, single-digit SDs (standard deviations), and low ESs (extreme spreads). After a few hundred rounds of testing, I decided to hunt the fall deer hunt in Montana with the 133-grain Berger Elite Hunter, as it was the best option for hunting and produced better downrange ballistics than a 6.5 Creedmoor with 143-grain ELD-X.

I confirmed my data out to 800 yards, like I do on all my hunting rifles, and felt confident in the rifle's reliability and accuracy. I will note that I did switch out the Hawkins M5 Oberndorf bottom metal for a Hawkins M5 DBM just before hunting season, as I prefer to hunt with a magazine with five rounds down and a spare five-round magazine on me as a backup. This is a personal preference. After years of training with a magazine-fed rifle for reloads and malfunctions, it's what I know. The rifle fed reliably and smoothly with both systems, and the beauty of the Hawkins parts is that the dimensions of the M5 bottom metals are identical, so they fit perfectly, even in a bedded custom rifle.

Final Thoughts

The final project was an incredibly beautiful rifle that shot and performed well in real-world use. Not one of my rifles is a safe queen, regardless of how pretty the stock is painted, and this rifle was no exception. It was strapped to a pack and carried on hunts throughout the fall. It maintained zero, performed flawlessly in feeding, extracting, and shooting regardless of the conditions from -15° to 85°. Even after all the range days and hunting trips, the custom-painted stock is nearly pristine in condition with only a few very small rub marks from riding against a tripod head for a several-mile ruck.

I was fortunate enough to take my best Montana whitetail buck with this rifle after a long day of glassing in November. We were trying to stay warm by a small fire we made when a doe appeared on the far side of the basin we had been watching all day. Just below her, a great buck appeared and offered a short window to take a shot. I got a range, confirmed my hunting partner Shane was on the buck in his glass, made a correction for the distance, and got the crosshair settled on the buck as he stopped just short of the trees. I broke the trigger, sent the bullet in flight, and watched it impact the buck in the shoulder as he took off, packing his off-side front shoulder. The bullet had gone through both shoulders and vital organs, but the buck was still up when we got to where we last saw him and required a follow up shot to get him on the ground. These large-bodied bucks in the rut are tough and committed to not dying despite holes through their lungs, specifically from smaller rifle cartridges.

I have always stated that a rifle is the sum of its parts and that choosing the right components can make or break a rifle build. The components I selected for this rifle are some of the best for the application and allow a gunsmith to build something truly exemplary. Snowy Mountain Rifles can build such a rifle for any application you desire for your next custom build.

Contact Snowy Mountain Rifles at 406-546-8732, email at info@snowymtnrifles.com, and check out their rifles online at snowymountainrifles.com.

“Only accurate rifles are interesting.” -Townsend Whelen