I have two. A rifle length 35 Whelen with a wood stock, and a carbine length 30-06 with a synthetic stock.
They both have a Monte Carlo style cheek pad on the stock which means it is impossible to line up the eye with the factory installed open sights. That is why both of mine have a scope.
The 35 Whelen really has a nasty kick because there is no butt pad to speak of.
They are both quick and agile to handle, the carbine more so, naturally.
The fore-end on both of mine rattles a little bit. I have heard you can fix that by gluing some soft material on the receiver to keep the pump rails from hitting the receiver. On the 35 Whelen I can twist the fore-end slightly so that it touches the barrel on the side, probably not good for accuracy; I will someday remove a bit of material from the fore-end to prevent it from touching the barrel.
Both of these guns shoot 1-2 MOA with most loads I have tried. The 7600 has a free floating barrel so the accuracy is not surprising.
The trigger action on my rifles is quite clean but heavy. I have already bought spare hammers and sears so I can try my hand on doing a trigger job. Brownells sells a third party trigger improvement set for about $140.
The synthetic carbine in action (without a magazine in this photo)
The full length 35 Whelen
The carbine with different after market ten round magazines, which I have not been able to get to feed anything. Maybe a couple of rounds total have fed so far, all the others hit the barrel below the feed ramp and get stuck there. I tried modifying the feed lips on one of the plastic magazines with the result that rounds will not stay in the magazine anymore, they just pop out on their own.
I will probably buy a couple more of these guns eventually, they are very likable. Purebred utility tools just like their cousin the Remington 870 shotgun.
