BUTCH’S STILLER SWAPS BARRELS AGAIN
By les voth
This poor action has to feel used and abused. After all - it’s mine.
It wasn’t the first custom action I’d ever owned, but it was the first one that got much use. I traded a Manner’s stocked long action Defiance with a 6.5-284 Bartlein for this Butch’s white labeled Stiller, to retire a Remington 700 when I got serious about shooting PRS. Barrels came and went, and bullets disappeared in the general direction of all the AR500 steel I could lay eyes on.
For the last few years a #3 Bartlein in 6mmBR hung off the front and slung 70 grain Nosler Ballistic Tips, Hammer Hunter Tipped 75 grainers, 105 Berger Hybrids, and 107 Sierra Match Kings at steel out to 800 yards, critters closer, and rocks, lottsa rocks.
Why did this action find a new job? I went to the NRL Hunter Grand Slam Finale and got all enthused about trying to shoot one of those matches - that’s why. Any time I see something I think I have a glimmer of possibility of doing without dying, out come the parts and new combinations are created.
A word further on the Stiller action: When I originally got the action I looked up “Actions The Pros use” by Cal Zant, and was more than elated to find Stiller “on the list”. I’d go to a match and someone would ask what it was, and I’d say, “It’s a Stiller. It’s on the list!” let the shootin’ commence!
The Stiller has worn many barrels and maybe 5 different triggers of at least three brands. Today along with the mystery maker’s 6.5 Creedmoor barrel it sports a TacSport X two stage trigger with a Gator Grip shoe. Shoots good, too!
Why did I dig out the Stiller for this project? At the NRL Hunter Finale I saw a man carrying a Stiller actioned rifle, remarked to him that I’d recognized it as a Stiller, and asked him what he thought of it. The love he had for that - his favorite rifle - poured out of him.
He’d broken another purposefully built Hunter factory rifle recently, and called on his favorite hunting rifle to replace it as his competition rifle. It was built by Horizon Firearms, and he couldn’t say enough good about it. It shot real well, and it even looked good, unlike what I’ve done with mine. Well, it ain’t ugly, but doesn’t reflect the kind of talent over at the Horizon shop in Bryan, Texas.
Over the course of three days in Clovis, New Mexico attending the Hunter match, I saw more Stillers besides this one, in different configurations. But it stuck with me that Stiller would be a perfect production rifle to get on the NRL Hunter’s “approved” list for factory rifles. If, as mine does, they had a Bix’n Andy TacSport X two stage trigger in them - they’d be shooters, too.
The rifle in the foreground is a Horizon Rifle w/Stiller action.
This is my newly recreated Stiller in 6.5 Creedmoor w/Bix’n Andy TacSport X two stage trigger. It sits in a Grayboe Phoenix II stock, is propped up by a single pull CKYE POD bipod, and is shushed up by a AB Suppressor A10 7.62 Warthog. The 4-20X50 XTR II Burris works as it should.
Rounds 3-7 after barrel, scope, and stock swapping.