This discussion is flawed from the beginning. Rifles come in a lot of different categories that beautiful or ugly. For example, I've got a stainless Model 70 on a black factory composit stock. Certainly not a "beautiful gun" nor was it built to be. When I look at it, I see a "serious" purpose built rifle. A lot of the most deadly guns we have aren't pretty. They were built to shoot well and hit and kill what they were aimed at. Then we have a lot of mediocre stuff that is semi-functional, i.e. it works....sort of. Below that we have the functional stuff...you pull the trigger and it goes bang and a bullet comes out more or less in the direction aimed...although not necessarily with the ballistics to do the job intended.

What I call an UGLY gun is a gun of piss poor design, trashy workmanship and junk for material....basically garbage disguised as a firearm. The Jap Nambu comes to mind and the French had a machinegun whose name escapes me that was such a bunch of trash it wouldn't melt intogood manhole covers.

And if we want to split hairs, I can think of several other categories. But the world does not consist of just the beautiful and the ugly.

I own quite a few Rugers, 77's, #1's and Red lables with some pretty nice confiquired wood. I have never seen a 77 with this type of wood? Did you buy this new or from a custom shop? Super nice rifle. I got a birthday coming up. I don't suppose you would like to adopt me!

I have to say the 'ugliest' rifle I ever owned was a H&R Handi rifle in .223. It had terrible wood to metal finish and butt heavy, even with the bull barrel. But man could that thing shoot. I had more than a few guys chuckle when I pulled it out of the case at the range. But they soon stopped when they saw the targets I was shooting. It outshot a good bit of the higher end varmint rigs the guys had. Of course that could have been the shooters too. I had one range officer look through my spotting scope at the 1/2" ragged hole in the target and he asked how many rounds were in the group. When I told him about 10 or 12 he didn't believe me.

Ugly but a shooter.

CAGE: IMHO, that's all that counts!

i'll take dog ugly over inaccurate anyday. love my savages. they ain't ugly when the game is on the ground.

I think we have found the winner for the "ugly rifle" contest!

Does this count as a rifle?



An old musket that has been passed down through my family..

The only rifles I can honestly say I hate the sight of are bullpups. Ask Badgerboy, I can't stand them. I understand the reasoning behind their design and that they're the wave of the future in military weapons, blah blah blah, but I think they're an eyesore. I'll take an M-16 any day.

i dont know as much as i see beauty in a perfectly polished wooden stock i also see beauty in certain synthetics (styers, mausers, springfields, Remingtons sps... ) and even old beat up wooden military stocks. My M1 Garand has an old GI stock from the 1947 on it and despite the bulkiness and scratches and darkened grease stained color i find her to be beautiful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.....

its much like cars.... certain cars have souls... like old muscle cars and a few certain newer ones... doesnt matter how old or how dirty they are their beauty lives on and shines through the dirt.

only ugly rifles i see are old Ak-47/74s and mosins but those were built for function and not form....