Personal experience here: as mentioned, I own an AIAX. And I grab quite a few rifles more often than the AX.
I think if you are a hardcore target shooter, esp. long distance, yeah, I could see happily reaching for the AI almost each and every time. It’s an easy button…buy it and it just works. No futzing with your custom that you are piecing together.
But I’m not a target shooter. I shoot varmints. Little ones. So I reach for the 22LR Kidd shooting silenced/subsonics, 17 HMR, 17 hornet, and 204 way more. For me, the AX shooting 6BR is primarily for those longer prairie dog shots off a stable platform.
I think I smile the most when I grab the Kidd or maybe the 17 Hornet.
Not trying to be a dick. I’m trying to give some realistic advice to the OP and including other uses for rifles other than LR target. We don’t know what sort of things the OP uses rifles for.
Just saying for some, lugging around a heavy-ass AI to shoot ground squirrels or mountain goats isn’t where that rifle excels. Of course, if you are an Ironman triathlete, be my guest and hoof all you want.
For example, I own a heavy 204 (18-20lbs) and light 204s. I take the light ones if I’m walking distance.
If there was a qualification like, “For LR target shooting…” I wouldn’t have bothered to respond.
Not attacking anyone, no drama, just pointing out other possible scenarios. And yeah, I know who the site’s typical user tends to be.
But sometimes the AI mythos runs a bit thick, you know? Like when you open the gun safe and there it is, bathed in golden light, your sacred (elite sand) AI floating, awe-inspiring and vibrating the very ground beneath your filthy undeserving bare feet with its sheer
raw, totemic power!
With angels chanting in the distance lol.
Man, now that
would be cool.
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P.S. presumably we all know that all other AI colors besides sage green are blasphemous and profane. I included the “elite sand” color in my text above as a trap to weed out the less pure. Sage green, for the uninitiated, is the favorite color of our dear and most holy Lord of Lords, He who created this lush and verdant world therein for us to shoot our AI’s. @Huskydriver and @Krob95 are going straight to Hell and they know it.