July-August 2019 http://www.riflemagazine.com 45
I skinned the buck while Holt
packed his Jeep, finding the ex-
panded ELD-X under the hide in
front of the right shoulder. Soon
Holt was on the road.
Dwayne and I looked over a
few more bucks that evening and
the next morning, but all proved
to be too young – or had good-
sized 4x4 antlers. About an hour
before sunset, however, we both
suddenly spotted a mature buck
standing broadside in a Gambel
oak thicket about 100 yards away.
Dwayne immediately said, “Three
points on one side. Shoot!” Except
for its head, the buck was almost
totally hidden. Through the scope
I found a small opening around
the shoulder, and at the shot the
buck crumpled. Afterward, the la-
ser scope indicated the shot was
101 ya rds.
During skinning we discovered
the bullet had broken both shoul-
ders, the core and jacket ending up
half an inch apart under the skin
on the far side; apparently the sec-
ond shoulder expanded the jacket
barely beyond the InterLock ring.
I consider that very good perfor-
mance at close range, especially
on a buck that yielded exactly
100 pounds of boned meat, indi-
cating a live weight of more than
250 pounds. Holt’s buck was no-
ticeably bigger, probably around
300 pounds. One of the advan-
tages of higher-BC bullets at mod-
erate muzzle velocities, like 2,700
to 2,800 fps for the 6.5 and .308
ammunition used on the hunts, is
more consistent bullet expansion
both up close and farther out, due
to more retained velocity.
A month later, Franchi shipped
the rifle for further testing. Its trig-
ger averaged 3 pounds, 6 ounces,
again with some creep – and
again, when adjusted to 2 pounds
the creep disappeared. I only got
to target-shoot the 6.5 a little due
to one of the worst winters in the
memories of Montana natives.
With the same ammunition used
on the hunt, 100-yard groups av-
eraged even smaller than in New
Mexico, probably because of ad-justing the trigger and using a real
benchrest, rather than the hunting
camp’s makeshift bench.
The Momentum comes in both
short- and long-action lengths in
the same chamberings as the
Horizon: .243 Winchester, 6.5
Creedmoor, .270 Winchester, .308
Winchester, .30-06 and .300 Win-
chester Magnum. The short-ac-
tion magazine is slightly longer
than the industry standard of
2.85 inches, apparently estab-
lished by the Remington 722. On
both the .308 and 6.5 they mea-
sured around 2.92 inches, not
quite as long as the 3-inch mag-
azines some companies put in
short bolt-actions these days, but
still a definite plus when hand-
loading longer, high-BC bullets.
Barrel lengths are 22 inches in
the “standard” chamberings and
24 inches on the 6.5 and .300.
Franchi’s list price for the rifle is
$609, and for the scope combo,
$729. A check of Internet sites
found them advertised for some-
what less. R