Suppressors offer reduced noise, muzzle blast and recoil. More hunters are using them, and rifle manufacturers are making it easier to do so. (Photo courtesy of Blane Everett)
September 20, 2024
By Richard Mann
The .300 AAC Blackout cartridge emerged a decade into the 21st century. While functionally a short and weak version of the .30-30 Win., the cartridge’s cool name and excellent suitability for suppressed shooting made it a hit. Seemingly overnight, a plethora of new bolt-action and semi-automatic rifles were offered in .300 Blackout. Simultaneously, it seemed, the suppressor industry swelled. Today, suppressors are one of the fastest growing segments of the firearms industry, and not only are they selling like never before, they’re also changing the makeup of the modern bolt-action rifle.
THREADS Not all that long ago, a threaded muzzle on a factory-built rifle was considered an upgraded feature. Today, it’s essentially standard, and few new rifles—regardless of caliber or chambering—are offered without threaded muzzles. This is because most modern-day shooters want to use a suppressor with their rifles, or they at least want their rifles to be suppressor compatible if they later decide to buy a suppressor. Thus, most manufacturers build and sell rifles with threaded muzzles.
However, muzzle threading isn’t as simple as it might seem. This is because barrels come in different sizes/diameters. The most common thread pattern today is 5/8x24, but other patterns are also used. The new Colt CBX TAC Hunter rifle’s muzzle is threaded at 9/16x24, and Kimber threads the muzzles of its skinny-barreled rifles at 7/16x28. There are others as well. This means if your suppressor is threaded at 5/8x24, you’ll need an adapter for these rifles.
To circumvent this odd thread pattern, some manufacturers flare the end of the barrel slightly so that it can be threaded at 5/8x24. In fact, this is the technique Wilson Combat uses with its new line of NULA ultralight bolt-action rifles.
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LENGTHS While shooters and hunters appreciated manufacturers threading factory rifle barrels, many quickly noticed that screwing a 6- to 10-inch suppressor to the end of a 22-inch barrel made the rifle impractically long. Manufacturers responded, predictably, by offering rifles with shorter 20-inch barrels.
Even so, in many cases, a barrel with a suppressor still extended 26 inches or more from the action. This made retrieving a rifle from your truck or maneuvering it in a small blind or shoot house problematic. It also made proper rifle handling difficult in some hunting situations, particularly in areas where brush was thick. So, rifle barrels began to get even shorter.
Some rifles have a thread pattern that is considered non-standard and may require an adapter to work with some suppressors. (Photo courtesy of Sebastian Mann) For example, Springfield Armory now offers its new Model 2020 Redline rifle with a 16- or 20-inch barrel. Similarly, Wilson Combat’s new NULA rifles are available with 16-, 20- or 22-inch barrels. A 16-inch barrel is as short as you can go without ending up with a short-barreled rifle (SBR), which requires a tax stamp just as a suppressor does. It’s also roughly the ideal length for a suppressed rifle. If you add the excellent Silencer Central Banish Backcountry suppressor to a 16-inch barrel, for example, overall barrel length is only 21.5 inches.
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CARTRIDGES These shorter barrels have had another effect on rifles. Up until relatively recently, the .30-06 Sprg. and the .270 Win. were two of the most popular centerfire rifle cartridges for big game hunting. That’s changed. Today, the .308 Win. and 6.5 Creedmoor have replaced the Ought-Six and .270 in popularity. This is partly because these cartridges work from a shorter action, but also partly because velocities do not suffer as much with a 16-inch barrel.
Granted, hunters still use long-action cartridges with long barrels and also run suppressors. But, in general, most new bolt-action hunting rifles are chambered in either 6.5 Creedmoor or .308 Win. with short, suppressor-friendly barrels.
WEIGHTS A suppressor adds about 7 to 14 ounces of weight to a rifle. With lightweight options, like the Springfield Armory Redline or the Wilson Combat NULA, this isn’t a big deal. With a 16-inch barrel, the Redline weighs just 6 pounds, and the NULA comes in at under 5 pounds.
But many hunting rifles aren’t that light, and manufacturers are now taking steps to reduce their weight, mostly by using either carbon-fiber stocks or carbon-fiber-wrapped barrels. For example, the Springfield Armory Model 2020 Waypoint is offered with a 20-inch conventional steel or carbon-fiber-wrapped barrel. The carbon-fiber-barreled version weighs 6 ounces less, which can mostly offset the weight of the extremely light Banish Backcountry suppressor already mentioned.
However, there’s another aspect of weight that using a suppressor affects, and that is balance. Most well-made hunting rifles balance close to or right at the front action screw. This often offers the best of both worlds when it comes to handling. It makes the rifle snap to the shoulder quickly, but it also allows for good control when shooting offhand. When you add 7 or more ounces to the muzzle of these rifles, they become very front heavy.
A muzzle-heavy rifle is not necessary a bad thing; they’re a bit easier to hold on target when shooting offhand. However, it’s their handling that suffers. They’re harder to get on target quickly, and if you’re swinging left to right to get on or to track a target, they become difficult to manage.
For instance, I hunted in Africa this past spring with a 4.8-pound Wilson Combat NULA in .358 Win., which was fitted with a Silencer Central Banish 46 suppressor. This suppressor can be shortened from 10 to 7.9 inches, which reduces the weight from 20 ounces to 16. However, having a pound on the end of your rifle barrel will drastically affect its handling. I had to shoot a running kudu one day, and I struggled to get hits. In any case, it’s something to consider when going suppressed, and you’ll need to practice to become proficient at handling a muzzle-heavy rifle.
With its 16-inch barrel and an overall weight of less than 5 pounds, the Wilson Combat NULA is an ideal hunting rifle to pair with a suppressor. (Photo by author) THE FUTURE At least one manufacturer has devised a solution for this problem of poor balance when shooting suppressed. With its new American Rifle Generation II, Ruger offers a weight kit of up to 1.6 pounds that can be added to the buttstock to help establish proper rifle balance when using a suppressor. So far, Ruger is the only manufacturer I know that offers this feature. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes an option from other manufacturers soon.
I also expect that as technology advances, we’ll see lighter suppressors and maybe even rifles that are lighter than what has already become common today. Either way, one thing is certain. Hunters are transitioning to suppressors, and rifle manufacturers are making it easier.
