R Bros Competitor Tactical

Designed from Scratch, Dead-Nuts Accurate

- Keith Wood

My friend, and the legendary pistol smith, Stan Chen said it pretty well: “These days, a ‘gunsmith’ is a guy with a torque wrench.” Due to a variety of factors, none the least being economic, skilled craftsmanship in the gun trade is rapidly going the way of the revolver. Talented gun makers are still around, but when you encounter one you take notice. In a world full of pretenders, promising accuracy that they can’t pro duce, delivery times they’ll never meet, or attention to detail that’s seriously lacking, R Bros Rifles is the real deal.

The R in R Bros stands for Redell — brothers Travis and Jesse grew up under a gunsmithing father and were raised working in the shop. When the brothers showed up at a precision rifle match and won it using hunting rifles that Travis had built himself, the business was effectively born. R Bros builds a variety of rifles, and hunting guns are very much part of the lineup, but R Bros has become best known for its competition models, likely due to the status of both Travis and Jesse as active competitors in precision rifle matches. R Bros sent us one of their Competitor Tactical models, chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor to take for a spin.

The Competitor Tactical is based on R Bros’ own Rogue action, designed by Travis and built by the folks at Defiance Machine. You know a guy is a real-deal gun maker when he goes through the time and expense of designing his own components, especially something as complex as an action.

The Rogue is notable in its absence of a bolt counterbore in the barrel: the Remington 700 was designed with a bolt nose that extends past the locking lugs to surround the case head within the “three rings of steel” (bolt head, barrel shank, and action).