Weatherby Vanguard Wilderness

About the Weatherby Vanguard Wilderness

The Weatherby Vanguard Wilderness is a lightweight bolt-action hunting rifle built on Weatherby's Vanguard action, itself derived from the Japanese Howa 1500 barreled action. Aimed at backcountry hunters, it pairs a hand-laminated carbon fiber composite Monte Carlo stock and aluminum bedding plate with a cold-hammer-forged, fluted, free-floating barrel finished in matte bead-blasted blued metalwork to keep total weight around 6.75 pounds. Like all current Vanguard rifles it carries an adjustable two-stage match trigger and a sub-MOA accuracy guarantee. In its flagship .257 Weatherby Magnum chambering the 26-inch barrel drives light bullets past 3,700 feet per second for an exceptionally flat trajectory.

Roy Weatherby founded his company in 1945 on the conviction that high-velocity cartridges were the future of hunting, and the .257 Weatherby Magnum he developed in 1944 remained his personal favorite. The Wilderness adapted the value-priced Vanguard platform for mountain and backcountry hunters who wanted a light, weatherproof carry rifle without stepping up to the flagship Mark V.

Weatherby Vanguard Wilderness specifications

Barrel length is 24 inches for non-magnum and .240 Weatherby Magnum chamberings and 26 inches for the belted magnum cartridges such as the .257 Weatherby Magnum. Select non-magnum calibers were offered with a detachable drop-box magazine that trimmed weight to about 6.5 pounds. Now discontinued from Weatherby's catalog.