The Stag 10 Marksman
The Marksman title suggests the rifle is made for sharpshooting, and the 18-inch barrel takes full advantage of the popular .308 Winchester's potential. With features like reliable direct impingement, a full-length handguard, nitrided components, and the precision rifle buttstock, the Stag 10 promises a sharp performance.
I opened the box to see a handsome black rifle with a fantastic finish and look to it. The impressive size of .308 AR-type rifles always catches me off-guard. I checked the chamber and ran the charging handle a few times to get a feel for it.
The Stag Arms two-stage trigger felt good, as did the whole ensemble when shouldered. The muzzle came fitted with a VG6 Gamma 7.62 muzzle brake, which promised to keep recoil to a minimum.
The full-length handguard is also M-LOK compatible to make adding your accessories easy. I added a Magpul bipod mount to the front of the handguard, as I wanted to see how this rifle shot on paper.
Range Prep
I also added a good scope, as I had a Primary Arms GLx 3-18X44 scope handy. It sat in a ZRO Delta scope mount, making it very easy to drop onto the Pic rail of the Stag 10. With the scope mounted and a quick installation of a Harris bipod, all I needed was a selection of ammunition to hit the range.
I went to my filing cabinet and pulled some Desert Tech 175 Match ammunition, as well as some Fiocchi and Magtech 150 ball ammo. I wanted to see how this rifle did with both precision ammo and your typical ball ammunition.
With targets and other gear in hand, I headed into the mountains to find a quiet spot where I could get serious with the Stag 10.
On the Range
First, I wanted to do was bore-sight the rifle to avoid wasting my ammunition. I set up my target at 100 yards, and using the Fiocchi ammo, I quickly got a zero. Then it was time to shoot a few groups. I would load five rounds at a time in the Magpul SR-25 20-round magazine.
The rifle shot very well with all ammunition I tried, but the match ammo performed better, as you might imagine. Groups typically were around 1 MOA, while the ball ammo spread a little bit. But even shooting fairly quickly with the ball ammo, it was easy to keep groups around 2 MOA.
With the scope zoomed out to 3X, it was easy to engage various targets at closer ranges. I say easy – meaning as easy as it can get with a 18-inch .308 rifle. I imagine this rifle would be fantastic for shooting pigs at nearly any range. Up close, the rifle was powerful and reasonably fast to get on target, or you could drop down on the bipod and engage targets out to 500 yards or more.
The muzzle brake was effective at reducing recoil, and the size of the rifle helped. It was very pleasant to shoot, the recoil impulse was quite mild, and I never noticed any significant gas in my face. I shot using 20- and 10-round magazines, and the 10-round allows better ground clearance for the rifle when shooting uphill.
Going Long
The adjustable surfaces of the buttstock were a nice touch, allowing me to customize the rifle to my needs. This made the next task even better, as I wanted to stretch the rifle out a little bit and see how it would do as a marksman rifle.
I picked out a small white rock surrounded by soft mountain soil on a distant hillside. My rangefinder measured the distance at 487 yards, which I figured would be an easy job for this rifle. I checked my dope chart for the .308 Match ammo, and I knew it would be close but not perfect. I dialed the 2.7 MRAD into the turret of the GLx and favored into the wind.
The next three shots all landed within a fist's distance of the little white rock. Surely no larger target would have escaped me at that distance. And it’s nice to have .308 horsepower at those distances. I know I can do the same thing with some of my 5.56 rifles but with nowhere near the power.
Pros & Cons
The Stag 10 is a fantastic rifle, but I'll share my pros and cons with you and let you decide how to apply them to your needs. I love autoloading rifles in bigger calibers like .308 and 6.5 CM, but one of the drawbacks I find in them is the mass.
These rifles are not small, and they are harder to move around and maneuver. I don't mean just the Stag 10 – nearly every longer .308 semi-auto I've shot is just a smidge too much for my taste. The size and weight of rifles like this are the only hindrance, in my opinion, but there are also a bunch of great benefits to it.
The mass of the rifle makes it very easy to shoot, as well as spot your own shots. The 18-inch barrel gives you maximum velocity to really stretch the .308 out, and the Stag 10 does it very well. The rifle is very smooth in its operation, the controls are crisp and feel good on the pads of my fingers. The quality components like grips and buttstock add value to the rifle.
Keep in mind, one of the great benefits of Stag Arms is that you also can get this rifle in a left-handed model. I really couldn't come up with anything I didn't like about the rifle other than the mass. But let’s say I really wanted to nit-pick the Stag 10: I suppose I would likely upgrade the trigger and probably add a larger charging handle.
Pros:
- Smooth operation
- Crisp controls
- Easy to shoot
- 18-inch barrel accurate to long ranges
- Quality components
- Size and weight keeps recoil down
Cons:
- AR-10 size is a bit unwieldy for my preference
- Trigger could stand an upgrade
-
Charging handle could be bigger
Final Thoughts
As a rifle junkie, it comes as no surprise that I quite enjoyed the Stag 10. It was a class act all around. The accuracy was good, the function was flawless, it looks sharp as can be, and I can't imagine a civilian shooting scenario where I would feel vulnerable with the Stag 10.
It does a great job fulfilling the role of a heavy autoloading marksman rifle, in my opinion. Of Course, you can take that with a grain of salt and see if the qualities I've outlined are applicable to your shooting purposes. But the Stag 10 is definitely worth your time.
