Geissele King Hunter Review: 7mm Heat, Half-MOA Bite

Geissele’s King Hunter is a heavy, expensive, superbly accurate bolt gun built around Federal’s hot new 7mm Backcountry cartridge. It is not trying to be a featherweight mountain rifle, but from the bench and the field rest, this thing shoots like it knows it wears a crown.

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Geissele’s King Hunter is superbly accurate and optimized for the 7mm Backcountry.

Geissele Automatics, which is renowned for making fine triggers and gas guns, has boldly jumped into the crowded bolt-action rifle market with a bolt gun that has a hefty weight and price tag to match. Bolder yet, the gun, named the King Hunter, is designed for Federal Ammunition’s new, higher-pressure cartridge, the 7mm Backcountry.

If that sounds like a big bet, it is, but Geissele was clear on what they wanted the King Hunter to be. “A bolt action that Geissele would make would be a Rolex, a gun that you would be proud to give to your sons and daughters, and that they would be proud to give to their children,” says Bill Geiselle. The genesis of the King Hunter, he says, was Federal’s work in developing the 7mm Backcountry. That gave Geiselle the “kick” to start working on the company’s first-ever bolt-action rifle.

Before we get into the details of this Geissele King Hunter review, a brief review of the 7mm Backcountry is in order. The cartridge is a hard-hitting, flat-shooting, and relatively tame-recoiling round that achieves unprecedented velocity for a 7mm cartridge out of a shorter barrel. This is possible because the round uses a special alloy steel case that Federal says can be safely loaded at a maximum chamber pressure of 80,000 pounds per square inch, propelling bullets downrange faster.

Geiselle took about a year and a half to design the rifle around this cartridge, which Bill Geiselle believes will “literally take the shooting world into the future.” He predicts that there will be more cartridges employing the same design elements in the future, and he hopes the King Hunter will be the first of several bolt-action rifle designs to follow. That all remains to be seen, but in the meantime, here’s a closer look at what you’ll get for the rifle’s steep price tag of $3,800.

According to Geiselle, virtually every component of the King Hunter was heavily influenced by precision PRS and benchrest shooters. That undoubtedly contributes to the rifle’s rather substantial weight. The King Hunter will never be mistaken for an ultralight mountain rifle, but neither is it a 20-pound PRS rifle. It tips the scales at 8.1 lbs. empty and weighed 10 lbs., 2 oz. full up with the Zeiss Conquest V4 6-24×50 scope I installed for testing. That weight is obviously not something that most hunters want to climb a mountain with, but it’s fine if you’re looking for an everyday hunting rifle that’s inherently stable shooting from any type of rest and won’t blow away in a stiff breeze.

The King Hunter is built around a Remington 700-footprint receiver that’s machined from a solid block of 15-5 stainless steel, a highly corrosion-resistant stainless that can be hardened first and then machined. This avoids any warping that can occur during the hardening process.

Geissele calls the action the “high-pressure model.” It uses a bolt with a two-lug floating bolt head designed to lock up and contain the higher pressure of the 7mm Backcountry cartridge. The relatively large bolt head, which is separate from the bolt, is made of S7 shock-resistant steel. The bolt has a standard plunger ejector and M-16 type extractor. At the upper rear left of the receiver, you will find a bolt-release button that’s heavy-duty but easy to manipulate.

Design elements of the receiver that stand out include a bolt shroud made out of stainless steel and nitride for corrosion resistance. A unique roller on the bottom of the cocking piece guides the firing pin with minimal friction. “Nanoweapon” coating on bolt protects from corrosion and helps with bolt cycling, which is exceptionally smooth with no binding. The bolt handle has an old-school round bolt head, but in a nod to contemporary tastes, the gun comes with an alternative elongated bolt head with nearly a dozen flats machined on it for a solid purchase by the fingers. Two short Picatinny rail sections on top, for mounting optics, are integral and machined into the receiver.

The rifle has an AICS-style, long-action magazine well and bottom metal, so any AICS long-action magazine should work with the gun. It comes with one Magpul AICS Long Action five-round PMAG magazine. The magazine drops freely into the hand when the magazine-release lever is pushed, but I’m not a big fan of the magazine setup for hunting. The magazine extends well below the bottom of the action and can easily be snagged on brush or branches, and it can make a rattling noise when that happens. It did, however, feed rounds flawlessly, and there were no issues with extraction or ejection.

An accurate rifle requires a high-quality barrel, and the King Hunter checks this box. Barrels, made of 416R stainless steel, are double heat-treated and cryogenically treated in liquid nitrogen baths for hours to stabilize their internal metallurgical structure. The beefy, midweight-contour 20-inch barrel has cut rifling and a fairly fast 1-8 rate of twist to stabilize the relatively long, heavy bullets used in the 7mm Backcountry.

The 20-inch barrel is threaded (5/8 x24). It comes with a Geissele Swavvy QD muzzle brake installed, giving shooters the ability to quickly mount the HUXWRX Flow family of suppressors. This is one of the key features of this rifle/cartridge combination: It lets hunters use a handy suppressed rifle that still launches relatively heavy long-range bullets at 3,000 fps.

The King Hunter wears a Manners Long Range Hunter carbon fiber stock, made in a custom camo pattern for Geissele. With an average weight of 30-33 ounces, this stock is designed for modern long-range hunting and for competitors to use in the newer long-range precision matches like the NRL Hunter Series.

The stock has straight lines, a vertical pistol grip for better trigger finger placement when shooting prone, and an adjustable comb for a proper cheek weld. There’s one sling swivel stud aft and two beneath the forend, allowing you to attach a tripod and a sling. In addition, there are QD attachment points on the front and rear sides of the stock.

The stock comes with a separate, six-slot Picatinny rail that can be bolted onto the forend and used to attach bipods to the rifle, or attach the rifle to a tripod using an adaptor. However, you won’t need an adaptor for tripod mounting because the stock already has a built-in 3.5-inch Arca rail positioned immediately in front of the magazine well for optimal rifle balance on a tripod.

The King Hunter is equipped with Geissele’s precise, Super 700 two-stage bolt-action trigger. Like many hunters, I prefer to use single-stage triggers in the field, but I would have no qualms using this trigger for hunting. The trigger is externally adjustable for trigger break within a range of 1.5-3.5. As it arrived from the factory, the trigger broke consistently and cleanly at an average pull weight of 2 lbs., 5 oz. I left it at that setting for testing.

The trigger is paired with a two-position safety mounted atop the receiver just behind the top of the bolt handle arm. It does not lock the bolt when engaged.

Given the newness of the 7mm Backcountry cartridge, I only had two loads to test in the rifle, and both proved to be winners. The King Hunter’s 20-inch barrel is exactly what the 7mm Backcountry was designed for, and that was reflected in the velocities I measured for the two loads. Federal’s 170-grain Terminal Ascent load launched at 3,013 fps, while Federal’s 168-grain Barnes LRX copper load stepped out at 2,985 fps. Both of those numbers are remarkably close to factory-stated numbers for 20-inch barrels.

I previously tested and hunted with several 7mm Backcountry loads in the past, but this was my first experience with the 170-grain Terminal Ascent load. It left me quite impressed, printing 0.47-inch average groups and a best group of 0.27 inches, or a single ragged hole. The 168-grain Barnes copper load didn’t do quite as well, but it was still a sub-MOA performer out of the King Hunter with 0.89-inch average groups and a 0.71-inch best group.

With its price tag of $3,800 (I’ve seen it listed for $3,319) and its relatively heavy weight, the King Hunter isn’t for everyone. But if you’re looking for a half-MOA shooter with rock-solid build quality that will stand the test of time, the King Hunter may sit atop the throne, and it does so without pretending to be cheap, light, or ordinary.

Note: Velocity was an average of 3 shots, measured with a Garmin Xero C1 Pro chronograph. Accuracy is taken from three, three-shot groups at 100 yards in wind varying 5 to 10 mph.

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• Pros: Superb accuracy, smooth cycling action, Federal 7mm Backcountry performance from a 20-inch barrel, excellent Super 700 trigger, rock-solid Manners carbon fiber stock, suppressor-ready Swavvy QD muzzle brake, Remington 700-footprint receiver, and flawless feeding, extraction, and ejection in testing.
• Cons: The $3,800.00 MSRP is steep, the 8.1 lbs. empty weight is not ideal for mountain hunts, and the AICS-style magazine hangs low enough to snag brush or branches and make noise in the field.