Two magazines, long and short, insert easily, feed reliably. The trim latch is silent, unobtrusive.

At the range I fired a variety of ammunition. The bolt extracted all but the Eley .17 Mach 2. Cases would slip from the extractor part-way out, and I'd finish with my fingernail. Feeding was smooth, though the first round from the .22 LR magazine did not slide into the chamber. I suspect the spring bottoming out prevented tail movement of the cartridge and forced bullet noses too low onto the ramp. Just a conjecture. The remaining cartridges in the magazine fed faultlessly.

The fine accuracy I had seen in England resurfaced on the short-range (25-yard) targets I hung to record bullet displacement with barrel changes. One three-shot group was so tight that it appeared barely bigger than a single hole. Several five-shot groups hovered at .2 inch. Predictably, the .17s wanted to shoot tight, as did the Eley Tenex .22 LR. But in the Quad even .22 WMR bullets held close; a group with Federal miked .24.

Changing barrels changed point of impact. I started by zeroing the .17 Mach 2 barrel with Eley. Installing the .17 HMR barrel and using Remington cartridges, I fired a .48 group 2.1 inches at 2 o'clock. The .22 LR tube delivered a slightly smaller group with Remington/Eley EPS ammunition, but it was three inches to four o'clock. Winchester bullets from the .22 WMR barrel landed in a tight knot 3.5 inches to 4 o'clock.

I repeated the exercise using different ammunition and zeroing first with the .22 LR barrel. Same kind of dispersion. I fired another couple of groups with the .22s. For the third time, group centers stayed a short half-inch apart. Barrel alignment was undoubtedly responsible for the larger deviations with the .17s. I could see the barrels did not all lay well centered in the channel.

To check zero return when a barrel was removed and replaced, I installed the .22 LR barrel, then fired four groups, taking the rifle apart after each. The groups showed essentially no shift in zero, though the tightest--a five-shot cluster that miked just over .18--lay very slightly to 4 o'clock. All 20 bullets would have hit a dime.

I like this rifle because it feels "gunny." The barrels interchange easily and quickly. They all shoot accurately. How much need there is for a rifle that handles four rimfire cartridges, only the market will tell.

Burris offers a variable scope for the Quad with color-coded zero markers on W&E dials. (inset) Zero for each of four loads, then set the colored rings. Note the thumb-and-finger bolt knob.

The Sako Story In a cold land of birches, under pastel skies, people walk with ski poles in summer. You get the idea that Finns are always ready for snow, that they live warily on sunny days, anticipating harder times. Finns wear the stoic expressions of people used to privation, who spend much of every year shivering in subarctic winds. A jump in the Baltic sea after a steam bath appears to be a ritual intended to dispel the notion that life should be easy. Finns complain little because they know times can always turn for the worse.

Finland is a harsh land that was explored by Swedish missionaries as early as 1155 and remained a Swedish protectorate until 1809, when it came under Russian control. The Czar proclaimed Finland a Grand Duchy, a status it held until 1917. Two years after breaking with Russia, Finland became an independent republic.

The Finnish firm of Suojeluskuntain Yliesikunnan Asepaja was established April 1, 1919. It prospered under military contracts and between the world wars supplied rifles to hunters and target shooters. The company was later renamed, mercifully, Sako (correct pronunciation: "sock-o").

An uneasy peace between Finland and the U.S.S.R. unraveled in the winter of 1939–1940. Soviets invaded, and brutal fighting characterized what history records as the Winter War. The Continuation War that followed was all but ignored outside Finland as Nazis brought Europe under the dark veil of the Third Reich. When the Russian Bear backed off in 1944, Finns had lost some land but not their independence.

The Finnish tongue comes from the Finno-Ugric linguistic family. Swedish is still taught in some schools. The Lapp language, Sami, is also official and remains common above the Arctic Circle, where the summer sun doesn't set for 73 days and for 51 days each winter people live in darkness.