Trendy shooters would have you believe the AR-15 is the end-all varmint rig and the good ol’ bolt action is best reserved for nostalgic, wool-clad trips to deer camp. But even the high-tech, high-capacity crowd will want to stop filling their magazines long enough to take a turn behind the latest bolt gun meant for vermin-exterminating from Howa. Unconventionally stocked and with lines as rakish as a quad-rail handguard, the Howa Axiom is a breed apart from its heavy-barreled turn-bolt brethren.
   The singular quality by which varmint rifles live and die is accuracy. If a rifle can’t make the fur fly from distant pests and predators, it’s more a plinker than a varminter—its use sure to be relegated to informal field trips when you’re not hunting varmints. The Axiom calls upon several features to ensure it will be aimed at rodents and coyotes instead of just rocks and cans.
   They start with Japan-based Howa Machinery Limited’s M-1500 action, variations of which have been used at one time or another by Mossberg, Smith & Wesson and Weatherby, as well as found favor among custom riflemakers. The flat-bottomed receiver is forged from steel with an integral recoil lug. Its forged, one-piece bolt has dual locking lugs, a recessed face, a hefty M16-style extractor and a plunger-type ejector. A slot machined in the right locking lug mates with a rib running along the inside of the right receiver wall to eliminate bind and wobble. Controlled by a three-position safety, the trigger is adjustable for let-off weight and sear engagement. A continuous piece of bottom metal includes the trigger guard, the frame for the magazine and the hinged floorplate. Two action screws hold the works to the stock.

Howa’s one-piece bolt has two locking lugs and a recessed face to accommodate an M16-style extractor and a plunger-type ejector. The setup produced no failures to feed or eject during testing.

   The action is fitted with a barrel having what Legacy Sports International, Howa’s United States importer, refers to as a No. 6 contour. It’s a brawny piece of hammer-forged steel that measures 1.18 inches in diameter where it emerges from the receiver before tapering to .85 inch at the muzzle and ending in a recessed target crown. The Axiom I received for testing had a 20-inch barrel that contributed mightily to the gun’s total weight of nearly 11 pounds.
   Despite proving its penchant for accuracy and reliability, the Axiom’s barreled action is traditional enough to evoke yawns from the black-rifle crowd. Excuse yourselves, boys, and consider the rifle’s stock, where technology throws tradition out the window. The multi-component design comes from Knoxx Recoil Solutions, and it’s a couple tactical steps ahead of the usual wood or synthetic iterations.
   Combining the company’s innovative SpecOps buttstock—developed for the military and law enforcement to reduce the recoil from hard-kicking magnum buckshot and slug loads in shotguns—with an aluminum fore-end, the Knoxx Axiom V/S stock is tailored for bolt-action rifles. The fiberglass-reinforced polymer buttstock looks like it could go on an M4 carbine, but what resembles the buffer tube swells and extends forward to meet a pistol grip. Inside the pistol grip is a strong spring attached to a sliding, wedge-shaped block that bolts to the rear of the aluminum chassis containing the barreled action. When the rifle is fired, recoil moves the block rearward in a channel against the tension applied by the spring in the pistol grip. The block travels about 3/4 inch before contacting a stop, at which point a second spring contained within the tube compresses another 3⁄4 inch.

The Knoxx Axiom V/S buttstock uses two springs to reduce recoil. It provides length-of-pull and cheekpiece adjustability for even more comfort.

   Since recoil must work against the two springs, much of it—Knoxx claims up to a whopping 70 percent—is eliminated. The channel in which the wedge-shaped block slides is angled upward, so as the block and the rear of the aluminum chassis move back and up, the muzzle is forced down to stay on target.
   Why worry about recoil in a varmint rifle? Even the .223 Remington, not the mention the hotter .22-caliber cartridges, can start to wear on your shoulder after a couple hundred rounds in a day spent on the open prairie. Plus, being able to keep the crosshair on target during recoil promotes faster follow-up shots in the event you misjudge the wind and shoot wide of that songdog slinking through the sage.
   The buttstock is adjustable for length of pull from 11 1/2 to 15 1/2 inches. It takes seconds to make a change by simply depressing the lever on the bottom edge and sliding the rear portion forward or backward along the tube. A removable cheekpiece is also adjustable for both height and distance from the scope. With the fore-end and barreled action moving to the rear 1 1/2 inches at the shot, you want to keep an adequate distance between your forehead and the scope. The adjustability of the buttstock allows you to stay comfortable behind the scope and out of its way.
   The rifle’s fore-end is CNC-machined from a billet of aluminum. Rugged and weatherproof, the fore-end has precise inletting that fits the barreled action perfectly, and the barrel remains free-floating along its entire length. My test Axiom was covered in Prairie Ghost camouflage, but Legacy recently switched to a different dipping process that coats the rifle in King’s Desert Shadow pattern. The rifle is also available with a black aluminum fore-end and blued metal, or a reinforced-polymer fore-end that reduces its weight.
Varmint hunters will most likely opt for an Axiom in .204 Ruger, .223 Remington, .22-250 Remington or .243 Winchester, but I wanted to test the effectiveness of the Knoxx stock and ordered one in .308 Winchester. I mounted a 4-16x44 mm Nikko Stirling Platinum Nighteater riflescope on the gun and headed for the closest 100-yard range. More than 150 shots later, I was still comfortably squeezing the trigger; the approaching darkness was more of an issue than fatigue from recoil. I tried six brands of ammunition with bullets weighing from 110 to 168 grains. The best accuracy for five, five-shot groups was with Hornady’s 150-grain Interlock BTSP factory load, which averaged 1.11 inches. The rifle would have probably performed even better had it not been for a trigger that exhibited an annoying amount of creep.
   In the mathematical sense, an axiom is a principle that is accepted as true without proof as the basis for argument. The Howa Axiom is one advanced varmint rig, and it proved that truth on the range.