I've hunted with what most people considered "heavy" rifles my whole hunting life. My first was a custom Pattern 17 Enfield with Douglas Premium barrel, and custom stocks, and it weighs about 8.5 lbs. Never really thought about the weight until somebody with a composite stock told me it was heavy.
And packing my old single shot rifles of 10-12 lbs. with external adjustment Lyman, Unertl, Fecker scopes and no slings made me really appreciate what heavy means! But I never had an issue using the old external scopes for hunting, but always used lower 8x-12x power scopes, as the higher power just aren't good choices for hunting for me.
