I never shot one cuz I thought they were just too butt ugly, and as they say, "Life's too short to hunt with an ungly gun."
Seriously though, the comment about the bolt has a lot of truth to it. When I lived in Nevada and was apprenticing to a gunsmith, we made a lot of money rebrazing those bolt handles back on after idiots shot too way hot loads in them and had to pound on the handle to open the bolt. Seems like most of the offenders were in the varmint caliber as I recall. Hunting coyotes was real popluar and the 788s would reach out and touch them. Part of the reason for their great accuracy was thet had an extremely short lock time.
Paul B.