Floor plate?

[Zogman]

Do you prefer hinged or none?

I have had both and do NOT like a hinged one. Mainly have opened and spilled the shells. I prefer to run them though the top. Not closing the bolt on them of course.

 

[bucksnbears]

I prefer a magazine I dump one at a time.
No clip type or hinged.

 

[1lessdog]

I have over a dozen Remington 700 in the ADL, BDL and DM. I prefer the BDL. I have never had a BDL plate open under recoil.

 

[KDM]

I prefer the hinged style. Seen way to many guys lose their mags in various ways. All of them embarrassing and all of them result in single shot weapons. Which may not always be a bad thing as single shots tend to limit hail mary shots or other less than optimal shots.

 

[guywhofishes]

Thanks for jinxing me to my first loss of a mag this year.

 

[Jiffy]

Have blind, hinged, mags, and ye ole single and double shots.

Prefer blind mags to them all.

 

[KDM]

Thanks for jinxing me to my first loss of a mag this year.

Sorry Dude, but someone had to do it. Besides, you only need one shot anyway.........right?

 

[LBrandt]

I am such a good shot I could just use a single shot break open. HA HA, LB

 

[SDMF]

Blind if I have a choice.

I did dump the hinged plate on my M70 300Win fall of 2020. I'd hit a bull elk, fatally, but he was still on his feet. I was moving to get a better/more stable position for the slow moving shot and bumped the release (which is fairly snug) and dumped my ammo on the ground. I nabbed one off the ground, chambered it and put him down for good. The country was very open and I was in no danger of losing the animal but it made me appreciate a blind mag even more than I already did.

I've never lost a detachable magazine afield either directly out of the rifle or a spare gone missing. That said, when I worked in a sporting goods store, I sure did sell a lot of mags and listened to a lot of stories of repeaters involuntarily turned into single shots. Remington 788's were probably one of the most frequent "The mag popped out of the rifle somewhere" makes/models. Savage 340's were also high on the list of losing the mag right out of the gun. Remington pump and semi-auto's, Winchester 88/100 could fall out too if you didn't get them seated in fully. Most of the rest were lost due to misplacement or "falling out of a pocket".

I think the original Browning A-Bolt/A-Bolt 2 magazine/floor-plate designs was/is exceptional. You could top-load like a traditional hinged floor-plate or have a 2nd magazine, trip the floor-plate snap one out, snap the other in and you're going again. If you happened to trip the floor-plate release by accident, the ammo is still retained in the magazine and the magazines usually hung on pretty well.

Some of the newer platforms using AR or AICS pattern mags are pretty robust regarding retention. I have a bolt-action 223 that uses AR mags and they're NOT coming out by accident.

Still, given my choice for a hunting rifle, blind is 1st by a LONG way.

 

[svnmag]

Hinged. What is a blind mag?