Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter Review: The Truth About This Mysterious and Scarce Rife

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The Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter was announced back in August of 2022, to a gaggle of high-profile gun writers at the FTW Ranch in Texas. A flurry of post-bankruptcy enthusiasm whirled around this sharp-looking new Remington that promised to be everything Model 700 shooters wanted it to be. It represented new energy and a modernized rifle for a reborn company, climbing out of the ashes of the defunct Remington Arms. This spark of energy never really took to flame though, and months of anticipation became years. I never saw a single additional review or evidence that the Alpha 1 ever shipped.

Eventually, I forgot about the 700 Alpha 1. That was, until I started looking through some of the new production Remington rifles on local store shelves. I began researching online and saw the rifle listed on websites in all cartridge offerings, but in out-of-stock or coming-soon status. It appeared that the existence of the Alpha 1 was still an anticipatory facade. Then I found some. I ordered one in 6.5 Creedmoor, and it arrived a few days later. I had my own Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter to test. 

Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter Specs

See It

• Action: Two-lug M700
• Stock: AG Composites, grey speckled
• Cartridge: 6.5 CM (tested), .223 Rem., .22/250 Rem., .243 Win., 7mm-08, .308 Win., .270 Win., .30/06 Springfield, 7mm Rem. Mag., 7mm PRC, and .300 Win. Mag.
• Capacity: 4+1 (in 6.5 CM)
• Weight: 7 pounds, 3 ounces (measured)
• Trigger: Timney Elite Hunter, straight shoe, 2 pounds, 9 ounces (measured)
• Barrel: 1:8 twist, 22-inch steel, fluted, black Cerakote finish, threaded ⅝-24
• Length: 41.75 inches
• Price: $2,035

Key Features

• Quality composite stock
• Toolless bolt takedown
• Aluminum bottom metal with BDL-style magazine
• Long magazine box
• Bolt release on left side of receiver

Review Highlights

• Good accuracy, but particular about ammo selection
• Good ergonomics and looks
• Bolt release and takedown are improved over standard M700
• Bolt is very sticky and lug engagement is too tight
• Magazine doesn’t feed well
• We’re not sure these rifles are actually being produced currently

Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter Accuracy

When considering any rifle, accuracy is one of the most highly valued performance characteristics. Anyone anticipating production models of this new pinnacle M700 wants to know how it shoots. My 700 Alpha 1 is an interesting case, and I would qualify its accuracy as good, but inconsistent. If that sounds oxymoronic, I’ll explain. 

I tested 11 different types of ammo in the rifle, which averaged 1.37 inches overall for 20-shot group sizes. For a hunting rifle, that’s good accuracy. The interesting part is that it shot some ammunition extremely well and other stuff poorly. Over the tens of thousands of rounds we’ve fired for accuracy testing in the past couple years focusing on larger sample sizes, we have observed that barrels which are truly great shooters are quite consistent. They’ll shoot everything well and select loads superbly. 

This Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter printed some of the tightest groups I’ve seen from a hunting rifle with both Hornady– and Federal-loaded 143-grain ELD-X bullets, and also performed well with Sierra 140-grain MatchKing and GameKing ammo. But it printed middling two-inch 20-shot aggregates (1.91 to 2.09 inches to be exact) with 140-grain Hornady Match, Federal Centerstrike, Fusion Tipped, and Freedom Munitions match ammunition — all of which shoot accurately in our control rifles.

Here’s a more granular look at the Remington 700 Alpha 1 100-yard accuracy data:

A Note On Outdoor Life’s Accuracy Testing Protocol

You may notice that, while we include five-shot group sizes in our accuracy data, we focus on 20-shot group size and mean radius as primary accuracy values. This is because we’ve found five-shot group sizes to be undependable and to not accurately represent a rifle’s true level of precision. For a deeper dive and explanation of this, check out the podcast episode Your Groups are Too Small from Hornady. You’ll also see us using mean radius as an accuracy metric. Mean radius is a more useful value than group size for comparing accuracy data because it is the average distance by which shots miss the group center — and takes every shot into account. It doesn’t just measure the worst two impacts and ignore everything else.

Features of the Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter

As I hoped, the 700 Alpha 1 that arrived at my local FFL is a sharp-looking rig. It’s certainly a cut above a standard Remington 700 BDL. But is it everything a Remington 700 shooter wants it to be? After all, over the years that Remington has floundered into bankruptcy and been reborn, the market of M700 clone rifles and actions has blossomed. Rifles from Christensen, Bergara, Springfield, and Weatherby all have a strong presence with quality rifles in the space. Additionally, builder actions from Zermatt Arms, Defiance, Aero Precision, Bat Machine, and others can be user-assembled with pre-fit barrels and are easier to get than ever. 

The Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter isn’t a lightweight gun, but it has good ergonomics and balances well. It has a cylindrical action with an enlarged ejection port and comes topped with a Picatinny rail. An improvement over traditional M700 rifles is the bolt release at the left rear of the receiver — a feature that has become more or less standard on M700-pattern rifles. Older models had a bolt release located inside the trigger guard, just in front of the trigger shoe. The Alpha 1 has a sliding claw extractor in the right bolt lug, and the bolt body is fluted. The bolt is easily disassembled without tools, the bolt handle is replaceable, and the action is capped up front with a precision-ground recoil lug — we assume to reduce stress and create better bolt-to-bore alignment.

Trigger 

The Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter comes with an adjustable Timney Elite Hunter trigger which has a flat shoe, and is surrounded by an aluminum trigger guard, bottom metal, and BDL-style hinged floorplate. Flat trigger shoes have become popular among precision rifle shooters and can allow a more consistent, crisp trigger pull — particularly when installed on a rifle that uses a vertical pistol grip. In a stock with a more traditionally styled grip, that advantage doesn’t translate. Like we saw a couple years back on Christensen’s Ridgeline Scout, the trigger shoe geometry on the M700 Alpha 1 is a bit awkward. Trigger pull itself is fine, but a curved shoe would work better with the angled grip on its stock.

Stock and Bottom metal

The 700 Alpha 1 has a handsome grey speckled stock from AG Composites. It looks like the AG Sportsman, or at least an OEM version of it. RemArms specifies it as carbon fiber but, at 32 ounces, it’s much closer in weight to AG’s fiberglass variant. With the coatings, I can’t tell for sure.

The stock has a deep, flat-bottomed fore-end and sling swivel studs fore and aft. The 700 Alpha 1 has a lengthened magazine box — compared to the standard short-action M700 — to accommodate longer cartridge overall lengths, and it’s capped with what appears to be AG aluminum BDL bottom metal. All components are of good quality and on-par for the price point of the rifle. The only real flaw I noticed is that the rear bedding pillar isn’t centered in the inletting for the bottom metal. Other things I’d like to see improved are a smoother blend from recoil pad to butt stock and to have the barrel sit more evenly in the barrel channel. 

Barrel

My Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter in 6.5 Creedmoor sports a 22-inch sporter barrel that’s fluted, threaded ⅝-24 at the muzzle, and Cerakoted a satin black to match the receiver. It’s unspecified, but likely to be a button-rifled barrel, and mine is stamped with markings from the Ilion, NY factory, which RemArms shuttered early in 2024. 

The Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter in the Wild

My coveted sample of the 700 Alpha 1 proved to be accurate, and I hoped it would be the optimal general-purpose hunting rifle — ushering RemArms and the Remington 700 towards a bountiful future. It has good ergonomics, quality components, and an improved feature set, but I was disappointed with the rifle’s handling and function. Even fresh out of hibernation from its brown and green box, the bolt was disappointingly sticky in the raceways, and it requires an excessive amount of force to close — even on an empty chamber. There are clearly some tolerance issues, which was one of the reasons the old Remington Arms floundered in the modern era. 

When the magazine is loaded with four rounds, the bolt drags heavily on the top cartridge case, and it often has trouble feeding. Also concerning, the last round in the magazine tends to get stuck nose down and won’t feed. I did a lot of testing in the cold, trying different lubricants and couldn’t ever get the rifle to operate smoothly. In colder temperatures, close to zero degrees fahrenheit, the bolt became even stickier and empty cases wouldn’t eject. The plunger ejector seemed to be functioning, but case rims would stick under the Sako-style extractor, angling out of the ejection port and needed to be plucked by hand. 

The Alpha 1 Hunter’s good ergonomics and stability when fired from different positions, especially on a game changer and tripod, couldn’t make up for its inability to run smoothly and feed reliably. Considering that this is a premium-priced rifle, I felt a bit like a guy who’s trying to stand up for actor Danny McBride’s character Kenny Powers in the show Eastbound and Down. It, and he, are just not defensible. 

The Mystery of the Alpha 1

When the Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter was announced, my eager inquiry to our shooting editor John Snow was met with a deflating “We’ll see.” His skepticism about this new gem was based partly on some inside baseball, but also on the general timeline and logistics of the new RemArms operations. He astutely theorized that the rifles that every gun writer was swooning over were likely put together from remnants from the old Remington custom shop rather than genuine new production arms. The question was when, or if, RemArms would be able to roll out the Alpha 1 to consumers.

Though retailer websites like Sportsman’s Warehouse list the full array of Alpha 1 Hunters in all cartridge offerings, they’re out of stock. It wasn’t until I found mine on clearance for $1,450 on Brownells that I had confirmation of their existence. I received my rifle late in 2024, and it showed signs of being stored in its box for a long time. Slight bits of spot rust on the muzzle threads and screw heads — and a barrel from a factory that had been closed for months — indicated that this hadn’t just rolled off the line.

With further investigation, I found Alpha 1 rifles available on Midway and Gunbroker, ranging between $1,700 and $2,100. Interestingly, the only chamberings I have been able to find are 6.5mm Creedmoor, .243 Win., 7mm-08, and .308. No non-standard bolt faces and no long actions. This probably means that a production run was made, but that the rifles aren’t currently rolling out.

Will We See More Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter Rifles Soon?

Though we would love to see this rifle functioning well and rolled out en masse, we aren’t holding our breath. RemArms has been radio silent about the status of the Alpha 1, and even advertised cartridge offerings aren’t tracking with the market. The 7mm PRC is the most modern chambering listed, and that cartridge was rolled out just a couple months before the big 700 Alpha 1 introduction of 2022. New Remington 783 and 700 rifles on store shelves do have Georgia-marked barrels, but I’m seeing many of those marked down on clearance too. It appears that the only company building fewer of their flagship rifles is Kimber.

Final Thoughts on the Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter

It’s sad to consider the world of American hunting rifles without a healthy Remington and the Remington 700, but I doubt the Alpha 1 will be what saves it. It’s a nice rifle with an updated feature set, but that’s not enough. Even if every chambering were in stock tomorrow, it has serious competition. The steel-barreled Springfield Armory 2020 Boundary is essentially the same rifle, with the same stock, at the same price, except it has QD sling cups, and M-Lok fore end, a curved trigger shoe, and smoother action. For the time being, the Remington 700 clone market has surpassed what RemArms is producing — or not producing.

Even if the conclusion is likely disappointing, it’s fascinating and exciting to get ahold of a Remington 700 Alpha 1 Hunter. Rather than a new standard, it will likely end up a Remington enthusiast’s sticky-bolted collector’s item.

 

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