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An M-14 is not very accurate anyway, maybe about 0.75" moa.

I've never found it to be spectacularly accurate either, even in match versions. Good enough for government work, but 1.0-MOA was about as good as you could reliably expect as a practical matter in the field if everything else was kosher. Which is pretty good really, and plenty accurate for the vast majority of combat work. It wouldn't be my first choice for a sniper mission.

I have an old friend, with whom I used to shoot, who had made up a fifteen pound .270 with a Mauser action. He had an old 10-power steel Weaver on it. Carried that thing around in a big plywood box. Shot excruciatingly perfect handloads.

His machinery got so strange because he was an avid crow shooter. No combat experience. I saw him put five rounds at 200 yards and the entire group, not center to center but the whole group, was covered by a penny. Couldn't see even a shadow of the hole. Bench rest and sand bags, natch. He shot crows at what looked to me to be about 700 to 800 yards with that thing, not missing for five or more birds in a row, back in the days when you could legally shoot crows, of course!!

Anyway, I was amazed. I don't see much combat use for the weapon though!!

He was developing a .375 H&H long range rifle, but couldn't get bullets to suit him. If good bullets had been available, or if he had made his own, he would have had to make a barrel also if he couldn't get one made to his personal taste in rifling rate, polish, gauge, smoothness, straightness, etc., and the project was never completed. I shot one of prototypes, and thought it too powerful for human targets and too weak for even light armor!

This was long before the days when .50 rifles were more than very hard kicking toys. If we are in those days, hey! Folks would build them on Boys actions. Remember?