SIG SAUER CROSS-MAGNUM SAWTOOTH. With a PROOF barrel. My caps lock may be wheezing, but this 7 PRC rifle delivers sub-half-MOA five-shot groups without so much as breaking a sweat. Also available in 300 PRC and 300 Win Mag, it’s a whole lotta rifle that’s perfect for the modern long range hunter or precision shooter.
That’s a 0.4-MOA, five-shot group with Hornady Precision Hunter ammo firing super high ballistic coefficient 175 grain ELD-X projectiles. Federal, Barnes, Norma, Nosler, Winchester, and others all have fantastic 7mm PRC ammunition focused on hunting, long range precision, or long range precision hunting.
I shot that group, dialed the SIG WHISKEY scope down a half-minute and right a half-minute, and left for the 600-yard range at Copperhead Creek. DING! First shot was on steel and, with those slippery 7mm bullets traveling at nearly 3,000 FPS out of a sub-half-minute gun, so were the rest of them. With the right ammo, the SAWTOOTH is fully capable of consistent hits out to a mile.
That said, with ammo for this bad boy running about $2.50 per round I packed it up after dipping into the second box and saved the rest for a hunting trip.
Fallow deer down! Over the Thanksgiving break I took the family to Lonesome Boar Adventures in Mountain Home, Texas and we hung out on the ranch for a few days. I went nowhere during daylight hours without the SAWTOOTH, and though it murdered some steel targets when I spotted ’em across a valley with a solid crosswind and couldn’t restrain myself, it only took a single shot when I pointed it at a creature.
My goal was a long range shot, but when the opportunity presents itself, who am I to try and reverse stalk an animal to get farther away? At about 220 yards that .284 cal ELD-X bullet whizzed clean through the fallow, knocking it over so darn hard it never even tried to get back up.
Neither lung nor the heart made it, I’m afraid. This was a quick, clean harvest and the bullet went precisely, exactly where it was supposed to. High BC combined with high accuracy is a great combination for high confidence. I knew that as long as I didn’t shank the shot, the gun and the cartridge were going to do their parts correctly.
Entrance is on the right in the above photo, exit on the left. It blew through ribs on both sides and the leg bone on the exit side and kept right on trucking.
Now that we know the gun works, we can dive into some details. The CROSS is a very modern design that eliminates the entire bolt action paradigm of a barreled action that’s bolted into a stock or a chassis. SIG has machined the entire action / receiver out of a single piece of aluminum. It’s lightweight and it’s precise.
The CROSS’s ambidextrous safety is identical in location and operation to that of an AR-15 and it accepts any AR grip. High points for ergos, then, as this is a format we’re all familiar with and it’s great to have hundreds of different grip options to choose from.
A two-stage trigger is adjustable from about 2.5 to 4 pounds. It’s smooth, crisp, and predictable…an excellent trigger in every way. Magazines are AICS long action footprint and the included mag holds six rounds.
With its 24-inch PROOF carbon fiber barrel, the SIG SAUER CROSS-MAGNUM SAWTOOTH isn’t exactly the shortest rifle out there at about 47 inches. The stock is easily folded to the side, however, which cuts length down to a more manageable 35.6 inches (not including the suppressor seen here).
To allow the stock to fold to the right side of the CROSS, the bolt handle takes an interesting bend down, then outwards away from the receiver. While far from anything I’d call a problem, it’s perhaps a minor quibble that I’m just not really a fan of this. I’d prefer a bolt knob that stays closer to the receiver (doesn’t stick out as far) and is oriented at a more standard angle.
Only 60 degrees of bolt handle lift is required to unlock the bolt. That, combined with the handle shape, leaves lots of room to clear optics. Despite the shorter-than-usual bolt lift and the three-lug bolt head design (it locks into an AR-like barrel extension), lifting the bolt handle and thereby cocking the striker is smooth and is lighter than you’d expect.
SIG has engineered a lot of adjustability into the stock, allowing for length of pull, cheek rest height, and butt pad height adjustments in the field without tools. Bag riders and other accessories can be bolted to the bottom and the small polymer bag rider / hand hook seen above is installed from the factory.
A short section of ARCA rail is machined into the bottom of the handguard, along with QD sockets and M-LOK slots. If I have any other gripe about the CROSS-MAGNUM SAWTOOTH (other than the bolt handle and the CAPS LOCKS) it’s that the skinny, short handguard doesn’t do it for me aesthetically in combination with the fat, long barrel.
Functionally, sure, I’m totally on-board with it and obviously it weighs less than a longer handguard would. I love how it’s low to the barrel on top to clear a large objective bell and allow mounting a big optic as low as possible. But it just looks weirdly dainty on what’s otherwise a beefy-looking gun with a big ol’ barrel on it.
But still good overall, right? Yes, it’s a good looking gun. Fit, finish, machining…all very nicely done.
As you’d expect, the PROOF barrel is beautiful. It’s also incredibly stiff without weighing anywhere near as much as a steel barrel of this contour would. Though the rifle isn’t a featherweight at eight pounds, any comparable rifle with a heavy profile, 24-inch barrel and a more traditional steel action on top of a stock or chassis would easily weigh two to four pounds more than the SAWTOOTH.
Not to mention the fact that if you purchased this barrel on its own it would run over one-third of the MSRP of this entire rifle. Given the performance, the modern design, the great trigger, the adjustable stock, and the thousand dollar barrel on the front, the SAWTOOTH is priced pretty dang well.
All caps or not, the SIG SAUER CROSS-MAGNUM SAWTOOTH is a great shooting, very accurate rifle chambered in a couple of truly excellent, modern cartridges at a price that’s more than fair considering the package. It hammered my fallow deer and will continue putting meat on the table with the utmost confidence out to ranges that most hunters wouldn’t have even considered not too long ago. This combination of a super accurate, reliable gun and a fast, high-BC bullet with solid terminal ballistics is an absolute winner.
Specifications: SIG SAUER CROSS-MAGNUM SAWTOOTH
Chambering: 7 PRC (tested), 300 PRC, 300 Win Mag
Barrel length: 24 inches
Overall length: 45-47 inches with stock extended, 35.6 inches with stock folded
Weight: 8.1 pounds
MSRP: $2,699
Nice rifle …but… now ya need to hang some stuff on it… a light so you can see into the next county, a laser thingy, thermal optics, mounts need to be quick detach, 45 degree iron sights, something-something-magpul-furniture, forward grips, something-ARCA, etc… come on, get with the program.
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I already have one of these in 7 PRC … its a very nice rifle and worth the money.
This is probably a dumb question but how effective is a suppressor on a rifle like this? Not being a hunter, rifles are a bit of a mystery to me.
They’re very effective. It varies by caliber, but on a bolt gun like the CROSS SAWTOOTH, a suppressor (I think Jeremy’s using a SilencerCo Scythe-Ti here) drops the sound of the gunshot down into the low to mid 130s dB range. That’s not “silent,” of course, but it’s MUCH quieter than shooting without a can and it’s below the 140 dB range where permanent hearing loss happens.
Another big benefit of a can aside from the sound reduction is less felt recoil. That alone would be enough for a lot of shooters to use a can even if they didn’t get the noise under hearing damage levels.
Oh man, yes, what Dan said. Zero blast or concussion after adding the suppressor, less than half the recoil, very often a slight improvement in accuracy, maybe 2% higher velocity, plus a reduction in sound level down to where it shouldn’t be doing any hearing damage and is quite comfortable. In addition to all that, because of how much quieter the gunshot is and the fact that you aren’t wearing hearing protection, when you’re hunting you can very clearly hear the impact of the bullet on the animal and you can tell right away whether you made a solid shot or not. If you aren’t shooting from a position/distance where you can see the impact, being able to hear it and knowing what a solid shoulder/chest hit sounds like versus a gut shot or a glancing hit, etc, is super dang handy. You’ll often know before you’ve even recovered from the recoil whether you need to hustle for a follow up shot or if your shot landed where you wanted it to.
To triple down here, it’s extremely effective and very helpful, for both you whoever you are shooting with. It will help you stay in the glass to see your impact, provide follow up shots, and, as Jeremy said, you’ll hear the very clear and definitive “thump” of the round striking the animal. Folks not hunting suppressed don’t have any idea what they are missing.