I love the M14 but I find that the old wooden stocked version is just to damn heavy to be a fun gun to shoot. Take a Saiga 308 another AK clone made into a hunting rifle chambered in the same .308 round. It's lighter and easier to use than the wooden stocked M14 Also with the Saiga's 16 in barrel length it's much easier to handle than the longer barreled M14.
Then it happened Springfield introduced the M14 SOCOM 16 which came with a 16in barrel and lighter synthetic stock. But the mods didn't stop there. Many companies started offering drop in stock options that ranged from the sci-fi sniper light weight synthetic stock like the JAE system stocks to the modular drop in pistol grip rail heavy CQB type stock offered by Troy Industries. You could basically drop the main parts of a M14 into just about any type of stock configuration that you could possibly dream for.
All of this made me fall in love with the M14 all over again and with the new updates it in my opinion can be a nice rifle to own the only draw back to it over the Saiga 308 now is the price. M14s are not cheap and their new age parts and stock are not cheap either. A nicely set up M14 can easily top $2500 and that's not including any cool ass optics that you want to use.
Here's a video of a modified select fire M14.
