Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Savage A17 17HMR or Ruger M77 17HMR?

For Christmas I was ready to buy myself (gift from wife that I get to pick) a Savage A17 17HMR but with Ruger discontinuing the Ruger M77 17HMR I am leaning to grabbing one before they are gone.

A few years ago there was talk on how the M77/17 where not as accurate as older Ruger's was there any truth to that?

After 4 or 5 years how are the Savage A17's holding up?

This will be my small game plinker so I really do not the semi auto.

Thanks

I would buy the Ruger bolt gun 100 times out of ever 100 opportunities.

My All Weather 77/17 is plenty accurate and I would gladly buy one again. 1/2 inch 5 shot groups at 100 are common and keeping it under an inch most of the time is not difficult. My Dad has a walnut/blue model that also does well. I don't have any experience with the Savage but I too would choose the Ruger.

I might pick the Ruger bolt, but for a different reason.

Several people I know have purchased A17 rifles and all have shot great, including the last one, purchased this past summer. But they need to be fed A17 ammo, which is more expensive that most other .17 HMR ammo, because others won't cycle the action.

Bolt actions can run any kind of .17 HMR you find, and in fact everybody I've run into so far (including me) has found A17 ammo not only shoots very well in bolt-actions, but the velocity is considerably higher than the 2650 fps advertised--and most people get in A17 rifles.

In my CZ 452 .17 HMR, A17 ammo gets 2850-2900 fps, depending on the temperature that day, with excellent accuracy, while "standard" plastic-tip 17-grain ammo gets right around the listed 2550 fps. The A17's also land right in the same group at 100 yards as the standard stuff.

I shoot the standard ammo on ground squirrels, but use the A17's on prairie dogs, which are not only larger but the shooting tends to be longer. They work great, and performance is very close to the .17 WSM 20-grain ammo, which in the only rifle I tried it in got around 2900 fps.

John,
I tried the A17 ammo in my bolt gun and was also surprised by the velocity. I thought maybe my chrono was giving false readings at first. It didn't shoot quite as well as the Hornady Vmax 17gr in my rifle but still pretty good.

Yeah, it's not quite as accurate as the regular .17 HMR in my CZ either, but still way under minute-of-prairie-dog out to 200+ yards.

Good input on the A17 ammo had not heard that, it is hard enough to find lead free ammo but looking for lead free that works in the A17 would be a bigger pain.

That did it, I just ordered my M77 17 online from CDNNSPORTS at $399.

Well I was going to say Ruger, but consider a CZ 452 or the switch barrel 455. Little bit late now..

FWIW, I have found that the 200 round boxes of A17 ammo is consistently less expensive at Wal-Mart, priced right at $50, than anywhere else around Omaha. Cabela's and Scheel's typically charge around $60 for the same ammo.

I bought 500 rounds of A17 ammo in 50 round boxes at Cabela's for $13 per box, 'cause the price was close to Wal-Mart's and I don't really care to carry those 200 round boxes in the field.

I have also noticed a lot of 17WSM ammo on Wal-Mart shelves, but none of it going anywhere.

I am a big time Ruger fan, but I'd buy a Savage heavy barrel Mark II bolt gun. Chances are that it will be appreciably more accurate. If you decide on the Ruger, this is a killer deal.

https://www.cdnnsports.com/77-17-17hmr-20-blue-blk.html?___SID=U


Edit: Ooops, you beat me to it on the CDNN deal. Let us know how she shoots.

I hope they listed the twist wrong I though all 17 HMR were 1 in 9 not 1 in 16.

I have the Savage A 17. The heavy barrel, laminated stock model. I got it strictly because of a problem with recurring, persistent tendinitis in both shoulders. Running even an easy to cycle bolt becomes painful pretty quickly. So I went for the autoloader and prepared myself for some compromises. Surprisingly it is a very nicely balanced and accurate rifle that has presented no issues. Long term reliability will be seen at a later time as I've only run about 1,500 rounds through it so far.

The first thing that took me by surprise is that the only thing I had on hand was Hornady ammunition, that I bought for the first 17 HMR bolt I had. It cycled the action just fine even after several hundred rounds. The second was after I found a brick of CCI A17 ammo at the local store. It shot just fine, but sure did not seem anywhere like 200 fps faster. So I set up the chronograph. The Hornady ammo went 2,820 and the CCI 2,850. POI and grouping was the same. The Hornady velocity held up with two different ammunition lots. This was not an extended data intensive test, just a couple of clips over the chronograph.