Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Savage quality

I have one, a 16 in 250 Savage and the thing is stupid accurate no matter what I run thru it.

How about the quality though. Many sa they are accurate but what about quality? My guns can shoot 2" @ 100yds and plenty good for Wisconsin. I never shot anything past 100 yds. Does the case jamb like mine does in my Savage 12FV? I hate the fact that I can't feed a bullt from the magazine. It is nothing but a single shot anyway cause with the bull barrel it never leaves the bench anyway. As for accurate , it's a .223. I dont think it is all that accurate . I can put 5 inside. .8" - 1" @ 100 but that is not all that accurate . It could be me a little but I have done than with older Remington 700 so may times with plain Jane bullets , so i dont think it is me.

Probably a lemon. Did you call Savage?

All of mine must be excellent then. No feeding or extraction issues. You may want to send yours in, and have them look at it. With your accuracy and feeding issues, it may be related, like the mag box isnt in the stock right or bound up. All of my savage rifles also shoot into .8 moa, very consistently. Its almost too easy. Thats also 10 shot groups. I havent even bothered to work up a load yet in my 223 predator, as it shoots my AR load into .8 moa religiously. The other 2 (6.5 creedmoor and 22-250) have been far easier to shoot sub moa 10 shot groups, than my new Tikka 6.5 creedmoor, or any other rifle ive had, to be honest. I really dont mind that they are "ugly" when they shoot this well.

10 shots into .8 is incredible. Ive seen rifles with custom cut rifled barrels that wouldn't do that.

Just out of curiosity do your savages tend to copper foul badly? The ones I've looked at with my bore scope pretty much all had very rough bores and id be curious if that would cause excessive fouling.

IMHO a rough bore has little to no correlation to accuracy fwiw

The thing I really really like about the Savage guns is how easy it is to screw on a new tube. Im hoping that the REMAGE barrels that are being made by a few makers start to catch on with more companies. Ive already got a couple of worked over 700s and that would make my life soooo much easier.

@BSA1917Hunter. Very nice groups. Stellar rifles.

Holy [bleep] that is some great shooting! I certainly would NOT complain about any of those groups! That is funny about your experience with Winchester as mine is exactly the same. Both with USRAC guns and BACO guns. I hope nobody takes offense to this as I know the BACO guns are supposed to be so much better but I have to be honest...I think the barrels they use are absolute junk. Ive owned three of them (all supper grades) and they were the roughest bored, fastest fouling, and hardest to clean guns I've ever owned. I use a borescope pretty religiously and I sold them as a result. My USRAC guns also had very rough bores but they were all made pretty close to the New Haven plant closing and that was somewhat of a known issue.

Beautiful guns all of them and I really liked them. I just could not get the barrels to calm down and stop copper fouling. They literally would look like copper mines after as few as 20 rounds and i tried bullets of several different makes to see if I could find any that didn't foul as badly.

Great to know about your Savage barrels not fouling and cleaning up easy. Id be willing to bet its because they are button riffled and any manufacturing marks left are in the same direction as the bullet traveling down the bore. It would make sense that after they settled in a little they would smooth out nicely. IIRC Remington used to use button rifled barrels but switched to hammer forging sometime in the late 80s or early 90s or so I've been told. Ive had it both way with 700 barrels. Some seemed to never foul and were finished pretty well and some were absolute copper magnets that required a lot of work and/or polishing and were as rough as a corn cob. Ive got 2 newer ones in 270 that have 5R rifling which are supposed to be easier to clean. They are the best finished Remington barrels I've ever owned and they do clean remarkably easy. My guess is that its due to newer tooling as they haven't been making 270 5r barrels for very long. They both shoot very well...averaging 3 shot groups under an inch with their preferred hand loads but they defiantly don't shoot as well as your rifles above.

I'm curious if any of you have noticed savage quality going down? I've never been a savage guy personally, but always heard they were very accurate. So I've been developing loads for my grandsons new 308 shooting 165/168 gr bullets with variety, 4895, 4064 and I cannot get this rifle to shoot. I have adjusted the bedding and the trigger, along with seating depth, etc....and I'm only getting 1.5" groups at best. Did he just get a Lemmon?

Great to know about your Savage barrels not fouling and cleaning up easy. Id be willing to bet its because they are button riffled and any manufacturing marks left are in the same direction as the bullet traveling down the bore. It would make sense that after they settled in a little they would smooth out nicely. IIRC Remington used to use button rifled barrels but switched to hammer forging sometime in the late 80s or early 90s or so I've been told. Ive had it both way with 700 barrels. Some seemed to never foul and were finished pretty well and some were absolute copper magnets that required a lot of work and/or polishing and were as rough as a corn cob. Ive got 2 newer ones in 270 that have 5R rifling which are supposed to be easier to clean. They are the best finished Remington barrels I've ever owned and they do clean remarkably easy. My guess is that its due to newer tooling as they haven't been making 270 5r barrels for very long. They both shoot very well...averaging 3 shot groups under an inch with their preferred hand loads but they defiantly don't shoot as well as your rifles above.