Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Savage 340D in .222

eyeing one now on Gunbroker, any experience with these rifles?
Thanks in advance guys.

I know a guy who has one in 30-30, and he kills big deer with it quite often. He has money for another rifle, but feels no need to change.

I don’t think they are particularly very attractive, at all. The stock looks pregnant to me around the action. But as a functional firearm, I think they are fine based on my very limited experience around them.

agree, so ugly their mama might not even love 'em, but thinking as an ugly duckling deer rifle, might work. I have a Stevens 325 in .30/30 also on my watch list, it is down below $200 now.

Ya know on a fundamental level a firearm is nothing more than a tool and a tool doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to get the job done. And if that tool doesn’t cost an arm and a leg then that’s a good thing too. I think Savage succeeded in making a good functional tool that got the job done and didn’t cost the farm in the 340. It’s a working gun and doesn’t need frills to earn its place in the woods. If you can get the 340 at a good price (don’t go crazy in your bidding) then I would buy it and not look back.

aye it is sitting at $239 now, zero bids.. buy-it-now is only $259..... add about 65 for ship and FFL.... I might not be able to lay off of it....
the Savage .222 is somewhat less ugly than the Stevens in 30/30, but as noted, it does not have to be a beauty queen to get the job done.

i have lost track of how many 340,325's i have had.
i have a 340D in 222 that i have bought, sold, bought, traded, and bought back many times over the last 40 years.
this time its staying here. i can coax 1 inch accuracy out of it on a good day.
last year i sold a stevens in 30-30 before i shot it. shot it to make sure it went bang and Lordy was it accurate. wish i had fired it prior to saying sold.
one 340 i had in 30-30 about 45 years ago kicked me so bad it would make my nose bleed. finally got smart and slugged it, the bore was .304. go figure. traded it for a lyman tumbler that still does my polishing/cleaning.
one draw back of the 340's is optics. you are limited to side mounts and slightly offset scope. that and the split bridge limiting strength . none of that has ever amounted to much in the use i have put mine to.
if i could pick up one in 30-30 for less then 300 i'd grab it. great truck/atv guns.

LOL,,, you almost sounded like Jerry Clower there, buying and selling the same gun several times, but his story was about a horse. thanks for the encouragement, I am starting to feel like I need one now, and a day ago I barely ever heard of these guns. Dang Gunbroker!!

I have a 840 in 222 and its a hell of a shooter. Hence my name on the fire. I havent shot it in years because i got hooked on the 99’s.

Joe

The triple-two is an interesting cartridge too. I've toyed with the idea of getting a 340 in 222 for several years now.

My first rifle was a 340 in 30-30,not fancy but always got the job done, I also have a western field 712 in 222 made by savage. It looks like the 340 and is very accurate.

It depends entirely on your expectations. If you expect accuracy sufficient to kill stuff and aren't looking for something that generates deep pride of ownership (aesthetically speaking) then the 340 is your girl. Probably no better "throw it in the back of the pickup truck and forget about it" gun was ever made. If you have heard wondrous tales of the .222's inherent accuracy and want to hop on the hair splitting varmint rifle bandwagon, don't expect the 340 to deliver the goods- it's doubtful it'll provide you with 3/8" 100 yard groups that seem to have become the gold standard for Campfire bragging .22 centerfires.

My Dad had one and he was a groundhog shooter, merely caring about killing them dead and didn't care about doing it in style. At the end of the day he killed as many with that 340 .222 as the rest of us did with our hoity-toity rigs.

All in all, for $300 out the door I very well might arm wrestle you for it!

My buddy John shoots one under an inch pretty easy. It has the uncheckered walnut stocks and is a nice enough looking gun. Trigger is so-so, mounting is fubar until you get the right setup, but it works well for him. My only .222's are a (gulp) Remington 660 carbine and an Anschutz. Haven't shot either of them! Criminal!

during one of the trips through my hands with this particular 340 , i bought a replacement .223 barrel for it. never could get around to swapping it out. now i have .223's on other platforms and that barrel makes up part of a wind chime in my gun room/cave.
when i bought the barrel the barrel band and screw was missing from the 340 and someone had tried to free float the thing. couldn't shoot a group , more of a pattern. replaced the band and now it shoots well enough to be interesting, but not so good as to be boring.
think i'll get her out and shoot today.

I have owned four 340s, all in .30-30, over the years (my three boys and I all started with one as deer rifles) and a friend had one in .225 Winchester. They're functional, effective and shoot a lot more accurately than their price point would suggest. I like the fact that they are magazine fed, which allows the use of pointed bullets in the .30-30.

The early ones aren't set up to scope - you have to do some work on the stock to inlet for the side mount scope - but I'd guess by the time the .222 was manufactured, that shouldn't be a problem. You might want to check, though, to make sure the one you're looking at doesn't require stock inletting to provide space for the mount.

I still hunt with mine occasionally, as it's a rare event in the deep woods of upstate Pennsylvania that you get a 100 yard shot, let alone a longer one. Never feel handicapped at all.

I'll bet you'd find the .222 to be more than sufficiently accurate.

Thanks guys for the pointers from experience.

I used to see 340s in 222 fairly often, but not anymore. 30-30s are pretty easy to find.

It went for $239. I will let you know how it shoots in a few weeks!

Cool. Glad you got it. I dont think you will be disappointed at all.

Joe

good price! for a while they were breaking 400.00!
one thing i have noticed mainly with the 222's in the 340's. nobody cleans them! i have picked up many that i seriously doubt had ever had a brush or a swab down the bore. amazed some of the people i bought from when i showed the accuracy results from a shiny bore.
maybe they figure it's just another 22