Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Stole a savage axis 308.

I have a Savage Hog Hunter that is extremely accurate. I was amazed when I shot it the first time. Only tried one load, 150 GameKings and 44 grains of H4895. It shoots well in two 99’s also.

260Remguy:

I know a teenager who is looking for a decent deer rifle that won't cost him much. Nice kid, good family, dad hunts and the kid wants to go with him.

I you'll sell me the 6.5 Creed, I'll donate a scope for it and he can get started hunting in a good way - not getting beat up by borrowing dad's gun.

Tried to PM you but got a message that you were over your PM limit.

I've got to contact dad and see if this idea will work, but please think it over while I see if I can set it up.

Czech

So, finally had the chance and Took it out to desert to see how she does after I put on new rings and scope. (Viper 2.5-10x44)
After I shoot, the bolt is hard to pull back to eject the spent casing.
Ejects fine I guess. But it’s just hard to pull the bolt back. Unfortunately that’s the only ammo I had and have at this time.

She’s also not a very consistent shooter. I wasn’t expecting sub moa out of the cheap FMJ, but I was also not expecting the randomness.
Went home to clean it and give her a good wipe down, I couldn’t get the too far past where the barrel sits in the fire end/stock. So I think something is touching the barrel.
Any ideas regarding the bolt?
Thanks .

Remove the rifle from the stock.

Sand down any and all points that touch the barrel. Check fit and keep sanding until a business card will slide all the way back to the recoil lug/nut.
Dont worry about forearm flex. Just pull the rifle down into the bags at the mag location. Tuck your hand up close to where the bag and rifle contact.

Remove the rings and bases. Clean ALL of the screws and all the bases with nail polish remover.

When you put it all back together use BLUE LOCTITE on ALL OF THE SCREWS including those for the rifle.

Use colored nail polish on top of all the screws and a drop at the ring and scope contact to check for scope movement and any screws that come loose.
This is from Formidilosus a forum member here. It will cure most of your accuracy issues from the start.

For the bolt>> remove it from the rifle and drop the mag. Now wrap some very fine steel wool around a shotgun cleaning brush or one that will fit your chamber and stick that into a drill and slowly spin it in the chamber.
DO NOT PUSH IT INTO THE RIFLING JUST THE CHAMBER.
Another way is to wrap 1000 grit sand paper around a bore brush and so the same thing. Just a little bit for both techniques. You just may have a rough chamber and its grabbing hold of the brass just a bit.

Be patient GO SLOW.

From start to finish about 45 minutes.

Try a Burris Fullfield ll 3x9x40.

Best
HD

Wow! nice deal!

Especially if you can flip that scope for $50

My Axis is a .75" shooter with ammo it likes (a 223 though) and no turd polishing except clipping a coil off of a spring. I'd say shoot the dang thing and love it

After a good cleaning, maybe other ammo won't be too sticky, especially good 308 hunting ammo. What kind of FMJ was that?

Thanks HD.
So I made sure the bases were tight before putting on the new scope/rings.
I guess I can try again. And I do have burris full field IV 3-12 laying around.

Regarding the bolt.
I contacted savage so I’ll see what they say before I start messing with the chamber.
Sounds like fairly easy thing
Thanks again

Granted this is just an example of two individual rifles but the $250 Axis I have in 223 shoots better for me than the Tikka 223 I had a few years back. Both rifles had 3-9x40 scopes; Leupold on the Tikka, Burris FF II on the Axis and I hand loaded for both. Tried a lot of different loads in the Tikka. Some shot better than others but overall thought it was very accurate. The Axis shot better than anything I tried in the Tikka with the first two loads I tried. Overall quality of the Tikka was considerably better than the Axis but cheap or not that Axis is a shooter.

Dont have and axis but had 110 Apex hunter. One of the worst guns I bought action was sloppy. The stock has a lot of flex in the forearm can move it back ang forth. Would not shoot better then 2" groups at 50 yards. Down the road it went. So dont know about the axis so cant speak on them but the 110 I had was junk in my experience.

Any time Dre.

They definitely have warts and limitations, but can be relatively accurate for a cheap rifle. I would not consider them to be rugged/overly reliable compared to other rifles. Here's what I've learned from shooting/working with quite a few:

- Agree the bases must come off. Use a solvent with q-tips to ensure as much machining oil as possible is removed.

- Just "...checking to see the bases were originally tight." is NOT good enough. To name a few examples, the frontmost screw could be too long and be bottoming out on the barrel threads. Another case could be where the screws are bad quality and/or a little boogered and could be creating excess friction (making you think they are tighter than they are) but not actually stretching the screw and holding the bases as tight. It's best to start with new bases and screws that are machined well and fit well and tighten with loc-tite 242, 243, fingernail polish, or whatever your preference is.

-When you say pulling back on the bolt, what exactly do you mean? Axis rifles are known for a lot of upward pressure being needed to lift the bolt upward, prior to pulling back.

- Being it's an Axis, AND in .308 increases the odds of it being shot in the past with steel case ammo, which is extremely hard on the Axis' generally soft extractor. The extractor is cheap and easy to replace if you suspect it is ever not functioning as it should (see YouTube). IMHO, DO NOT USE steel case ammo or something hard like an A-Zoom snap cap in it.

- Being it's a Savage, just be aware of the extra play involved in the bolt and detachable magazine tolerances and fit. In some individual rifle/magazine combinations, it's possible to ride the bolt downward from the rear (making the head a hair higher) and causing the bolt to slide over the magazine and not chamber a cartridge, which is obviously bad in a hunting situation. This only applies to some individual Savages and Savage magazines, so yours may never have this issue, but it's something to be aware of.

- They are fairly notorious for misfires compared to other rifles. The firing pin spring set-up is comprised of spring-washer-spring system. In other words, a washer jammed between two springs rather than one spring. Sometimes the alignment of that system isn't sitting exactly as precise as the engineers intended. Also, despite it using a barrel nut for headspacing, it's not that uncommon for them to not be set to the best tolerances from the factory. Spring impact and headspacing both affect if a rifle misfires. Some Axis never have misfires IF the spring-washer-spring set-up is good AND if the headspacing is good. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of aftermarket trigger springs. Like any other bolt action, make CERTAIN the bolt handle is always 100% down prior to pulling the trigger.

- Yes the stock is flimsy, but as long as long as you do NOT use a bi-pod AND as long as it is correctly seated and tightened into the stock (5/32 Allen; I like a T-Handle style to prevent significant overtightening) the stock shouldn't be too big of deal for short distance accuracy if using a proper benchrest bag set-up or shooting off hand.

- IMHO, you need to shoot different ammo in it prior to deciding how accurate/precise it is.

Most Axis rifles are pretty accurate, but I've come across some that aren't. Also, they don't always feed very well out of the box, and especially cartridges with steeper angles, like the Creedmoor (But this could be said about Savage in general). Also, they are lightweight rifles in the low six pound range, which can be a desirable feature. They are an economy rifle that might work ok for you if understand how to work around its warts and limitations.

Greatly appreciate all the info!
Ok
I’ll take her apart and start over.
The ammo was Igman. Nice brass with 147 fmj. Velocity was mostly around 2770-2780.
So lifting the bolt isn’t the problem. It’s literally pulling it back to eject the spent casing.
I knew this was a budget rifle, but last time I bought a rifle on sale. It was a shooter, TC venture in 270. Love than thing!
Was hoping to get lucky again

Good post, Hines. Thanks for sharing your considerable experience. My experience is limited to one rifle, a 308 Axis. I worked over the trigger spring and got the trigger down to a manageable level. I epoxied steel rods into the forend - seemed to help some with the flex. I've had no feeding issues. They are certainly a cheap rifle in every sense of the word. I must say, on the positive side, however, that mine is a good shooter and not very finicky. I've had very good luck with 150 and 165 gr Partitions, and 150 Hornady IL's. With minimal tinkering I get consistent 1/2-3/4" three shot groups with those bullets. I've played with 130 TTSX's, 165 Speer's, and 180 Sierra SPBT's. All have grouped under 1 1/4 without expending much effort. I'm sure they'd do much better.

Mine seems to shoot better after 10-12 shots have gone down a clean barrel. A good excuse to not clean it very often.

Dre, I hope you got a good one and it is trouble free once you conquer this initial issues.

ttpoz: Your accuracy experience is not uncommon and glad yours works well. I think they would have an even better reputation for accuracy than they already do if not so many were sold to inexperienced shooters complete with a pre-mounted scope package. The bases ALWAYS have at least one or more loose screws. The newest ones went front 6-48 to 8-40 screws, so maybe it will be less of a problem from the factory for folks that don’t mount their own scopes. For quick identification, the models that use 6-48 have a milled out section on the rear of the receiver, whereas the new 8-40 tapped receivers just have a rounded rear receiver; this change just happened within the last year.

As mentioned, just keep an eye out for misfires due to the firing pin set-up of spring-washer-spring. What isn’t a problem now may possibly develop into one in the future. My understanding is the original Savage Axis (Savage Edge) utilized a more conventional one piece firing pin spring.

I would call that an average buy truthfully.

Not sure you’ll find a bolt action with scope For under 200$. If it was shooter, then it would have been a steal.
Granted it’s going to require some tinkering to shoot better. But still, I rather spend 2 bills on This vs Grand on a kimber and still have issues.

Read it as $229, sorry.

But I’ll pay the grand for a Kimber EVREY FU CKING TIME over the savage.

I made the mistake of buying 2 of the Axis rifles at the same time a few years back when they were on sale at Bud's. Both of them went back to Savage, one of them went back twice. They both had serious feed and extraction issues straight out of the box, and the 25-06 had horrible headspace and an extremely rough chamber that gouged the holy hell out of brass.

They were both accurate rifles, especially the .223, but I dumped them once I got them back functional. I won't keep a rifle I don't trust, and I wouldn't trust those as far as I could throw them.

My son shot his first 4 deer with an axis in 223, ugly as sin but that litte gun will shoot moa all day long. The only issue it has is when eject the shell, if you rack back with authority it will trip the firing pin. Not an issue with safety but a pain in the ass in the field. Need to get that issue addressed but its been sitting in the back of the closet for a few years now.

My best friend had one in 243 that I sold him and a 308. The triggers were the worst I've ever had to deal with....

My step dad has one in .243 he has been using the last 4 years-works great-more accurate than he is-If I came across one that cheap it would be coming home with me as well-nice snag!