Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Couple of 99s and a Savage related non-Savage

Well, took the 303 and 300 back out to try the fiddled N130 loads. Groups with the adjustments with the 140 Monoflexes out of the 303 were all worse than the initial ones I had tried last post. Looks like 23.5gr is the ticket for that one. It's not quite as good as IMR4320, but it's a good alternate and a bit better than IMR3031 will do with those bullets. I'll have to zip a group through the chronograph next time I take it out, but I'd guess they're right in the 1900-1950fps range. That's where the happy spot for those bullets has been with all the other powders I've tried.

The old 1899A SR





The 300 was a mixed bag. The original load from the other day was best with the 125 TNTs beat anything today, but I did get the 130 TTSXs to tigthen up. They're about equal to my H4198 load now. Gonna try bumping them up a hair more and see what happens, since the warmest load was the best shooter today. Didn't take any pics of the 300, since I had last time and was a bit pressed for time.

The real star of today's shooting isn't a Savage, but came about because of the inquiry I had made into 375 99s here a while back. Fireball2 generously offered to sell me this sweet little 94AE in 375. It's a rifle that had been on the want list a long time, so I'm pretty happy.



I threw a Skinner peep on it, and in a unique twist, I actually had to put a shorter front sight on it. I've never ran into that before, it's always been a taller front with peeps on every other rifle I've owned 🤷‍♂️ It's slick handling and smooth, but kind of a nasty little bugger to shoot. I've got a recoil pad on the way, because that hard plate is a shoulderbuster. I actually put 50 rounds through it a few days ago, and my shoulder was still a bit bruised today.

I had to cut today's shooting short because the shoulder was getting real tender and I was starting to flinch, but I had a couple promising groups. I also have an extremely green shoulder.🤣 N130 and IMR3031 under .376 cast 260gr flat points have produced loads I can probably work into something huntable. Unique and 2400 were utterly hopeless and threw a bunch of keyholes. I haven't gotten to 4198 yet, so we'll see how those look next time. Best 5 shot group of the day was about 2.5" at 50yds.