How is the crown of the muzzle? If it's dinged or out of round it would cause accuracy to be nil. It doesn't take much to mess up the crown of a rifle, even cleaning from the muzzle without a cleaning rod guide/muzzle protector is enough to mess up the crown and destroy accuracy. Since the rifle is 20 years old I doubt that Savage will do any warranty work on it, but I would take it to a gunsmith and have him go over it completely. If the only problem is the crown, it shouldn't cost much to fix.

Good luck,

Mike