ORIGINAL: DeerandbearhoG
Spaniel, you make some good points,
BUT ......
1)Its much more like 5 minutes in between shots in temps over 60 deg. which is really not that big a deal. I just bring a couple other guns along to shoot in between.
2) Although I think savage could improve the 10ML in some ways, I dont think TC Icon has leapfroged Savage in the CF dept, in fact I havent heard much positive feedback on the Icon at all, certainly they havent gained the reputation for out of the box accuracy savage has, so I dont see why they would make such a superior smokeless ML.
3) the only leapfrogging TC did to Knight was in marketing , I still feel knights are more accurate than TCs. I see alot of guys haveing a hard time w/ getting encores to group well,and Ive always though TC triggers werent anything to bragg about, but Ive never seen a inaccurate knight.
4) There are ways around the 3rd pillar, like the EZ tool, or just marking the rear action screw to match the stock, but IME Ive never had the POI change cause I loosened the rear action screw.
If Ive given the impression I think TC are not excellent guns that will service 90% of the hunters out there, as good as they need, let me just say again, TC are very good guns, but they ,as well as any other ML, simply cannot do what the Savage does and it baffels me that TC ,knight or remington have not jumped into the smokeless arena yet, but until they do Savage is the ML king!
Now all they need to do is a dime's worth of advertising and promotion for it and it wont be such an enigma.
Geez guys, I'm not kicking your baby here.
First, I have it on the authority of some of the most experienced Savage shooters that the cooling time is considerably longer than 5min if you are shooting anything remotely superior to blackpowder velocities. Sure, you can rig cooling systems etc to make it tolerable but look back to the topic here -- that's huge effort to circumvent a weakness of the gun! Sure, I can replace the barrel on a Traditions and drop it in a McMillan stock but that doesn't say a whole lot about Traditions, does it?
The comparison to the Icon is irrelevant, you miss my point. Knight innovated inlines, but based them on a centerfire platform complete with a bolt assembly -- a completely unnecessary item in a ML that only adds length and more to clean. TC released the Omega and Encore, both throwing centerfire convention away and designing bottom-up for their specific purpose and the rest is history. Knight and every other manufacturer have been playing catchup ever since.
There is no reason for a bolt on a smokeless ML gun either. If anyone else sees fit to play in this market, they could mimic the TC strategy and design a platform specifically for smokeless ML, not bringing along the baggage of a retrofitted centerfire platform. Edited to add - the breech plug design is also not optimized for what it is for, it is optimized to make up for the pre-existing design of the Savage Model 10 and get past the barrel nut. Another area for potential improvement in a from-scratch design.
As for ways around the 3rd pillar, again, we are talking about the function and design of the gun from the factory, not all the things you can do to make up for it's weaknesses. See the retrofitted Traditions analogy above.
Don't get me wrong, I follow the Savage with great interest. Personally, I'm waiting for the next generation or if I wanted to go smokeless would go with a custom offering or rebarrel to .45 or .40 for sabotless. It's a good gun. But the panacea of the ML world? Not in this man's opinion. I see it roughly equivalent to other high-end MLs with a different set of strengths and weaknesses.
As you mention, most guys here are interested within 150 yds. In that realm, the sole advantage of the Savage is cleaning (you mention recoil but if you are throwing ML bullets at 2400fps you are NOT reducing recoil!). My Omega takes 5-10min to clean, 777 has been a big advance over Pyrodex in that realm. Even my centerfires get a good wipe-down and oil after a day in the field, there is not a big difference.