Took the gun to the range this morning. Bore sighted it at 100 yards dry fired it a few times to get used to the trigger, and fired one round. 6" low and 2" right. My God, the trigger is horrible. Took a gamble, and corrected the sight based on the one round. I wanted to be 1 3/4" high at 100, to give me a 200 yard zero.
I nearly had a heart attack when I walked down to check the results. The second, third, and fourth shots had I have ever fired out of the rifle, had produced a group that measured 5/8 of an inch on centers. This is with Hornady Custom 95 gr.factory ammo. What's more, it was almost exactly where I wanted it to be. This with only 4 round fired.
I then set up a target at 200 yards, fired one round and walked down to take a look. Elevation was dead on perfect, but windage was just off the printed "X" to the left. Walked back, put in 1 click of right windage and fired again. This round tooK off the lower right leg of the "X". At this point, I quit while I was ahead, and stopped shooting.
Now, I have to wonder, how Savage can put a rifle of this quality together, and sell it for such a reasonable price, when all the other guys are charging telephone numbers for what now seems to be inferior quality.
I will be the first to admit that the gun is a ugly as a bag of worms, and the trigger sucks, but the thing outshoots every sporter weight Rem, Ruger, or Win, I have ever owned. Considering that I can shoot reasonably well (retired SWAT sniper), and I have shot them all, I speak from a lot of experience.
All shooting was off a bench, no wind, good light. Ideal conditions.I don't know if I will ever be able to repeat this group, but it sure as heck did it once.
Thought I would pass this along. It look as though I have a new deer rifle for the up-coming season.