My first Tikka
Way back when I was a Remington man. All my rifles and shotguns were Rems except for one Savage 110. My reason was because I am a south paw. About 5 years ago I started looking into Savage and I was impressed with their accuracy. Especially with the Accutrigger. I started about 3 months ago to seriously look at the Tikka line. My Savage 116 Weather Warrior (30-06) for some strange reason kicked like a mule. I love the big bores and have shot heavies including the .460 wthby so I am not recoil shy but this rifle would jar your fillings loose. I ordered a Tikka 3 Lite stainless in 30-06 to replace this rifle in the safe. I picked it up on Sat morning and put a SS Burris Fullfield II 3-9X with BDC on it. Sharp looking rifle. And the action is unbelievable. It feels like glass on glass. You can't even feel any resistance pushing the bolt forward and picking up a round from the detatchable magazine. The trigger is awesome too. Picture an Accutrigger without the takeup and that would describe this trigger. Absolutely zero creep or overtravel.
I took it out yesterday afternoon and although the manf. says the barrel does not need breaking in, I decided to do a modifed break in and gave it a good cleaning after every 3 shots. Even with the very old Norma 180 gr ammo I had on hand for this task the rifle showed a lot of promise. Each 3 shot group was right around the 1" mark. And the recoil was much milder than the Savage. Now this is probably due to a different stock configuration plus the superior recoil pad on the Tikka.