I also have a savage varmint 40 rifle in 223 but its single shot kinda sucks for quick follow up shots I will keep it as a bench rifle, I bought the savage 10FP to be my field gun. I use a handload which ended up shooting just as good out of my new 10FP as it did in the varmint 40
my handload is a 55 grain sierra blitzking sitting on 27 grains of varget.

heres a picture of how the 10FP did at 200 yards though the gun is zeroed for 100 yards, this is a 10 shot group shooting prone with a bipod.