I have the same gun and am very happy with it. The ability to shoot smokeless powder is a godsend, performance is outstanding, and the gun with smokeless powder is very economical to shoot with smokeless powder, which is a factor often overlooked when all people see is muzzle velocity. Smokeless is MUCH cheaper to shoot than any of the black powder "substitutes."

The Savage is the finest designed ML out there today, because the requirement to use smokeless precludes using lower quality materials and simplified design schemes that the 10ML-II weaker cousins routinely employ. The Savage has the best sealed breech system, because the bolt actually cams the primer into a "chamber" on the breechplug just like a CF bolt action rifle cams shut. The result is very little blowback. I can shoot 40 shots out of my Savage and have half the fouling I'd experience with my DISC in 5 shots. Primer extraction is also very positive because the bolt cams the primer out of the breechface when opened. The action is also totally sealed to the elements, which isn't as big a deal since smokeless isn't hygroscopic or corrosive if it does get wet.

The barrel is made of the same gun barrel steel that CF barrels are made of, not the much softer (and hence cheaper and easier to machine) steels common with typical ML rifles. The barrels are button rifled to the same tolerances as a CF barrel as well. The Savage is the only muzzleloader I've shot that I can't feel and variations in the barrel as I seat a bullet. The barrel is fully free floated and the rifle is pillar bedded just like the Savage CF rifles. The machineing and finish are superb, and the quality and appearance of the laminate stock is very good. Of course, nothing bad can be said about the now standard Accu-Trigger. User adjustable to a crisp, virtually creep-free 1.5lbs, it's the best non-set trigger on the ML market today, and certainly the best inline trigger available.

My only gripes about the gun are the lack of a decent recoil pad. The hard rubber "pad" the gun comes with is purely decorative, and with full house smokeless loads it'll get your attention really quick. The other gripe is that the action screw at the front of the trigger guard must be backed out a couple turns to get the bolt out, which disturbs the bedding of the action if not retightend to the same torque.

I also hear a lot of people bitch about the vent liner, which is a designed in wear item thats purpose is render breechplug life to an indefinate period. Savage recommend that the vent liner be removed and replaced every so many rounds or when accuracy drops off suddenly, which is supposedly between 50 and 200 rounds. I've never had one wear out yet, and I'm at about round 150 or so. My gun came with three vent liners, and replacement vent liners can be ordered from Savage for something like $4 for 2. Recently Savage developed a newer vent liner design using a much harder steel that lasts 500 or more shots. The hardened steel also remedied the problem of stripping out the allen head screw by not only being harder, but also by slightly deepening the recess. These vent liners are advertised on Randy Wakemans website and cost around $5 apiece I think.

Overall I'm very happy with my 10ML-II. It's MUCH more accurate than my DISC, much less finiky about loads as long as the bullet weight is kept toward the higher end (300 grain .45cal bullets).

Oh, and I mentioned the increased recoil above, but that need not be the case. It's very possible to load down to the more moderate velocities typical of BP (1500-1800fps) and actually have LESS recoil. Certainly a rifle shooting a 300 grain sabot at 2250fps with 40 grains of N110 is going to kick more than a 300 grain bullet at 1700fps with 100 grains of T7. That's about 32% more velocity. But if you keep the velocity with smokeless down to 1700fps you have all the performance of a typical muzzleloader with much less recoil because of the significantly reduced weight of powder used. To get 1700fps you'd need maybe 25-30 grains of N110, or roughly 1/4 the mass of powder needed to achieve the same velocity with T7. That 75 grain mass savings translates into less ejecta, which means less total recoil. I'd still recommend installing a good pad though. The Savage recoil pad still sucks.

Mike