I’ve been a big fan of the Savage Model 110 for a long time. It’s been around for over 60 years and I’ve been recommending it for decades. They’ve always been accurate rifles that give the shooter a lot of rifle for their buck, especially when it comes to accuracy.
With the new Savage Model 110 Varmint in .223 Remington, Savage has attempted to build on that legacy with a heavy barrelled rifle designed to shoot tiny groups far away, and and do it at a low price point. That’s a tall order, as precision shooters aren’t really well known for being particularly forgiving on quality. And while I’ve always been partial to Savage rifles, what they came up with surprised even me.
The Model 110 Varmint is not a “do-it-all” gun. This is a purpose-built rifle for shooting prone or off a bench, usually from a fixed position. It’s not designed to be the rifle you carry all day and shoot once. It’s the rifle you carry very little, shoot at long distances, and shoot a lot.
The Model 110 Varmint comes with Savage’s AccuFit system that allows you to change the length of pull as well as comb height right out of the box. This is an idea that’s become more common among budget rifle makers, and it’s very much appreciated. Within short distances on larger targets, or infrequent shooting, rifle fit doesn’t matter quite so much. But for anything else — for almost everything else — it makes a big difference.
Many folks have experienced what happens when a rifle or shotguns’ length of pull is too long, especially when a parent hands a long gun to their kid or a male shooter hands a rifle or shotgun to a smaller female shooter. The body is out of alignment, making it difficult to keep the rifle on target, and felt recoil is significantly in increased.
If a gun’s too small for a larger shooter, unless it is so short that eye relief become an issue, the main problem is that it’s just uncomfortable to lay behind in the prone position. That lack of good body position leads to fatigue, which directly relates to more difficult follow-up shots as well as the inability to manage the gun in recoil.
The Accufit system changes length of pull through a series of spacers between the stock and the recoil pad. Simply unscrew the two screws set deep into the recoil pad with a long Phillips head screwdriver and slide on or remove spacers until you get to the desired length of pull. Or as close as you can. Using the longest set that came with the Model 110 Varmint, I was still a bit short on my LOP, but I’m 6’2″ with very long arms.
Comb height is another factor. If it’s too tall, you aren’t going to see through your sights. That’s not an issue if you’re a member of New York City’s finest, but for the rest of us, it’s a problem you’ll want to address. More often than not, however, the comb is too low for a good cheek-stock weld. By adding one of the five different combs included with the Model 110, the shooter can customize the comb to the appropriate height for whatever face/scope/mount combination you may be running.
Beyond just the obvious personal fit, I appreciate these systems because of the options they provide the young shooter. In olden days, to change the length of pull for a youngster, you’d cut off a wooden stock to fit, and then re-stock the same gun years later. That was a lot of years of the gun not quite fitting right as the child grew, as well as a waste of money and good stock wood.
Adjusting the comb height was always easier, but ugly. Shooters have been using a sponge wrapped in tape to customize comb height for decades. As your child tended to grow, you either changed the sponges or, more often than not, they just got crushed into shape over time anyway.
The AccuFit system allows you to appropriately size the rifle to a wide range of shooters progressively as they age so that it fits the shooter throughout their early years and into adulthood. It’s definitely a big bonus for parents considering a rifle for one of their children.
The outside of the stock itself is acceptable at this price point. The flat fore end, more reminiscent of the early Weatherbys, is the right idea for a heavier-barreled varmint gun. It’s easy to get it to rest securely on bags. There’s also some texturing on the palm swell, although shooting from the prone or off a rest, you probably won’t ever need it. If you’re gripping this gun hard, you’re doing it wrong.
It’s what’s inside the stock, underneath the action and the recoil lug that matter. In this case, it’s a full-length aluminum bedding block. I gotta admit, for a gun at this price point, that was a surprise. I’ve become used to seeing metal inserts in these plastic stock for reinforcement, but not a full-on block.
My complaint on all of these budget guns is always that the plastic stocks are too weak for consistent shots in multiple positions over time. That’s not a valid complaint here, and including a block like this is a practice I sure hope more manufacturers of budget rifles follow.
As this is a rifle designed to be scoped, there are no iron sights. Savage has included scope bases.
The safety is a tang-mounted three-position safety. Forward to fire, once notch back to lock the trigger (but not the bolt), and all the way back to lock the trigger and the bolt. The safety is a little sloppy, with no obvious catches between each setting. Finding that middle position was a bit of a challenge, and I ended up either in the fire or the bolt-locked position unless I was really paying attention and taking it slow.
Triggers on rifles at this price range usually aren’t wonderful. The Savage Model 110 Varmint’s AccuTrigger is a great trigger. When you depress the “AccuRelease” (that little blade on the front of the trigger), its forward tip drops out of the way of the sear. Pulling the shoe itself then releases the sear for a short, crisp break with a lockup time advertised at 1.6 milliseconds. To put that in perspective, the Remington 700’s short action lockup time is about twice that.
My trial and evaluation gun came from Savage with a trigger pull weight just under three pounds. Using the supplied tool, which looks like a tiny valve-stem remover, I took the pull weight down another pound to 1.8 lbs on my Lyman trigger scale. It’s advertised to go as low as 1.6 lbs safely. The whole process involved two screws to remove the action from the stock and a few turns with the supplied tool. Easy peasy.
The Model 110 Varmint comes with an oversized bolt knob that hangs down low and a little away from the stock. If I was hunting in the brush, I’d be concerned that the bolt would too easily be caught in branches or vines. But that’s not what this rifle is designed for.
As it is, the bolt handle’s size and placement make it easy to slide my hand forward, catching the handle in the web between my thumb and forefinger to quickly cycle and chamber another round.
The action of the 110 is, by this time, surely a classic. After all, it’s the oldest continuously manufactured bolt action rifle in America, with few changes after the ones made back in 1966. The bolt, in this case, is jeweled. Kinda.
I appreciate the effort to class up a budget rifle, but the end result here is a bolt that looks like the jewling is worn and old, on a brand new rifle. I would have preferred the job either be done well, or not at all.
This isn’t a light rifle, and that’s mostly due to the 26-inch free-floated heavy barrel. That long tube is all carbon steel and button-rifled with a 1:9 twist. The extra barrel length really helps with 68+ grain rounds, imparting as much as 200fps more velocity over the same round shot from a 16″ carbine-length AR-15 barrel.
With the heavy barrel and light plastic stock, the gun is completely unbalanced and it would be unacceptable for a spot-and-stalk rifle. As it is, in a gun designed to make up the distance by shooting, not walking, it works just fine.
Unfortunately, and surprisingly, the muzzle isn’t threaded. Considering the calibers available and the application, I would have definitely wanted to put a direct thread suppressor on the end of the barrel. After all, the only thing better than shooting a coyote at 600 yards is shooting two coyotes at 600 yards.
Given its weight and caliber, the Model 110 Varmint doesn’t recoil, it flinches. Barely. With that kind of stability, I could watch my round strike my target with ease. My eye never had to leave the scope, and my cheek-stock weld wasn’t disturbed. Considering the lack of recoil, and the AccuFit stock, this would be an ideal rifle for a young shooter.
The Savage 110 Varmint sports a four-round detachable box magazine. It works just fine, and never failed to lock in place or to drop out when I needed it to. However, there were a few times I tried to chamber a new round only to find the bolt sliding on top of the next cartridge, without picking it up to load into the chamber.
When that happened, the cause was that I had failed to fully seat the magazine. It’s easy to do, as the magazine feels like it’s locked in, and won’t fall out, long before it is actually fully inserted into the gun. The usual cause was that the front of the magazine had not fully seated.
As long as I had fully seated the magazine correctly, I had no issues with reliably in any way. The gun never failed to fire when I pulled the trigger with any round. I used bullets from a 50 grains to 77 grains from several different manufacturers. I put 200 round through the rifle in total, and beyond the initial lube of the gun, I never performed any more maintenance once the shooting started.
Since I had lowered the trigger pull so much, I also decided to bounce the unloaded, but cocked rifle up and down on a stump a few times. The sear never released and the firing pin never fell.
This is a varmint gun, ostensibly designed for target shooting as well as shooting pesky animals at relatively far distances. As such, it needs to be accurate. No commercial round I tried shot a five-round group larger than .9″ at 100 yards off a Caldwell Stinger Shooting rest.
Using an Atibal Nomad 4-12 optic, the best-shooting commercial round was, again, the IWI 77grain Sierra Match King round, printing an extremely consistent .7″ average five-shot group at 100 yards. My go-to White Tail Deer culling round, the Winchester 64gr Super X printed .75″ on average.
That means, given the rifle’s intended purpose, rabbits and rock chucks at 300 yards are no problem as long as you do your job and the wind is right. Coyotes at 600 should be child’s play. And that’s with factory ammunition. Get to the reloading bench and I have no doubt this rifle will print 1/2 MOA groups.
I’ve always been impressed with the Savage 110. In fact, when TTAG asked me for the three guns I’d recommend a couple of years ago, the Savage Model 110 series rifle was on my list.
When it comes to building good rifles at a low cost, Savage certainly hasn’t lost it’s touch. The purpose-built Savage 110 Varmint is a great all-around gun for target practice or small game hunting. It’s unfailingly reliable, accurate, and well-designed for its intended task. And it’s absolutely ideal for the parent looking to get their child their first centerfire rifle.
Specifications: Savage Model 110 Varmint
SKU: 57066
Caliber: .223 Remington
Magazine: 4 round Detachable Box
Barrel Material: Carbon Steel
Barrel Finnish: Matte Black
Barrel Length: 26″
Overall length: 46″
Weight: 9lbs
MSRP: $749 (easily found online for $570 and less)
Ratings (out of five stars):
Style and Appearance * * *
The synthetic stock is ugly, but all of them are ugly. The Accufit system, while utilitarian, makes the butt of the gun look segmented and ad-hoc, because it is. The matte black finish is simple and well done throughout. There are no tool marks or rough gouges anywhere on the gun, inside or out. If this were my gun, it would get it rattle-canned with a quickness.
Customization * * * *
This is a Savage 110, which means that barrel swaps and bolt head swaps are a breeze. The entire AccuFit system is about customization. Trigger adjustment is easy and it works. One star off for the lack of a threaded barrel, a mistake on this type of rifle.
Reliability * * * * *
If your hand or any other handy appendage works, so will this rifle.
Accuracy * * * *
A modern bolt gun needs to get below 1/2 MOA to earn five stars from me. As it is, this gun is at 3/4 of a minute with several different kinds of ammunition. That’s very good, but with the right pet load, it could really shine.
Overall * * * *
This gun isn’t pretty. At all. But it shoots pretty well. It’s ideal for a growing shooter, and it’s both inexpensive to buy and inexpensive to feed. Savage made a varmint rifle anybody can afford, and few will outshoot.
Doesn’t appear to come in creedmor….
I’m puzzled as to how this was even posted given that it’s not 6.5 Creedmoor. One cartridge to rule them all.
I’m surprised Savage would even chamber a rifle in a non-Creedmoor caliber. Are they trying to go bankrupt?
Well, the company is for sale. That’s probably why this rifle is so cheap. They don’t want the new owners to see anything but Creedmoors.
Creedmoors, as far as the eye can see….
It is for varmint hunting not a target rifle, and in some places like PEI Canada, you are can not go over a .22 so the 223 is what is needed, for hear, I am very thankful they came out with it, not every one just shoots targets, and has to follow the laws, weather we agree with them or not.
.223 Creedmore!!
FTW!
Someone better tell all those coyote, deer and Antelope that I have killed that they should not be dead, because I have never shot one with a round with (creedmoor ) at the end of the name! What is this silly fascination with Creedmoor? I never realized how much trends drive the gun industry, until this latest CREEDMOOR explosion! Someone was telling me about this NEW 6.5 Caliber! Gee, I’m pretty sure I owned a 6.5 Rem Mag and a 264 win mag in the 80s, also if President Kennedy was around, he might have a thing to say about this NEW 6.5 round! I swear, every new round introduced, is the greatest thing ever! With Biden in office, lets see how long it is before you guy’s are going back to the old standbys! I’ll bet I can find 30/06 rounds long after the CREEDMOOR ammo is gone! I’m heading to the range today to shoot my new 357 creedmoor revolver………not!
I don’t agree that the barrel needs to be threaded. This is a target first. I would go with .308, but I understand the 6.5 whatever is superior.
I have the .308 version, and the only thing I’d really change about it is to have a threaded barrel. It’s an excellent gun for what I bought it for, otherwise.
not sure if this is the best source, but from my experience it’s twenty dollars well spent.
https://www.tacticalworks.com/Savage-Improved-Extractor-Kit.html
I do love savage bolt actions. In fact i have three. An axis, axis 2, and a model 10t. Sadly since im apparently a knuckle dragger the axis 2 and 10t are chambered in 308. The axis is 223. I bought both axis rifles with the scope package. Once i replaced the crap scopes with vortex diamondback 3×9-40 scopes they have been phenomenal.
I put a vortex viper 4×16-44 on the 10t. It is as accurate as i can be, first time i shot it, after getting it sighted in, i cloverleafed a bullseye at 200 yards.
And yes im a savage/vortex addict. But dont worry i can quit any time i want.
And i will be buying one of the 110 models as well. With a vortex scope!
Hilarious. I did the exact same thing with the scope my Savage came with… I immediately swapped it out for a Vortex Diamondback. “Budget” rifle with “budget” glass, but it gets the job done.
How does a story about this blog break on TFB before it does here?
Shows which site has better quality reporting.
First, that’s Jeremy’s channel, not TTAG’s.
Second, because that’s what you get for not following TTAG on Instagram! You’d have heard about it real time there.
Ah Ha!.
I haven’t done Instagram before but now I have a reason to do so.
That where the most 6.5 Creedmoor content is at?
Stereodude, well, actually, kinda yeah.
Looking at that magazine, is this built on a longer action? Some of the manufacturers just chamber the shorter cartridges in a longer action to save money, but that seems to me to totally defeat the point of the shorter cartridge.
The saga of Savage Action lengths and nomenclatures would be a good long article in and of itself. The screw spacing between the current long and short actions is barely 3/5″ difference, but this rifle does fall within their short action footprint, with a 4.4″ screw spacing.
Probably the worst example of this is S,R&Co’s 77 series (.357, .44). I thought I wanted one until I realized that they’re .308 length actions. By rights they should be 2″ shorter. And these aren’t exactly budget rifles either.
Underground Tactical used to turn out some integrally suppressed 77/44s pushing 260-270gr RNFP bullets just barely subsonic. Those were absolute pig slaying machines. All you would hear is the firing pin drop, and the TWAK! of the round when it hit the pig. One head shot after the next. We’d stack them up like that hunting at night. Live pigs would be pushing over dead pigs to get at the corn underneath them.
It’s pretty much the only thing I’d use the 77/44 for, but man, it’s about perfect for that.
If only there was a universe where you, Dyspeptic Gunsmith, and TTAG staff had pinned comments.. and I could edit out PWR Serge’s comments.. TTAG would be my go to.
Seems to me that for a $600 rifle, .7moa with factory ammo is 5-star performance. For a $1500 bolt-action bench or varmint rifle, demanding .5moa would be more reasonable.
Just my two bits.
I appreciate your 2 bits. If this was 20 years ago, I’d agree with you, but the goal posts have moved. Most of the budget rifles, even the ones at the $500 price point and below, shoot factory ammo at or just below 1MOA out of the box. It’s a great time to be alive.
such as???? neither the mossberg nor the remington I bought in the past 2 years shoots sub-moa.
Those are certainly not the brands that I would look to for accuracy. Take a look at the lower-priced short action offerings from Weatherby, Howa, Ruger, and Savage.
I am a huge fan since Savage actually makes rifles for us Lefty’s
Yet another benefit of the floating bolt head design.
I’m also a big fan of the Savage line.
All mine shoot around 1/2 inch.
Great guns for the money!
4 stars on accuracy (.7 MOA) with factory ammo in a $600 gun? Sheesh
But do those stickers peel off easily without leaving a mess behind? Lets not pretend that is not a big deal. permanent sticker adhesive misuse is a criminal act.
also, putting big stickers on any rifle make it look like a cheap toy. Do they need a branding 101 class?
I actually checked for that, and yes they do come off without residue. It is something that drives me absolutely crazy about these guns.
I think the Creedmoor comes without the gaudy sticker.
What we need now is Creedmoor adhesive remover that comes packaged in a Creedmoor case with a spray nozzle that adjusts from .224 to .264.
Just sayin’.
That’s a cool rifle for a kid to learn medium long range shooting, heavy enuff , right caliber, adjustable stock. Grandsons 7th birthday coming up in August. Yup yup, ” wow grandpa, thanx” and the gleam in the eye priceless
Definitely has my interest. I just have to round up the available funds after my next tax return cheque.
I have a Savage 110 in 223 bought over 20 years ago, No Accu trigger, oversized bolt, detachable magazine or adjustable stock. Shoots better than me. Likes the 55 grain Ultramax reloaded soft points.
Bought several more savages since, all in 308. All great guns.
Want a 300 BLK and 7.62×39 with 16 inch barrel . Guess I will be getting a Ruger
Mike, out of curiosity, if you are going with a 16 inch barrel, why do you want the blackout?
Savage Arms makes great guns at great prices — and the company is up for sale.
A small nit:
The term is “lock time,” not “lockup time.” And 1.6 ms is very good – on par with some of the best match rifle actions/lockwork setups out there. That’s on par with Anschuetz 1800 and later lock times, which are about 1.5 ms.
For those unfamiliar with the issue/term, “lock time” refers to the amount of time that passes between when the sear disengages the striker/cocking piece, and when the firing pin hits the primer. This is “dead time” during which the rifle can move before the round goes off.
To give people a rough idea of lock times:
Competition rifles with high-force springs, and titanium (ie, light, or low-mass) firing pins might achieve lock times from 1.4 to 1.8 ms.
The Rem 700 long action, with stock firing pin and spring, is about 2.5 ms. Change the spring to a higher-force one, and you get down to about 2 ms. Put in a titanium firing pin, and you’re in the 1.6 ms region. Short actions might shave about 15% or a bit less off of these times.
Winchester 70’s (with the original Model 70 trigger) are about 3 ms with stock parts.
Springfield 1903’s are about 4.5 ms, if memory serves. Mauser 98’s in original form (ie, original springs) are a tad over 5 ms.
Basically, to get fast lock times, you have to do three things:
1. Decrease the mass that moves when your trigger breaks.
2. Increase the spring force that’s moving that mass, and
3. Reduce the distance that everything has to move to set off the cartridge.
Savage has been one of the accuracy-at-a-price leaders for some time. Where Savage fails is in aesthetics. The Savage action, with the barrel nut, is hideous. It works and works well, even allowing people to change their own barrels with little more than a barrel nut wrench and some headspace gages, but it looks incredibly ugly.
Every time I wrote the words “lockup time”, something was going off in my head. I even went into the shop and looked at one of my Colt SAA’s, knowing there was something in that phrase I was missing. I pulled it out of the story, changed it, and put it back in.
I knew something was wrong there, I just couldn’t remember the right words. Thanks for setting it right. It was still bugging me.
In my defense, I’ve had 11 concussions, and I’ve been dead for 4 minutes and 31 seconds once. So…sometimes I garbage pail plum salt beer coaster refrigerator squirrel.
You know about CTE, right? Know the warning signs and all that?
Yup, get my scans every year. There’s definitely been some damage, but my kidney (singular) and the parts of my liver I have left will give out long before my noggin. At least that’s the plan.
As a competitive shooter I can assure you that the first thing you want to do with your new rifle is remove the barrel from the action and throw it in the trash. The good news is that you can re-barrel it yourself with a custom barrel that will shoot. Several members at our club did this after sending their guns back 3 times to the factory because they were inaccurate and threw shots.
Now if you think that I am bullshitting you here is a test you can perform yourself but always have someone with you in case you have a heart attack after seeing how bad the factory barrels really are. Here is the test: Use the 100 yard I.B.S. Hunter Rifle Target. It has one sighter bull and 5 bulls with the 10 ring is less than a 1/2 inch in diameter. Shoot 4 shots on each of the 5 bulls ( to avoid the confusion of too many bullet holes use 2 targets and shoot 2 shots into each of the bulls). If you score less than 98 points out of the 100 total your barrel is throwing shots assuming your bedding is good. Use at least a 36x scope. Remember the less power of magnification the more aiming error you have simply because you cannot see the same amount of aiming error that you can with the higher power scopes. This is target shooting 101.
Here is the target you use.
http://www.nationaltarget.com/product_info.php/ibs-100-p-164
Have you figured out what decade it is yet? I mean, you’ve claimed that you’ve been a “competitive shooter” for well on 70 years now.
Everything you say is lies. You’re completely full of shit.
to JACK ASS TAYLOR
quote——————–Have you figured out what decade it is yet? I mean, you’ve claimed that you’ve been a “competitive shooter” for well on 70 years now.
Everything you say is lies. You’re completely full of shit.—————quote———————–
READING COMPREHENSION JETHRO, READING COMPREHENSION. I sometime wonder if you Hill Jacks ever went to school. Anyone who is reasonably well educated would have understood that the figure 70 I gave is my age not how long I have been shooting but it is close as I was 12 when I got my first Daisy BB gun. If you were born back when I was you would not be making such idiotic statements about how long people of my generation were engaged in the shooting sports. So since you also cannot do math I will make this a simple as I can. I have been at this game of shooting for 58 years. Please let me know if you still cannot fathom any of this.
“Anyone who is reasonably well educated would have understood that the figure 70 I gave is my age”
You can never keep your lies straight, can you? Read you post again, you never said you were 70, and you never said 70 years. I did. That was my number.
Because in previous posts you said you’ve been competitively shooting since the 50s, and you still are today. What amazing longevity!
Oh, but you screwed it all up again. If you are 70, you were born in 1948, but now you say you didn’t get your first “gun” and a BB gun at that, until you were 12, in 1960. But wait, you were competing in the 50s?
How’s that for math? But you’re just lies never add up. You are a child.
Why in the world would I throw out a barrel that is shooting .75″ groups with ordinary factory ammo??? (scratching balding head) Reading this review, I learned that this rifle is totally and reliably able to shoot “minute of groundhog” all day long at ranges further than I can see a groundhog. And I get this kind of accuracy for under 6 Franklins?? with a stock that I can adjust to fit either 6′-3″ me or my 5′-0″ wife??? Seems rather wasteful and foolish to throw out any part of that.
Am I following a new gun site, TTAC, The Truth about Creedmoor? You guys are hilarious! I do wish all the best for the rifle company Savage however, I hope that any more “investment firm” types leave them alone. Those deals just never work out well in the end as we’ve witnessed time and time again.
I guess since they say chambered for .223 Remington they wouldn’t recommend firing plain ol’ 5.56 ball.
Unless I missed it, they don’t say what the twist of the barrel is.
I had to go back to find it. article says 1:9 twist.
I recently purchased this exact same gun, in .223 Remington. I’m writing this for the benefit of those looking to research this gun but who are not finding all the information they want on this gun online.
To preface, buy this gun. I can’t think of a scenario in which you would be sorry. I also can’t envision a better value for the money, which makes this gun a guilt-free purchase. If you’re buying this gun, you’re probably wanting it for varminting purposes or as a low-cost trainer that won’t burn up barrels on your match rifle. It accomplishes both of these things extremely well.
In .223, you are burning around 25ish grains of powder instead of 40ish grains on larger short-action calibers. .223 bullets are also much cheaper than the 6mm/6.5mm calibers most comp rifles are chambered in. Barrel life for a .223 is also much longer than those more overbore calibers. In other words, even as inexpensive as this gun is, it provides a lot, and you can shoot it a lot.
I got lucky on mine. At the time of purchase, Savage was offering a 10% rebate on the gun. Net cost to me w/ transfer fees was $550, brand new. Outstanding.
The first thing I noticed out of the box is just how damn rigid this gun is. Other Savages that I’ve owned in centerfire calibers have had cheap feeling stocks on them. Often the stocks ended up in the garbage and the guns ended up in aftermarket stocks or chassis systems. The involves an additional expense of $300 – $400 to get one of Savage’s good quality barreled action where it needs to be. Most people understand that they’re paying for the action and don’t care, but on a low cost varminter or trainer, it would be nice to have the damn cake and eat it too.
Pleasantly, ditching the stock is entirely unnecessary and wasteful. The Accufit stock is ugly, but it is the real deal and the adjust-ability is good. Ergos are good and features are good. The aluminum block is very rigid, cradles the action well, and has a milled slot for the recoil lug. It is full length, and even with a bipod, there is NO flex at all in this gun, even on the fore end. The barreled action does not move at all, and on a sub – $600 dollar gun, this is phenomenal. I don’t know how Savage is making money on these guns.
The trigger is well known already and the action is very smooth and slides well inside the raceways of the action without binding or gritiness. The barrel is carbon steel rather than stainless, so expect a really long barrel life once your break-in procedure is done. The barrel is also heavy, and takes a lot to heat up. At 26 inches, even with a 1 in 9 twist, it stabilized the 77 gr. SMK and TMK just fine. Additionally, since the magazine is a little longer than AR mags, I found that I can seat bullets beyond AR magazine length, load these rounds a tad hotter, and with a slow burning powder for heavier .223 bullets, let the barrel length do the work. My chrono showed 77 gr. matchkings leaving the muzzle at a hair over 3,000 FPS. That is SCREAMING. No pressure signs were evident, though I’m probably approaching or at a max load.
This gun weighs quite a bit. Savage made no effort to save weight on this gun. The mag it ships with has a steel floor plate. The bottom metal and mag well are steel. Even the damn trigger guard is steel. With optics, this gun weighs over 10 pounds, which means that shooting this gun is like shooting a .22 mag at worst. It recoils less than a 6mm with a brake.
Precision work was great. I’m not going to qualify that statement by saying “for the money”. It was forgiving with a lot of different powders and ammo types. My 77gr. match load grouped at .628, .517, .658, .715, and .348 at 100 yards. I was not expecting that with 5 shot groups out of a 1 in 9 twist.
My varminting load (55 gr. Nosler BT on top of 24.5 gr. of H335) grouped a tad worse, but at a still respectable average of .648 across five 5-shot groups.
It’s possible that I got lucky start to finish with this gun. I got a good discount on it, and maybe the machine operators at Savage had a good day, had freshly tooled the machines, and so tolerances were better on mine than maybe on other. Maybe the assembly guys had a good weekend and were on top of things, and maybe I bought a rifle after the marketing department realized that they needed to step things up to remain competitive with the amazing work being done by other bolt action manufacturers. However, I cannot think of a reasonable complaint about this rifle.
thanks for your thorough review. i’m sure many readers will find it useful.
i have also purchased the same rifle and have had very good results even after months of shooting it.
i bought one of these rifles in august 2018 on the strength of this review.
i did not like the mag and replaced it with a sharp shooter supply fred sled as i prefer to single load anyway. i used burris mounts and med. zee rings to mount a weaver t 36 that sits about a 1/4 inch off the barrel.
my set up is a caldwell rock and rear bag. i do not compete and i’m just a casual shooter who likes to get to the range at least twice a week.
after the usual trial and error i have settled on the 52 gr. smk hpbt on top of 22.5 gr. of aa 2015. after shooting over 50 5 round groups at 100 yards my average is just under 1/2 inch and just under 1 inch at 200 yards. i thought this was odd for a 9 twist but the 52 smk’s are an affordable bullet anyway.
i am very satisfied with these results for a $600 factory rifle with no modifications.
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I sternly disagree with you saying this should have a threaded barrel. You also knock it for not being a good- looking gun ? This is gun is not intended to be “pretty” but it looks very good, and even better outfitted with everything and ready to go shooting. And your idea of accuracy is a joke; you got .7 MOA out of a factory load out of VERY few types you tested and you question this gun’s accuracy ? Did you forget the price of this gun ? I really enjoyed your article until you contradicted yourself at the end with your reasons for a 4 star rating.
Bill Crowley, I was thinking the same, and you said it all for me, thanks. I have one and like the look of it and have no use for a threaded barrel. For what this rifle is intended for I would give it a 5 out of 5 star rating. Just picked up a 16-42 scope so going to exchange the 4-12x 50 and put the 4-12×50 on my Savage 93 FVSS 22 WMR along with a Boyd pro varmint stock as the F stock that the 93 comes with is not that great, have that stock on the Savage Mark II TR and fits me to a T. But I do like the stock that comes on the Savage 110 varmint .223. Looks like I will be mostly bench shooting it as have a problem with my right arm and holding it to free hand shoot is a bit of a problem now, but was fun when I fist got it.
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