After seeing one of these 'as is, out of the box' guns beat the custom rifles at a local club, I bought my first Savage. I figured if Savage is making guns like that, it was time I found out. I did some research to find out how heavy a bullet the 12 twist could handle and read conflicting stories. Apparently some will shoot them and some won't. So, here is my load development target for the 87 g V-max. After shooting this target, there were 80 rounds on the barrel. This is the first rifle I have ever had, custom or no, that shot three groups in the ones during the first try at load development for a particular bullet, even if they were 3 shot groups. Do ya'll think it is shootin' the 87?
After trying a few other load combinations, I went back to the first load out of the rifle for the 87 V-max, which was 32.8 grains of Varget, and shot it at 200 yards. The results are attached. Groups 1 & 2 put four of five into very tiny groups (equivalent to .14" & .195" at 100 yds)! The results of all four groups is not bad at all for a factory rifle at 200 yards. It is going to the Wabash Cannonball match next Sunday.
This is in spite of observing what others have commented on regarding Savage factory barrels. It is indeed rough with tooling marks and coppers quite a bit, making it hard to clean, but you can't argue with the way it shoots! And this is right out of the box. The only thing I did to it was to lighten the torque on the rear action screw to just enough to keep it from coming loose after seeing how that screw was pulling the action over the edge of the aluminum bedding block. The front two screws I set at 30 inch/lbs.
After trying a few other load combinations, I went back to the first load out of the rifle for the 87 V-max, which was 32.8 grains of Varget, and shot it at 200 yards. The results are attached. Groups 1 & 2 put four of five into very tiny groups (equivalent to .14" & .195" at 100 yds)! The results of all four groups is not bad at all for a factory rifle at 200 yards. It is going to the Wabash Cannonball match next Sunday.
This is in spite of observing what others have commented on regarding Savage factory barrels. It is indeed rough with tooling marks and coppers quite a bit, making it hard to clean, but you can't argue with the way it shoots! And this is right out of the box. The only thing I did to it was to lighten the torque on the rear action screw to just enough to keep it from coming loose after seeing how that screw was pulling the action over the edge of the aluminum bedding block. The front two screws I set at 30 inch/lbs.