I bought this rifle for three reasons. 1) Savage has made a name for itself from the out-of-the-box accuracy that their rifles have. 2)The AccuTrigger and now the AccuStock. I had seen the AccuTrigger before and liked what I had
seen. I was eager to try the new AccuStock as it seemed like a good bedding system for the action. 3) It had gotten good reviews out of the box and I found one for about $750. This was a good deal for a good long range rifle, I thought.
Description: This rifle has a good deal of "big gun look" to it. It is under Savage's law enforcement section, so it's built with purpose in mind. It has a 26" fluted barrel on it with a muzzle brake. It's chambered in .308 Win, and has a synthetic stock on it. The old Savage stocks seemed to be flimsy, where this one is very stout due to the aluminum inlay of the Accustock. The butt end of the rifle still seems like it could use a thicker plastic to stiffen it up, however.
Being a LE model, everything on it is black, even the bolt. The bolt even has the Savage name and logo on it in bronze color. I thought this was a very neat feature. The other nice feature is the double swivel studs on the beaver tail fore end.
This rifle weighs in at just under 9 lbs (I think the spec is 8.9lbs) without anything on it. Add a good sized scope and a bipod and it may well reach 11 or 12 lbs. Personally I like my target rifles heavy, and I may look into adding weight and recoil reduction in the butt end of the stock.
As for accuracy This gun may always shoot better than I do. Here is a target from when I was sighting it in at 100 yrds. The top and right group is from some low-end 180 grain Federal. The other group is from some Federal Gold Medal Match 168 boat tail hollow points. (168 bthp is probably what I'll reload for this.) Each group is three shots. The group with the 168 grain bullets measured at under .5". I shoot this in prone on a bipod.
I must say I'm very impressed with this rifle, especially for being out-of-the-box. So don't get me wrong when I say there are two things I would fix with this rifle. 1) The previously mentioned butt end of the stock. It seems like it'd do the job, but I'd like a lot more rigidity to it. I do not, however, feel as though it might break on me, but I wouldn't want to try to fend off a bear with the back of this rifle. 2) The bolt is not as smooth as I'd like it to be. This could be just my rifle and it is not as though I'm worrying about the safety of it. When the bolt locks, it is solid. I'd just like it to work smoothly when I pull it back and put a new cartridge in it. In the big picture these two issues are minor and I could probably go my whole life without fixing them. (The problems probably won't last the summer, but I digress)
Overall I would recommend this rifle to anyone who asks about a long range rifle, not just those who want one on a budget or out-of-the-box.
-Steven Kipp
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