Struggling with a new Savage.

[IUOE]

I've cleaned it on average about every 2 boxes or 40 shots. Do you think I should clean it more often? I've been cleaning it with Hoppe's #9, is that a decent choice?

[fgw_in_fla]

I've cleaned it on average about every 2 boxes or 40 shots. Do you think I should clean it more often? I've been cleaning it with Hoppe's #9, is that a decent choice?

I've found most, if not all of the sporter barrels I used in the past like a little "foul" in them. 4 to 8 rounds to leave a little copper behind seems to settle them down. I did have .270 sporter that liked a dozen rounds to settle down.
As far as Hoppes.....
Swab the barrel with a generous amount of the stuff & let it sit for 10 - 15 minutes before you clean patch it. You'll find the longer if sits in the barrel, the prettier blue the patches will come out.
I use hopes to remove carbon first, then Sweet's to de-copper the barrel, then a last application of Hoppe's to dilute the Sweet's.
I like my barrels shiny clean. 2 of them shoot best when clean.

[bodywerks]

I think it is fair to say that most Savage rifles will shoot under 2" @ 100 yards without match ammo. This includes factory sporter weight barrels. I have a sporter weight 22-250 Stevens 200 that is nearly as accurate with hunting ammo as my 223 VLP with match ammo. Both shoot well under an inch. The key difference is the amount of shots I can get downrange without having an impact on accuracy. Obviously the lightweight barrel and the increase powder of the 22-250 heats the tube up a fair bit quicker than a varmint contour 223. I'm sure his rifle can produce tighter groups than what he has been experiencing, certainly closer to 1" than 2".

On another note, most Savage barrels, according to others on here and my own experience, tend to shoot better as they get dirtier. How often are you cleaning the barrel?

Every 308 savage I've owned (3) wouldn't shoot worth a darn with anything but match ammo, and even then it was finicky. Non match bulk ammo was typically only good for 2.5-3.5MOA(pmc/Winchester/m118 NATO). Match, good stuff, was all sub MOA. Only my handloads, tuned to the specific rifle, were good for half MOA, sometimes better.
My 223 rifles, both of them, were easily sub 2 MOA, many bulk ammo options were around 1 MOA.
As you start to push heavier, larger pills faster it seems to be more difficult to just throw some ammo together and make it shoot well. My experience at least...

[IUOE]

Well it appears that the rifle indeed will shoot, just not any of the factory ammo I've put down the barrel. After randomly picking some hand-loads to try and only getting mixed results I decided to give this load ladder thing a try. My load of choice would be a 200 gr Accubond bullet over a load of H-1000 starting at 72.0 gr and adding .25 gr until i reached 77.0 gr (listed max). Long story short I held 5 shot, sub 1" group between 75.25 and 76.5 and now I'm stoked! And the bonus is that in the process that started with simply finding an adequate hunting rifle, this whole process has evolved into a new and very enjoyable hobby with many new ideas/tests/purchases yet to come. My wife on the other hand is not so thrilled that I've found another "addiction" to add to my already out of control archery hobby. I'm blaming it on all of you LOL. Thanks everyone for all your info to keep me steered in the right direction

[Joe L]

IUOE--Excellent! Glad you got to experiment enough to find the right match of ammo for the rifle. I'm lucky that my stock rifle shoots several brands of factory ammo well. Good luck with your new hobby.

Joe

[stangfish]

Willing to bet that the more you shoot the better your trigger skills get.