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The rifle we're looking at today is a left-hand variant chambered in .223 Remington. Upon receipt of the rifle the first task at hand was to remove the scope and rings and ensure the scope base screws were all properly torqued and weren't bottoming out on the barrel shank (front screw). It is essential that you take the time to do this quick and easy check on any new package rifle you buy because it is a known cause of erratic accuracy - so save yourself the headaches and some ammo by taking a few minutes to do it right at the start.
Looking over the rifle in the shop I couldn't help but notice that the Trophy Hunter's synthetic stock has a much nicer finished quality than the standard synthetic (non AccuStock) stocks used on other models. There are no sharp mold separation lines running down the centerline of the stock, the checkering is much sharper and has more lines per inch, and the checkering pattern covers more area on the forearm. It still has a lot of flex in the forend and grip areas the same as the Axis and non-Trophy Hunter 11/111 synthetic stocks, but at this price point you can't have everything.
The AccuTrigger came with the pull set at 3-lbs 1-oz. and I didn't bother to mess with it as that's plenty acceptable for a hunting rifle of this type.
At The Range:
Ammunition for the range session consisted of Hornady Steel Match 55gr FMJ and some leftover handloads I had sitting around that consist of 50gr Nosler Ballistic Tips seated over 25.8 grains of Varget with a CCI BR-4 primer. I also tried some Hornady Superformance 75gr ammo just to see if their "enhanced velocity" would allow them to stabilize in a 1-9" twist barrel but things went sideways with that experiment (literally) so I stuck with the lighter weight bullets. My shooting was done from a variety of rests - mostly because I forgot to grab my rest when I headed out the door the first day and had to resort to struggling with the ones the range has available for use.
On my first outing with the borrowed range rest made shooting a real challenge as the rest was far from stable. Of the four groups I shot before throwing in the towel, the best measured in at 0.837" with a five-group agg of 1.365". This was with the Hornady Steel Match 55gr FMJ ammo. It was "acceptable" accuracy from a factory sporter rifle shooting factory ammunition, but it wasn't anything noteworthy and I was sure it could do better off a more stable rest.
On the second outing with my rest and medium front sandbag things started to improve but the accuracy still wasn't as good as I would have liked. The medium bag was just a bit to wide for the sporter stock's forearm so it was able to move around a little more than I would have liked. The groups were much more consistent, and when they opened up it was usually my fault and not the guns. Best group of the day was a 0.611" with a six-group agg of 1.041" These groups were also shot with the Hornady Steel Match 55gr FMJ ammo.
One thing to note about the Nikon scope is that as others have commented on the forum the eye relief is a little short and eye alignment is somewhat finicky. It's not horrible by any means, but it's more noticeable than most other 3-9x optics. Again, considering the price of the package and the improvement over the previous package scopes, this is a minor nit-pick. A more notable gripe would be the turrets and the adjustment slots. They're extremely shallow making it hard to keep a quarter in the groove to make the adjustments. A nickel might work better due to it's smooth squared edge, but I didn't have a nickel so it was up to George.
The other item to note is that there's nearly no option to adjust eye-relief distance with the two-piece base mounting setup Savage uses. As such I felt like I really had to get up on the gun to get the proper eye-relief since it couldn't be moved rearward at all. Had Savage used a 1-piece picatinny-style rail like those offered by EGW then they could place the rings closer together and allow for more than 1/8" eye-relief adjustment in the mounting system. Another small nit-pick, but worth mentioning.
As for the functioning of the rifle it was darn near flawless. The only issue I had, and it only happened twice, was that the bolt failed to pick up a round from the magazine on closing. The first instance was my own fault as I didn't have the magazine fully snapped into the gun, and the second I suspect I may have short stroked the bolt but I can't say for certain.
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