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It was at this point I numbered each of the three replacement magazines and started logging each jam and empty chamber to see if it was one particular magazine or if it occurred with all three. Over the course of the next two range trips and 420 rounds of ammunition I experienced 11 jams and 85 empty chambers. The latter seems high, but many of those occurred while shooting 100 rounds of the older, lower pressure ammo and not the new A17 ammo from CCI. Each of the three replacement magazines had a proportionate amount of failures attributed to it so I can only surmise that it’s a design or production tolerance issue that needs remedied.
It was on this second range trip that I ran some older ammunition through the A17 to see if it would function properly with the lower pressure rounds. The ammunition I used was CCI 17gr Speer TNT and Hornady 17gr. V-Max. In both instances I had varied results, but the CCI TNT loads were definitely more problematic. In most cases the bolt would cycle enough to re-cock the hammer but failed to pick up a new round, but there were also 11 instances where the bolt didn’t cycle enough to reset the hammer resulting in an empty chamber and a dead trigger.
One oddity I can’t explain is that both the CCI TNT and Hornady V-Max ammunition printed about an inch higher on the target than the A17 ammo even though the A17 ammunition is faster and I was using the same aiming point on the targets for all the groups.
Range day two concluded with my having fired approximately 270 rounds. Twenty 10-shot groups shot at 50 yards netted an aggregate group size of 1.149 inches, and the seven 10-shot groups shot at 100 yards resulted in an aggregate of 2.406”. Best 50 yard group was 0.915” and the best 100 yard group came in at 1.964”. There were 67 total failures (25% of total rounds fired) with eight being jams and 59 being empty chambers.
Since I wasn’t testing various types of ammunition on this day I was able to get a good feel for how many rounds of the CCI A17 ammunition one could fire before the barrel would get so hot as to affect accuracy, and how many rounds could be fired in total before accuracy started to taper off indicating the need for a cleaning. As you can likely tell from some of my Day 3 targets below, the third consecutive 10-round group would open up considerably due to barrel heat, so if you’re chasing accuracy I would recommend letting your barrel thoroughly cool after every 20 rounds. As the targets also indicate, the groups really started opening up after fifty rounds – a likely indication the bore was ready for another cleaning.
Conclusions
As I’m sure you can guess by the accounts above my experience with the Savage A17 thus far hasn’t been entirely positive. Aside from the previously mentioned issue with the supplied scope and the multitude of magazine/feeding issues there are two other things that I feel should be mentioned.
First, the spring tension on the AccuTrigger blade on this rifle was noticeably heavy, far heavier than any other AccuTrigger I have used in the past. I don’t know if that’s indicative of this particular trigger design or if it’s just an abnormality with this particular rifle, but it made for a very gritty feeling trigger. The trigger also exhibited a fair amount of creep and a hint of over travel, and adjusting it seemed to make little if any difference in the pull weight.
Second, the synthetic stock has some issues. For starters, the raised textured panels on the forearm make it difficult to shoot off a front rest as they tend to act like boot lugs grabbing onto the bag rather than letting the rifle move freely. This isn’t an issue if you’re shooting off-hand or with a bipod, so just know beforehand that it’s not bag friendly. Additionally, there is a LOT of flex in the stock. When setup on a bipod I can pinch the heel of the butt stock between my thumb and index finger and with minimal pressure side to side I can cause the barrel to move back and forth nearly 1/8th of an inch at the tip of the forearm. Thus my comments regarding to having to constantly fight the stock; when a stock can be flexed so easily you're never going to get consistent accuracy from it.
Despite all that, the A17 really acts like it wants to shoot. I would suspect that with a rigid stock, a better trigger, a higher magnification scope, and shooting from a quality front rest and rear bag this rifle would have consistently shot much better groups. You can see glimpses of the accuracy potential in the groups below, but when you have to constantly fight the stock it’s near impossible to maintain consistency from shot to shot – especially when shooting 10-shot groups.
Even so, the most accurate rifle in the world is all but useless if it’s not reliable and with 128 failures in the course of 480 rounds (27% failure rate) the A17 is not a rifle I could confidently recommend to a friend. With a little time I’m sure Savage will get the bugs sorted out as it’s a solid platform with a very good design that offers easy maintenance. For now though I would recommend taking a wait and see approach with the A17 as it’s just not quite ready for Prime Time.
Additional Photos:
Contact Information
Savage Arms
100 Springdale Road
Westfield, MA 01085
www.SavageArms.com
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