Have you noticed this trend ?

As in the thread below.."is this a good price".. I visited my local gun shop this week, and bought a Savage 93F 22 mag w/accutrigger.
I was conversing with the owner and told him I have been changing over my guns (as I trade them) to Savage. My rimfires have been Marlins and I have a Savage 11G in .223..and any more centerfires will be Savage.
He was not surprised..many people are switching to Savage and his new gun racks bore out a perponderance of Savage/Stevens. he said the word is getting out that in either rimfire or centerfire...all too often, for accuracy, Savage is "best, out of the box"...and the word is really getting around.
Have any of you guys noted this trend, or is it only in my local area ?


BTW: I trade very few of my guns..I have 3 grandsons and a grandaughter...waiting in line for them ! ;) :D

Its pretty known around here with the accuracy minded. The Once a Year hunters are still all to often just looking for the cheapest thing, a lot of remington 710s and 770s. It seems around here the one gunshop we have in town (not counting Wal-Mart and other chain retailers) carries a mish-mash of whatever, but not hardly any Savages. Now there is a small shop about 20 miles from my town that I get a lot of my loading supplies and thats about all they stock is Savage and Stevens. There is a Scheels store about and hour north of me and they carry a good selection of Savage most of the time. I know going to the public range you can tell who's a shooter and who's "just a hunter" who only shoots to sight for the hunt. It seems around here that 75% of the "shooters" are using Savages. I will say that I haven't seen many used Savages for sale in a while. The few that I have seen have been traded in for a higher model of Savage.

without a doubt, savage is usually the best out of the box. although as not as "gucci" as other manufacturer's, savage usually will out shoot rifles twice their price.

i must admit though, i put my mkii against a marlin 25, using the same 4 ammos and at 50 and 100 yards, the marlin did out perform the mkii (i know, i know sacriledge on this site, but truthfull none the less) in .22lr.

i think the biggest draw now to the savage rimfires are the new TR series and all those fancy stocked "custom looking" models they have out. there is a "flavored" model to suit just about everyone's taste. - oh yeah and they do shoot well also.

TOP PRED;
Not surprising, anything can happen in an individual shoot. I had a Marlin 880SQ which I gave to my Marine grandson..he outshoots all his fellow Marines in informal .22 contests. ...But then, he is an armorer, has "worked on" his guns and was his unit's "designated sniper" in Iraq.. ;)

There have been a few RF Savge rifles that have come out that had some issues with the barrels.
The issues are being resolved and looked into. most Savage RF barrels are very good, but most can benifit from a soft lap with JB Bore shine to work the rough spots found in most Savage RF barrels.The improvement can sometimes be pretty good if you have a less than perfect barrel.

There is no doubt that Savage keeps getting more popular and will in almost all cases outshoot guns costing much more.

Around the time the Accustock came out, Savage bought all new CNC machines and the number on the tang on the CF rifles is for them to keep track of how many cuts have been cut with each cutter, when the number of cuts is reached, the cutter is changed, no more "I think it's geting dull" kind of thing.

You will find that in blueprinting a Savage action, much less metal is removed from the models with the numbers stamped under the tang that were made with the new equipment.
Savage is keeping even tighter tollerances.

The other big 3 keep getting worse in quality, and that's not counting Kimber who's CF rifles have been pretty bad lately. Their Handguns are great, but I've been seeing some real problems with actions and barrels in the Kimbers. Don't know why, but I would not buy one, the pretty seems to just be on the outside. Their RF rifles may be better, I'm talking CF rifles.

John K