I got a Savage 110 in .270 Winchester a couple of years back. It WAS a tack driver. I worked up some hand loads and truthfullly it liked everything I worked with, naturally some more than others. I was out practicing and tried some Custom Hornady 130 grain SST Interlocks. These rounds seemed HOT when I shot them. I shot a five shot group, (only five shot were fired of the Hornady rounds), went to look at the target and it looked like I had shot it with buchshot, probably a 6 inch group. Well, I figured out it did not like them, which really suprised me as it had shot all bullet weights GOOD up to that point. I went back to my bench and noticed that the grip cap was broken out of the pistol grip on the synthetic buttstock. Evidently the recoil from the Hornady rounds had broken it out because of the way I had it set in my Firestorm rest. I went back to a load I knew it liked, not thinking too much else about it, just hated my stock grip was broken out. Well, the next group looked liked like the Hornady loads, like I had used a shotgun with buckshot.
I started to try and diagnose the problem. Rings tight, scope seemed ok, I NEVER cleaned from muzzle always from breech, and I had broken the barrel in slowly.
Then I cleaned the barrel and noticed a LOT of copper fouling, seemingly from the Hornady rounds. I had never had that much fouling before. Back to the range, no luck, still really bad.
I changed scopes and rings, it helped some, but still not like it was when I first got the gun (I had been using the cheap scope that came with it, it worked good till this point??).
COULD the grip cap getting broken out upset anything? It goes up into the stock on stalk and fits into the structure of the internals.
If not, what could this be for it to go crazy all at once? It shot FINE right before the Hornady, the lousy ever since??
I have shot for years, and know my way around firearms fairly well, but this one has me stumped. And I REALLY like this rifle. Any ideas?