On a Savage (or most any other rifle) the scope mount holes drilled in the receiver will not be perfectly aligned with the axis of the receiver. Also, the axis of the barrel and the axis of the receiver may not be perfectly aligned. This means that the line of sight (looking through the scope) and the axis of the receiver are probably not exactly parallel when looking down at the rifle. If we had a perfectly accurate rifle we could see that the bullet will actually cross from left to right (or right to left) as distance increases. The term for this is parallax. Sighting in a rifle at longer distances will minimize this error. However, in practical terms this is an extremely minor error that will not be a factor if you sight in at longer distances. If you tried to sight in at 25 yards only then the error could be large.

Keeping a scope near the optical center is beneficial for other reasons than the parallax issue discussed above. Scopes tend to track better near the optical center of the adjustments. That is why the offset rings or angled scope bases (example 20 MOA) scope bases are popular.

Happy shooting!

Keith