Hello gents, first post here. I have a Savage 111 in .243 that I just picked up for my son, the rifle doesn't appear to have been fired much, is super clean and topped with a Leupold 3-9x40 scope....perfect or my 11yr old son!

We brought it to the range after his birthday this past Sunday, and I took the lead on sighting it in (I have numerous other rifles I was sighting in as well on the lead sled). All went normal with loading the rifle, cycling the round in and actually firing, but good GRIEF it was hard to extract the spent casing. Thinking it was a fluke I repeated this 4 more times until the rifle was zero'd at 100yds. Each round was a beast to extract, bolt will rotate / lift and square up, but took alot of umph to pull the bolt rear ward (Im 6'3" 220lbs....Im no weakling)

Once the bolt is moving, it extracts and flings the cartridge just as it should without any damage to the base of the spent cartridge, thus rules out weak extractor. Looking at the casings, there is some minor scratching, and a small black ring around the tip of the spent casing. We were shooting Remington Core lok ammo, as that was the only thing we could find locally. Needless to say, the last round (6th shot, 3rd by my son) stuck so bad we had to bring the gun home from the range and tap the bolt with a hammer to get the casing out.

Has anyone ever seen this or experienced this? Perhaps I have a burr in the action? Is the barrel set too tight and the casing expanding into the throat? Perhaps a good polish of the action?


Gun shoots wonderfully, but just cant get the spent casings out.