This is my first post here and I am a new Savage owner. I picked up an 11VT in .308 at Dicks on sale a few weeks ago and I am having a problem that I have never seen before. The first day I had the rifle I took it to the range with a box of my service rifle ammo (168 SMK over 41.5 IMR 4895) This load has always shot well in every gun I have tried it in. Maybe not the most accurate but always good. I could not hit paper at 100 yds with the Bushnell scope that was factory installed so I took it to the 50 yd target and found it hitting right 11 inches right. I zeroed the scope and moved back to 100 yds where I had to add more left windage to find center. The scope was up against the full stop and not grouping great. I went home very upset but determined.
I took off the factory scope and checked the mounts, they were very tight and centered as best I could tell. I put my trusty Leop VX3 6.5-20 on the gun and bore sighted it. I checked the stock screws and torqued them to 30 inlbs. I went back to the range and talked to the owner. He recommended I try a box of the ABM 185 gr Bergers. I had basically the same issue, the 168 shot 20" right and had the windage to almost the limits, the Bergers were shooting 13" right but they were grouping under .5 moa. 1 5 shot group was .295 one was .365 one at .467 the other 5 went to getting on target. So I was happy the gun could shoot just upset were it shot.
I ordered a new stock with a bedding block and a 20 moa rail and windage adjustable rings. I used the wait time to load some Horn 178 HPBT. Everyting came in and I put the gun in the new stock, installed the rail and the rings. I recentered my scope and headed back to the range. Nothing changed except that I used the rings to move the group back on paper so my scope would have some windage adjustment but the rings are moved to there limits. The Horn 178's are shooting right between the 168 and 185. There is some vertical stringing which is to be expected between the weights but the horizontal spread is tremedous and it is just based on bullet weight. I laddered the 178's and they only string vertically with little or no horizontal movement over a 300 fps spread. The 178's are staying consistantly at or under .75".
My big question is should I take a chance on sending this back to Savage to have the windage problem corrected at the risk of not getting a barrel that shoots this tight or is there something else that should be looked at.
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