Good afternoon everyone, I hope you are enjoying your day off today I'm a first time Savage owner, and a few weeks ago I chased down a Savage Axis XP in .308 for a great deal (I LOVE price matching on firearms!), plus my mail in rebate of $50 I couldn't pass it up. All in all, I am into it for 230. I have owned many firearms and will always hang onto a select few - G-pas Model 70 in .264 WinMag (shoots like a laser), his revolver in 22mag, Dads S&W 5904 (my EDC now), and the first AR I build from an 80 (all things the same, ARs are Legos compared to bolt guns)..

My original intentions were for this to be a cheap & light woods gun (.264 weighs a ton after a few miles), and I am sure it will do fine for those intentions. However, as I am new to .308, the more I read about the ballistics, the more I want to get the most distance out of this rifle I can..

I started thinking, I am less than 250 into it so far, so I started looking at stocks/ triggers/ trigger mods and found an unfired Savage Small Shank Varmint Barrel in .308 with a 1:10 twist for less than 200 bucks! Got me to thinking, what could this rifle really do, on a budget, and without a chassis.. I'm still not sure what I want to do with it in the long run, but whatever I do, I will be sure to create & keep an updated thread