I have a Savage 93R17BTVS.
The Pros:
1. It's beautiful. The laminated stock is a real eye-catcher.
2. It's accurate. It shoots groups like this at 100 yards with ease. (The dot is 3/4")
3. The trigger. It has the best trigger of any rifle I have ever fired. There's a little tool that can adjust the trigger, and I screwed it all the way to it's lightest setting before I ever fired it and haven't moved it since. It has a safety gizmo made in to it a little like a Glock pistol and That's cool because this is one super light, crisp trigger. I love it!
4. It was cheap. It's been a while, but I remember buying it brand new for under 400 bucks.
5. It's been reliable. No breakage and no issues. (Other than mentioned below)
The Cons:
Yeah. The only thing I can say about that is The Magazine Mount.
There is a piece of sheet metal bent into an "L" shape, attached to the bottom of the barrel by one screw.
The magazine has a little channel made into it at the rear, and this little channel slides over that bent piece of sheet metal as a guide to hold the magazine in position.
In theory, it's supposed to have the magazine in just the right position to allow the bolt to strip rounds off and feed them into the chamber.
If you stop and think about it for a second, An AR-15 has a large square receptical made into the lower receiver that does the same job. It's made of forged aluminum, and the magazine is rock solid when it's snapped into place.
Not so with the little Savage.
The "L" shaped piece of sheet metal can bend and flex pretty easily, and allows the bottom of the magazine to move front to rear. When this happens, the top of the magazine tilts up and down and causes the new round to miss the chamber when the bolt is pushed closed.
It can be frustrating.
I have learned that taking my left hand off the front of the stock and grasping the magazine and stock from the bottom to support it while I work the bolt can result in perfect feeding, so that's what I do.
But my rifle is pretty much a range toy, and is only fired from sand bags.
If I was walking around with the rifle, hunting, this would be a problem.
It seems that operating the bolt slowly and gently is fairly reliable, but trying to rapidly reload after a miss (Yeah, it's possible to miss, but it's unlikely) pushes forward on the mag, tilting it down, and the new round noses into the barrel below the chamber. And then your squirrel or whatever runs away.
Whatever. I don't hunt with it.
And they may have improved on this design. My rifle was bought in maybe 2005, when the HMR was a fairly new thing. They have had lots of time since then to work it out.
Would I buy another of these if this one disappeared?
YOU BET!
The little hassle of dealing with the magazine is merely that. It's a small hassle. I have learned how to make it work for me and I can shoot it all afternoon without a hitch.
This rifle is a flat shooting joy, and it makes me look like I know what I'm doing. I can put my crosshairs on the center of a golf ball anywhere from 25 to 125 yards, and pull that awesome trigger- and get a solid hit.
No holdover or guessing required.
All my buddies hate the thing, because none of them has been able to out shoot it.
It doesn't kick, so it's possible to watch the bullet impact through the scope. I can't even begin to describe how cool that is.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm going to give the rifle a solid 9 1/2. Buy one. You won't regret it.
