Yes, that's exactly what they are supposed to do....every time. Unfortunately that has not been my experience with the 700, as previously stated. Lacking a safety that locks the firing pin, as opposed to one that only blocks the sear, I will not consider purchasing any rifle that does not at least have a 3 position safety. While the Savage does not lock the firing pin, it does sport a 3 position safety and I have never heard of one going off when safety was released.
I have only witnessed one extractor failure in a 700 based target rifle and it had several thousand rounds through it before it failed (over 5000 comes to mind). I think this Mod. 700 "defect" is a bit over stated. Having said that, one of my my mod. 70 target rifles has in excess of 15,000 rounds through it and the other one has over 10,000 through it; other than barrels, no parts have been replaced on either rifle to date.
As far as reliability of Savage rifles, have hunted two different Savage rifles hard for the past 3-4 years (I hunted 156 days and about 30 nights this year) and, unless you count leaving my FP10 bolt on the bench after dry patching it
, had zero problems with feeding, safety, parts breakage, etc., and accuracy has been outstanding on both. Both feeding and accuracy suffered with the bolt at home, however
. Admittedly, the round count is not nearly as high on my Savage hunting rifles as with the target rifles, but I would guess much more than average.Regards,
hps
