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In early March I bought a Savage B17 BNS-SR .17 HMR for a planned p-dog trip to southern Oregon and was truly excited as it was going to be a first time experience for me. I paired it with a Sig Buckmasters 3-12x44 which appeared to be a great entry-level scope. Anyway, I took it out to the range to sight it in and had trouble getting a satisfactory group. At first I thought it must have just been me being a lousy shot, but no matter how hard I concentrated on my technique I just could seem to hit a decent group (3-4" at 100 yards). Fast forward to my 4th range day, a second scope with parallax adjustment (Burris Fullfield 4.5-14x42), different ammo, different shooters and I came to the conclusion there wasn't much else we could rule out other than the gun itself was not performing. And yes, all the scope, mount, action and stock screws were tightened properly. And no, I didn't nick the barrel crown. Here's an image of one of the range days (100 yards). The Savage targets are lower left, upper right and lower right. The upper left was my Remington 700.
The trip to Oregon came and went without me being able to use the Savage. Instead I had to fall back to my 1990 Marlin 60 .22 with a wonderful, cheap, Monstrum 2-7x32, my Remington 700 heavy barrel tactical in .223 with a 4-16 Mueller, and finally my M-Forgery with a Primary Arms SLX 1-6x24. After I got back from the trip I called up Savage, telling them what I had experienced and they provided me a shipping label and told me to send it in for a look, which I did on April 18. They received the gun on Thursday, April 27. And then I waited. And waited. Finally, after a month, I called them on June 30 and they told me that although a visual inspection didn't reveal anything unusual, they had sent it to their test range and in fact the gun was spraying bullets all over the target, just like I reported. They then told me that since my gun was made in Canada, they had to request a barrel from there and if they didn't have one available would have one "spun up."
For all the ramblings, here's my point: It's great that Savage is responding to product support and I'll eventually (hopefully) have a usable gun. However, the defective gun has cost me countless hours, more than 100 rounds wasted trying to sight-in, over $1,000 for the gun, optics and ammo and a gun that I couldn't use on my pd trip. The best I can expect is eventually getting my gun back and not so much as a "sorry about that" from Savage. While I appreciate the Support from Savage its still quite frustrating.
Hope that doesn't sound like too much whining. I know that life is just that way.
Yeah, you're totally right. I wasn't really trying too hard with the Rem because I already knew that gun could shoot straight. I knew if I included that photo it probably would raise some eyebrows...
