I want an accurate plinker and good intermediate range varmint gun at a reasonable price. Looked at the savage tactical yesterday and have a favorable impression. Lookin to you all for suggestions. As long as It will shoot one inch groups or better with a good load, I'm interested.

Thanks yall

:D

Yup should work for you and the new accu-triggers are pretty good. I shoot a ruger #1 B in 243 for varmits, It's a one inch gun. My son shoots a Remington 700 VLS heavy bbl. and it's an under 1 inch gun at a hundred yards. Both of those come in 223, but are more pricy than the Savages. Nothing wrong with the Savages except they is just so ugly. If you get one you can always put a sack over your head when shooting in mixed company.

you might look at the new 204 Ruger cartridge, it gives you the cost of shooting the 223, but trejectories simular to the 22-250 and good barrel life. Savage makes those also.

There are several new varmiters coming on the market that are using lighter barrels, more designed for the walk around hunter and yote hunter. It all depends upon the type of shooting you do.

Heavy barrel varmiters tend to be a little more accurate and larger barrels heat up slower than thinner ones. It makes a difference if your shooting in the squirrel fields or just popping a rock chuck or a yote once in a while.

As important as the gun and sometimes more expensive is good optics to go with it. There are lots of opinions on that here on the forum. Personally I shoot a Simmons ATEC and like it. I really don't feel you have to spend more than the cost of the gun to get good usable optics.

My vote would go for a CZ427. I have got the older version Fox2, and I am very satisfied with shootability and accuracy. Being an average shooter my self, I find five shots grouping in 3/4"@100yds good enough. Some good features of these rifles are mauser extractor, set trigger and a very reliable safety.

Regards,

O.S.

If my friend had not found the deal on that used Ruger M77M2VT, I would have probably bought a CZ. I haven't shot one, but they feel really nice and aren't at all ugly.

amndouglas

Now a 788 Remington is ugly!!

I'd go with the Savage. I've heard alotta good about them and the accutrigger. If'n my 788 ever wears out I'm gonna look at one of them.

Now a 788 Remington is ugly!!

I'd go with the Savage. I've heard alotta good about them and the accutrigger. If'n my 788 ever wears out I'm gonna look at one of them.

I suppose you're right. Those Savages must look like Miss America next to your 788 :)

amndouglas

Savage 11GL. .223 is as deadly on prairie dogs at 240m. Scope it with a Sightron or Nikon, and yer set. ( I never count the hits, just the misses. When I miss 3 times, I go home) Last weekend I shot 72 prairie dogs....got fatigued....missed 3.....went home.....counted my remaining ammo. Yup....72. Try that with a Remthing. Good luck.

My Remthing 788 STILL shoots better than I can hold it. :p

I don't shoot alot of prairie dogs but I do shoot alot of ground squirrels. They are about 1/4 the size of a dog and four times harder to hit at 240 mtrs. If it was all hitting our heads wouldn't fit in our hats now would they!! :rolleyes:

I'd still go with the Savage. :)

My best load for my ugly "Remthing" 788.

I don't know if a Tikka fits your definition of reasonable price, but they claim their guns must shoot a 1" 3-shot group before they ship them. I own a tikka .223 and it is the most accurate out of the box factory gun I have ever seen - shoots much better than 1" for 5 shots. I also had an old ugly 788 223 that really shot good - it was my first real varmint gun.

I have a 12fvss in 22.250 and I love the gun. It shoots moa groups with factory ammo. I would recomend the Savage.

Woulda bought a savage had I not found the 788 on consignment. The nice thing about savages is they have the 1:9 (8?) twist to shoot heavy bullets with

Good for you JB, another convert :D

What did you have to give for it if you don't mind me asking? I gave $165 for mine back in 78. I picked up another one in triple duece here a couple years ago for $150 and didn't think I got hurt. :D It's a shooter too.

For what ever reason mine likes heavy bullets. It doesn't really care for any thing less than 55 grainers. :confused:

I bought a winchester M70 .223 about a year ago , and never looked back . Tedhttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v694/SQSHOOTER/000_0117.jpg

I paid 500 for min, but it was rebarreled with a douglas XX barrel and it was tricked out fairly well, I made a new stock for it with a forend that fit my front rest bag and a nice full palm swell and a raised cheekpiece

jb

Mine's the original 24" semi bull barrel. I don't know what I'm gonna do if it ever wears out :( For what ever reason :confused: it really likes 55 grain Wimpchester :rolleyes: bullets :D

The triple duece shoots almost as good. I've only used 50 grain Hornady SX's in it so far. I'm gonna try some 50 grain ballistic tips or some blitzes I think.

What kind of bullets do you shoot?

tdb I'd try some Benchmark for grins (see photo of group). It sure helped out my poor ole wore out Remthing :D :D

I have been feeding it 50 grain nosler bt's but that is becoming a hard habit to maintiain so I am going to give the v-max's a shot, did a small test with them once and they did all right, got a box of 250 for 28 bucks from Midsouth. i have been burning benchmark out of it, since I have my digital dispenser now, I will probably try some IMR 3031 as well, maybe a little varget, don't expect to change from benchmark but I gotta experiment, keeps life interesting

I had another 788 in 222 for awhile (I had to pawn it when we moved back to MT from NE) that I started out on IMR 3031. It was very accurate for a long time but I found out later that the 3031 was erroding the throat very baddly. You will find that 3031 is probably very accurate but I'd stay away from it. I used some IMR 4198 in my .223 and found it to be very accurate too. But then a shooting buddy turned me on to H335 and I went thru 2 and 1/2 8 pounders of that. When I started to get some bad primer flow on realy hot days, I switched to Benchmark about 1 and 1/2 years ago in both the .223 and .222.

I loaded Varget in a 700 VLS 22-250 I had (had to sell it to get the 300 RUM) and was very impressed with that load. I haven't tried it in the .223 yet. As I recall you can get a compressed load with it and 50 grainers in a 223.

Oh yeah, you can definitely get compressed loads with Varget in the 223. I've found that a light compression, just enough that you don't hear the powder shift when you shake it, seems to work the best. But I'm not nearly done experimenting yet.

Between testing the 40's with Benchmark and the 55's with Varget, I noticed that I couldn't reassemble the barreled action to the stock according to the manual directions. If I tightened the forward screw that pulled the barrel into the bedding block, I couldn't close the floorplate on the magazine. I filed the cover down a bit, and got the thing put together correctly.

I had one group of 40's over Benchmark left, and when I shot them, I didn't think they were very spectacular (5-shots .816") next to the 55 gr Varget loads that were averaging .6" 5 shot groups. Well, when I got home and compared the data, that group was nearly half the size of the other Benchmark loads shot prior to me filing down the floorplate.

Here I was looking into recrowning the barrel and worried about the length of the throat in the rifle, when the main problem seems to have been a little extra metal on the floorplate. When I get some more free time, I guess I'll find out if that made as big of a difference as I think it did.

amndouglas

I would recommend the Savage. The performance and acuracy is great, and the most of them so far is or close to .5 moa right out of the box. I have 2 of them in 308 and wouldnt trade or sell them for any.
Good Luck on your choice

I want an accurate plinker and good intermediate range varmint gun at a reasonable price. Looked at the savage tactical yesterday and have a favorable impression. Lookin to you all for suggestions. As long as It will shoot one inch groups or better with a good load, I'm interested.

Thanks yall

:D
I have had four different 223's and all shot under an inch. I think its a safe assumption that the cartridge itself is what makes it accurate. Its just well designed. My new favorite is the CZ, but I've had the Rem 700, Win 70, H&R, and Rem 788. All shot well. You can't go wrong with that round.

Try this, instead of looking for new guns, hit the gun shows hard. Down here, we have three different shows in the fall. I've found that I usually pay much less, especially on Sunday afternoon when they all want to leave.

I would go with the Winchester .223http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v694/SQSHOOTER/000_0115.jpg

Good Job fellows.
I have and use the Savage rifles, they are moa right out the box on the biggest majority of the varmint models with factory ammo.
I love mine.