Things have changed over the years. Years ago we would read in Shooting Times, Guns and Ammo and think what these gun writers wrote was gospel. Today people have their own chronographs, some on here Lab Radar, our ballistic programs on our phones, and we can't be bs'ed like we were years ago. Look at the 264 Win Mag for example. They advertised beyond 3200 fps for reloaders. The manuals told us that. Today with a 26 inch barrel we struggle to get beyond 3000 fps. The best powder and hottest load I have tested was 3129 fps with a 140 Berger VLD.
The gun writers of yesterday touted fast and flat. The 25/06 was their honey for long range out to 400 yards. Today many people have tactical scopes on top of old Betsy, and expect her to do 1000 yards. People with ballistics programs fell back to long, sleek, heavy projectiles and it took a few years for gun manufacturers to catch on and start turning out rifles with faster rifling twist. Remington still has not caught on to that. That's one problem and the other problem is they are trying to attract those want cheap guns. They think profit comes in the margin between cost of manufacturing and price on the shelf. Others produced better products and pushed their prices up.
The only thing I have against Savage is more often than not you can see milling marks in the bore. Sometimes so bad that pushing a brush down sounds like your doing your jacket zipper. Send them back. However, with the floating head Savage rifles are often still tack drivers because the head self aligns with the bore. They and Ruger started producing what they called platforms rather than stocks. This also increased the accuracy of their run of the mill barrels. I would like to throw my custom barreled Savage action 6.5 Creedmoor into my Savage 10 BA Stealth platform, but I had the throat cut so long the cartridge will not fit in the magazine. Darn. New barrel?
Edit: Ooop sorry the proper terminology is not platform it's chassis. Like the Ruger Precision and the Savage 10 BA Stealth. I see Winchester now has one also. Remington? Nope.
Speaking of Winchester do you remember their thermal bedding? It was nothing but a form of hot glue.
