Gun Review: Savage Long Range Precision Varminter Rifle

Last year my brother in law accompanied me on two prairie dog hunts, his first ever. He borrowed my bolt action Stevens 221 Fireball and my son’s bolt action Stevens 223 Remington; he also shot my son-in-law’s Remington 700 in 204 Ruger. He enjoyed the hunts so much he decided to buy his own pd gun. He ended up w/ a Savage Model 12 Long Range Precision Varminter in 204 Ruger. One of his main objectives was to have a gun w/ minimal recoil so he could see where his shots were hitting.

This gun is a bench gun as it weighs 12# unscoped. The action and barrel are stainless steel. The stock has a wide forend. The action is unique in two ways: First, it is single shot; second, while it has the usual right hand bolt, the loading port is on the left (as is the ejection). It was the first time for me to shoot such an action, but it makes sense for a varmint gun. The barrel is 26” long, fluted and has a 1” diameter at the muzzle. It has the usual Accu-trigger that was set at the factory to break at ½#! He bought the gun at Spotted Dog Sporting Goods in Columbia, La. They set it up very nicely w/ a Harris bipod, Leupoled rings/base and a Leupold 6.5-20X scope w/ the Varmint Hunter reticle. After cleaning the bore, I took it on a shoot.

Using Hornady factory ammo w/ 32 gr V-Max bullets, the gun shot very well. The first shot was on the paper at 100 yards. Shots 3-5 were barely off the bullseye in a 0.67” group. Recoil was minimal. The scope was a very nice and is the best I've ever shot. The trigger was just to light for me so I later adjusted it to break at 2#. I’ve since shot it two more times. At 100 yards avg 3 shot groups are not much bigger than ½”. I even shot it using the ballistic reticle. As you can see in the pic, it was very accurate. I only shot 2 rounds at each distance (100, 200 and 300 yards) as I inadvertently brought a box that had only 6 rounds. Holding second horizontal reticle dead on the target at 300 yards, the 2 rounds were right on elevation wise, although a little to the right.

This gun is a real shooter using factory ammo. The scope is really nice. I told my brother-in-law I’d load some ammo for him after he’s shot all the factory ammo. I kinda wish I hadn’t said that as I’m going to have a hard time duplicating the accuracy of his factory loads. His pd hunting gun gets two thumbs up from me. I’m looking forward to taking it on a pd hunt this year.

Left hand port

First 5 shots.

2 shot groups at 100, 200 and 300 yds. Instead of describing the reticle, I crudely drew it. The red arrow shows the aiming point used for each group.