Savage Weather Warrior .308 Win

100 yards/ 3 shots/ Winchester 150 grain PP

GET-ER-DONE” rifle in .308

If you are looking for a rifle that won’t break the family budget and will please anyone interested in nice looking, nice handling, weatherproof ACCURATE rifles, then read this article as this one will GET-ER-DONE.

I have always been a fan of the Win .308 cartridge. The .308 of course is the commercial name for the military 7.62X51mm NATO cartridge. It was introduced in 1952 as a commercial hunting round labeled the .308 Win. The two cases however are not exactly identical.

Brass is plentiful for this round if you are a handloader. The three most popular bullet weights in this caliber are the 150, 165 and 180 grain loads. It is possible to go lighter and heavier, however for the majority of hunting with this round, one of these three will serve you best. My understanding is that the most common barrel twist rate for this cartridge is 1 in 12, however the Savage Weather Warrior in .308 used for this test has a 1 in 10 twist. The 150 grain weight is an ideal whitetail load and my Savage likes the 150 grain Win PP factory loads the best. It will shoot the 165 grain and 180 grain loads with adequate big game hunting accuracy, but it does best with the 150’s. I would not even try to guess how many whitetails have fallen to the 150 grain soft point loads in both Winchester PP and Remington Core Lokt persuasion.

The subject of this article is the Savage Weather Warrior bolt action .308 w/AccuTrigger. The action of course is short. The weight is 6.5 lbs, with a magazine capacity of 4 rounds and as mentioned a twist rate of 1 in 10”. Stock is black synthetic with positive checkering and dual pillar bedding and a free floated & button rifled barrel. The ergonomics on this rifle are fantastic and combined with the light weight, make it a pleasure to tote into the woods or field.

Mine wears one of the newer Simmons Master Series 3X9X40 ProHunter models with hydra shield lens coating. I consider this scope a best buy for the working man and they can currently be found at SWFA for $99.00. Weight is 10.3 OZ, with 3.75 inches of eye relief and a field of view at 100 yards of 33-11. Features include the patented TrueZero adjustment system and a constant eye relief throughout the entire magnification range. They also feature a larger eye box for getting on target fast. Are the optics just as good as a Leupold for a lot less? NO, but they are better than you think they are and it beats buying a scope from under the counter at Wally World and putting it on your rifle. I have done a fair amount of shooting with two of these scopes on a .308 and another one on a .243. They hold their zero and the optics are a lot better than they should be for a C-note.

If you have twice that much to spend, then look at the Bushnell 3200 series 3X9X40 with rainguard and firefly. I mounted one of these on my Ruger Hawkeye .338 Federal and am very happy with it. In between those two prices I have had great luck with the Mueller 3X9X40 Red Dot scopes with 1/8 min clicks.

I previously had an older Simmons 2.5X10X44 Aetec on this rifle and used it on a deer hunt in Maine last fall. 3 out of the 5 days we hunted were in wet melting snow and pouring rain conditions. That is the primary reason I switched scopes to the Simmons with hydra shield.

Attached are photos of the rifle itself with Simmons scope and 3 targets. The first one is a 1 inch center to center group 3 shot group at 100 yards. The second one is 2 1/2” 3 shot group on the same target at 155 yards and the last one is an additional 3 shot group at 215 yards. The 215 yard group went into just under an inch.

This struck me as very strange except I had been doing a fair amount of firing in some pretty warm weather 85 degrees plus and the bbl was hot to the touch. I pulled the bolt, ran a few cleaning patches through the bore and let the rifle sit in the shade for a while to cool down before firing the last group. On the 155 yard group I was getting heat waves in the scope and the bbl was too hot to touch.

Any way you slice it all of the shots can be covered by the palm of my hand. I will go back and try some addl 3 shot groups letting the bbl cool completely between groups. I suspect it will prove this rifle is a real shooter and gets the job done with plain Jane vanilla flavored Win power points.

No Whitetail out to 250 yards will ever know the difference.

8/11/09 UPDATE - Since this article was written, I have found another load in the Federal Fusion 150 grain that also shoot right around 1-1 1/4 inches 100 yards and under 2.5 at 200 yards.

Dan 8/12/07
www.deer-hunting-information.com

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