stagpanther
New member
Some of you may have followed my trials and tribulations with a recent build I did in 350L in an AR--and that I was less than impressed with the suitability of the cartridge for an auto-loader; at least in it's present SAAMI spec incarnation and the different flavors of "mystery meat" that might be floating out there for purchase by the shooting public. Let the buyer beware remains my opinion. Not wanting to waste the investment in a thousand cases, as many bullets and dies I decided to spend $360 on a savage axis 2 in 350L. Another reason I did this is that when I received my "freshly cut" headspace gauges from ptg I had a strong suspicion there was a good reason they cut their no-go to 1.714 (as opposed to being close to the original Winchester-submitted 1.72 max SAAMI spec). In a nutshell, these dimensions keep the cartridge in an ideal seal to the chamber configuration and also will keep the the case head supported of all the different brass that I've seen so far. Just my experience and opinion, I'm sure lots of folks think I'm full of it. Won't be the first time.
This rifle conforms to ptg's tolerances.
With the new axis 2 Savage has finally done away with their notorious "Tupperware" stock which seemed to bend just by looking at it. It's basic, but gets the job done. No points for beauty--but who cares. The 18" barrel gave me pause for thought, that's giving away some potential velocity and might not live up to the "better than 30 30 and 243 win hype" that winchester continues to push. I have no idea why Savage really chose to go this route--but I have my own opinion having just returned from putting the first two magazines of cartridges through it. At the end of the day, this cartridge is not going to be a high plains 350 yd elk-dropper IMO, but in a lightweight carbine-like quick and handy configuration like this it makes a very dandy short to short/intermediate (say 50 to maybe 200 yds) heavy woods to mixed woods fields rifle suitable up to medium weight game with the right cartridge. Wild guess, but that probably captures about 75% of the non bird/varmint/big game market right there. Well played Savage.
The rifle comes with their great accutrigger and I chose to put a one-piece DNZ game reaper mount on it, which I'm quite pleased with so far. True to tradition (or maybe just laziness in standardizing on one size fits all) Savage allows for generous cartridge "oversize" in their magazine, a feature that has always endeared them to me as a hand-loader (and the fact their barrels tend to always be great shooters, no matter what the price point of the rifle is). Yes, I'm an unabashed Savage fanboy.
Unfortunately it was so cold and windy outside today (windchill not much above zero and strong gusts at my 2:00 whistling down the treeline like a wind tunnel) I only wanted to get on paper and zeroed with the scope, shooting off the hood of my truck with heavy gloves was less than ideal but I still got a group of around 2" at 110 yds--not bad considering conditions were very similar to the worst I've experienced on a winter hunt and I was using factory ammo.
About the only very minor nit I would pick is that it might be nice to have the option to put a muzzle device of some sort on--not because felt recoil is a factor--but because there is a bit of a tendency for muzzle-flip if you shoot free-recoil. You can certainly overcome that with a good grip on the fore-end.
This rifle conforms to ptg's tolerances.
With the new axis 2 Savage has finally done away with their notorious "Tupperware" stock which seemed to bend just by looking at it. It's basic, but gets the job done. No points for beauty--but who cares. The 18" barrel gave me pause for thought, that's giving away some potential velocity and might not live up to the "better than 30 30 and 243 win hype" that winchester continues to push. I have no idea why Savage really chose to go this route--but I have my own opinion having just returned from putting the first two magazines of cartridges through it. At the end of the day, this cartridge is not going to be a high plains 350 yd elk-dropper IMO, but in a lightweight carbine-like quick and handy configuration like this it makes a very dandy short to short/intermediate (say 50 to maybe 200 yds) heavy woods to mixed woods fields rifle suitable up to medium weight game with the right cartridge. Wild guess, but that probably captures about 75% of the non bird/varmint/big game market right there. Well played Savage.
The rifle comes with their great accutrigger and I chose to put a one-piece DNZ game reaper mount on it, which I'm quite pleased with so far. True to tradition (or maybe just laziness in standardizing on one size fits all) Savage allows for generous cartridge "oversize" in their magazine, a feature that has always endeared them to me as a hand-loader (and the fact their barrels tend to always be great shooters, no matter what the price point of the rifle is). Yes, I'm an unabashed Savage fanboy.
Unfortunately it was so cold and windy outside today (windchill not much above zero and strong gusts at my 2:00 whistling down the treeline like a wind tunnel) I only wanted to get on paper and zeroed with the scope, shooting off the hood of my truck with heavy gloves was less than ideal but I still got a group of around 2" at 110 yds--not bad considering conditions were very similar to the worst I've experienced on a winter hunt and I was using factory ammo.
About the only very minor nit I would pick is that it might be nice to have the option to put a muzzle device of some sort on--not because felt recoil is a factor--but because there is a bit of a tendency for muzzle-flip if you shoot free-recoil. You can certainly overcome that with a good grip on the fore-end.
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