was at first designed to be a possible US military rifle.
This is a fairly common assumption, particularly looking back from 100 years later, and, its one of those things that is sort of true, and isn't true at the same time.
Like a lot of things its a combination of facts and assumptions, and we don't have well documented comments from the designers to clarify it.
One common assumption is that since it was made to take a stripper clip, it must have been made with the idea of military use in mind. Today, well,, that's just common sense, right? nobody but the military uses stripper clips...
But in the 1920s, that wasn't the case. Once can find strictly civilian rifles made to use stripper clips, Remington semi autos, among them. Remember at that time, the stripper clip was a fairly new (to the civilian market), and convenient way to carry 5nds and rapidly reload. Lots of people who had never known of them before were introduced to stripper clips through military service in WW I, and found them a worthwhile thing.
Optics were rare, optics mounted over the receiver even more so, and factory rifles of the era were not drilled and tapped for them. At that time, a stripper clip slot was an advantage, and hurt nothing if you decided not to use it.
Another point to consider, is "competing" with the 1903 Springfield. Again, I think this is a more modern idea that has taken hold. It seems logical, because of the "military feature" of the stripper clip, but think about it.
One can only "compete" when the customer is shopping. When the Savage 1920 was built, the customer (the Army) wasn't seriously shopping.
Sure, there is always the "when the time comes, what will we replace our service rifle with"? thing going on, but that's quite different than "we are replacing our rifle, submit candidates.." THAT didn't happen until many years after the Savage 1920 was made.
There's a difference between the designer building a rifle for sport and
possible military use, and the marketing guys saying "heck yes if we can get the Army to buy these, we'll sell them as many as they want".
The .300 Savage can essentially duplicate the GI .30-06 performance, so its possible the Army might have given a bolt gun that takes strippers and essentially matches 06 performance a second look...except that by the time they were looking, it was years later, and the semi auto was a strong contender by then.
I think the Savage was made so that it might be considered by the military, but wasn't made with that idea being its prime objective.