im looking for a budget 308 just for range use and long range drills. im thinking of a savage model 10? i know walmart by me has it for like 400
any ideas or thoughts?
Weatherby vanguard, savage, howa or tikka take your pick. I would go tikka.
If you do go for a cheap savage you could also get a stevens 200, same as savage 10 just 100$ cheaper. Dicks sporting goods had a rem700 varmint sale for around 400 after rebate.
Any factory rifle is a gamble. What length bbl are you thinking? What ammo are you wanting to shoot?
Tikka or Rem 700 LTR
Can we quantify this? I’ve heard benchrest guys say similar for YEARS but never gotten a handle on what that means. Gamble how? won’t run? Won’t group? What kinds of problems are we talking about if won’t run? What kind of deviation in accuracy are we talking about?
Won’t group. Our smith said about 1/1000 factory barrels will be as good as a Krieger.
He showed us all kinds of factory barrel messes in his buckets of take off bbls… tight spots in barrels that create excessive heat and errosion… over bored bbls that simply will NEVER shoot well, etc.
We got to guage good and bad bbls for a hands on, no subjectivity lesson.
Rob I would say most factory rifles are like American cars or Colt pistols you buy it knowing you going to have to have some work done. This is true in most of the new Rems.
My rifle smith has a 250$ accuracy package he does on factory rifle that put the tolerences where they should have been from the factory. It typicaly turn’s a rifle that will shoot a 3" group at 200M in to a rilfe that will hold under and inch.
I have never seen any of the other rifles I mentioned not shoot if the shooter did there part. The QC of the guns other than rem is very good. I had a gun built on a 20 plus year old Howa action and my smith said the action threeds were .012 out of round thats it. The only reason most guys build on a rem action is after market support and lack of knowlege of the other brands.
this is not a quantification, it’s an extension of what has been said before.
THIS is quantifying. thank you.
What I’d like to know is how often that’s the case. Is the 3" factory gun the norm, or is it the extreme? If it’s the extreme, what IS the norm? and can a factory gun do 1"?
Yeah… as relatively new precision shooters, we looked at tikka, savage, and Remington. Both tikka and savage make an accurate barrel… but valid or not… we had concerns about the durability of those two.
We shoot a lot of rounds through these guns every weekend. The 700’s aftermarket support is indeed nice. The bottom line was… after trying to sort through all the internet input, I had to jump in somewhere… So a Rem 700 it was.
But going back to the OP’s question… “Best Budget .308 rifle”? He might luck out and get a 1/2 MOA gun for $500, or he may end up with a 3" gun. A bad barrel is a risk when buying a factory gun, and it’s possible to get a gun that can not be made to shoot MOA or better.
There was another bolt gun that we shot that was ALL over the place… I think we were getting like 5" plus groups at 100 yards…
Fortunately it shot so bad that we didn’t spend a lot of time or ammo trying to figure it out. Turns out a bore guage .002" over would fit into the muzzle end. That barrel would never be able to shoot MOA.
This came off a non-“budget” bolt gun with a sporter profile… Pappabear would have to refresh my memory on who made the gun though… It wasn’t a Rem, Savage, or Tikka though…
For the OP the only issue you will have with the savage in the stock is a POS I would replace it with a B&C right off the bat.
With the lower cost rems I would say its the norm in my experience. But its hard to tell, alot of the guys I help out at the range dont know what they are doing. Usually with a little instruction and education they can shrink the groups to a more consistant 3".
I just sold a savage 110 in 308 that would shoot under and inch with factory federal GMM ammo at 200M.
I have a few friends with Tikka rifles and it is the next one I am buying. But with the intention of pulling the barrel and adding a rem 700 style recoil lug and some parts from pete linchlon.
Pappabear just grabbed another 5R in 300 WM. As soon as it’s skim bedded, we’ll have yet another bolt gun to test out.
It was a Win Model 70 Featherweight. Stainless fluted barrel. Nice gun, or should have been. Its now waiting for a Kreiger 
I have 5 bolt action rifles. Of the 5, 3 were capable of 1 inch at 200m. They are the wife’s Mod 70 in 243, a Remmy 700 SPS in 308, and another 700 SPS in 308. The two that will not are a Browning A-Bolt in 300WM and a Tikka T3 in 7mm-08. I don’t know how often it can happen? Maybe I just got lucky with the Remmys, but they are a helluva a wepon right out of the box. With a bit of work, they are exceptional.
Any barrel can be bad or good. I’ve had custom barrels that ranged from amazing to acceptable to kinda dissapointed.
I would guess most factory guns, if you try enough ammo will get you to 1.5/2.0 inches. Ammo is critical as we all know.
My Tikkas and Browning have been MOA, so its just a hit and miss. The bull barrel variety most often do quite well.
Most guns will shoot 1/8 MOA with PRIVI!!!
Just kidding… don’t buy that shit. 
IMO, cheap and accurate don’t go together except by accident. I’ve had three suck-ass Remingtons in a row, and I’ve finally given up on them. My new FN A3G is an honest half-MOA gun with ammo it likes, but it’s a $2600 rifle.
My personal feeling is that if you have a high frustration tolerance and are willing to accept that more likely than not your factory gun will NOT shoot even MOA, roll the dice on a factory Remington. Maybe you’ll get lucky like markm did.
I’ve had 3 Savage 10FP’s in 308 over the years and one Rem 700PSS. They were all square range guns, so they don’t get abused a lot. All of them were at least MOA (out to 200yds) shooters out of the box using quality factory ammo (in my case that was Fed GMM in 168 for the Remmy and 175 for the Savages). When I pulled and reseated bullets to match my chamber/throat the Savages went down close to 1/2 MOA at 100 when I did my part. The Remmy didn’t change much. I never did try to roll my own from scratch, but I’m sure that I could have gotten the Remmy down as well. I am 100% certain that I was the limiting factor when things didn’t go as well as I had hoped with all the rifles.
Either I need to go out and buy a lottery ticket cause I’m the luckiest guy on the planet or the 1/1000 factory guns shoot well claims are a bit over stated. Or are made to justify upgrades or custom purchases/sales.
Would I have loved a custom built GAP or even other high end rifles. Damn right. If my life depended on the gun would I have gone with a budget Savage. Probably not. For my needs I felt it best to buy a rifle that shot well out of the box and allowed me ample trigger time to master basics.
There are plenty of low cost factory guns that shoot well enough to get one in the “game” without feeling like you’re pissing in the wind. You probably won’t win any bench rest comps. But youll have fun with plenty of funds for ammo and be able to learn the basics of long range marksmanship.
Im a fan of savage simply cause they were cheap, shot well (even with the craptastic stock), had enough parts and pieces to allow for tweaks if I wanted and were easy to work on. The accutrigger is easy to adjust safely and is adequate for shooting well. Re barreling is a snap with some basic tools ala an AR.