A couple of months back, the Savages took me on a prairie dog hunt and the evening before the shooting started I was handed a new version of the Model 12 Series Varmint in .223 to sight in. I did so, and what I saw 100 yards away in the fading light caught my interest—all five shots went in one ragged hole. Could this, I wondered, be the long-sought factory rifle that would break the ½-moa mark?

So when the hunt was over, I asked Savage for a loaner so I could beat on it at length with a variety of ammo and, after a suitable delay they gave me one with 600 rounds through it, also in .223. Now, before I tell you how I did, I should describe the rifle.

The Model 12 SLRPVDP is a lineal descendent of the Model 12, which won our Best of the Best award in 2006. It’s a single-shot with an oversized bolt knob, an H-S Precision Varmint stock with an aluminum bedding block (and three bedding screws), a special Accu-Trigger that can be set from 6 ounces* to 2.5 pounds, a 26-inch, deeply-fluted, extra-heavy 26-inch stainless barrel** and a ball-breaking weight of 12 pounds. “Dual Port” refers to the slots cut on both sides of the action, enabling a right-handed shooter to load from the left and eject the empties from the right. This was developed for benchrest shooters who want to get their five shots downrange as fast as possible, and is also good for prairie dog hunters whose blood is up.

This rifle is exactly what you’d get if you went to a cutting-edge builder of varmint gunss, gave him $5,000, and asked for his best effort, except that the Model 12, etc., costs $1,273.

The one I was loaned has a Picatinny rail on it, and I strongly recommend this. The scope I mounted is one of the new Bushnell Elite 6500s in 4.5X-30X with mil dots. A better varmint scope I have not seen, and neither have you.

And so to shooting***. I first fired five varieties of reasonably low-rent factory ammo through the Model 12 and so forth, and it responded by doing its own version of projectile vomiting. However, with the very first handload, it announced that it was the rifle I had been looking for all these years. I was shooting 50-grain Nosler Ballistic Tips, W 748 powder, Remington brass, and CCI 450 primers, and the groups averaged .293, with the smallest group .251.

So now the question was whether it was a one-load rifle. It is not. Using various combinations of W 748, RelodeR 7, Berger bullets, Winchester brass, CCI BR4 primers, and some match bullets that gunmaker Mickey Coleman gave me and whose maker I have forgotten, I was able to get comparable groups with ease. The overall average for everything is .306-inch, and is just about what I get from my varmint rifles that cost a hell of a lot more than $1,273. If I had used prepped cases, the groups would have been smaller.

The Model 12 etcetera also comes in .22/250, which will probably not shoot quite as well (it being axiomatic that the more powder you burn the bigger the groups), .204 Ruger (your guess is as good as mine; I am not a fan) and 6mm Norma BR (which may actually shoot a little better). In any event, this particular rifle is the most accurate one I have ever shot that you could buy over the counter, and after 40-plus years of writing about these things, that is saying quite a lot.

*You can set it at that weight, but it will malfunction. The trigger will release but the sear won’t. Twelve to 18 ounces will do you fine.
**Savage, which still button-rifles and hand-straightens its barrels, takes some extra pains with these.
***Temperature in the 70s, and no wind at all.

Occasionally I’m asked: At what point is a rifle too inaccurate to use? (I’m also asked what diddy-wah-diddy means, but that’s not important now.) I’ve just come across a perfect example. It is a .30/06 of excellent pedigree, a factory rifle, not custom.

When I started shooting it, I tried factory ammo in 180- and 165-grain weights, three different brands, and the rifle almost invariably put two shots together and one off into the Oort Cloud where comets come from. I was not depressed, because very often this means that a load is almost right, but not quite, and with a little tinkering you can get all three shots touching. Such is not the case with this firearm.

As it turned out the loads the rifle likes most are 150-grain Sierra Pro Hunter handloads, and 165-grain HSM factory ammo (amazing how well HSM shoots in so many rifles).
 
At its best the ‘06 will print near half-inch groups, but most often it shoots around 1.2 to 1.5. I could live with this and in many cases I do live with it; some of the most effective rifles I own group in this range. But the difference is they never go smaller than 1.2 or larger than 1.5.
 
This rifle, however, loves variety. On one target I have groups of 1.375, 1.990, .555, 1.116, 1.155, and 1.690. On another the list reads: 1.113, 1.246, 2.385, 2.597 (Don’t ask me what happened here; I have no idea.), .974, and 1.361.
 
Inconsistency is the scariest thing in the world of riflery, so I am sending the ‘06 back into the netherworld of inaccurate firearms. Life is too short to fool with it further.
 
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My gunsmith, John Blauvelt, showed me a Badger Ordnance FTE Removable Muzzle Brake, a fearsome device (above) that looks like it could damp down a German 88.  Stamped on the front is “This side toward enemy,” which appears on the business side of the very popular and effective Claymore mine. Someone at Badger has a sense of humor.

The guns of O.F. Mossberg, New Haven, CT, are beloved by many and scorned by others. People love them and hate them for the same reason: they’re cheap. I hear them called “Mossjunks,” “Mossturds” and worse by haters. I call the Mossberg 835 in this picture “my turkey gun.” I can find no reason at all to dislike it, nor to switch to something more glamorous and expensive.

My 835 doesn’t receive the epic abuse meted out to waterfowl guns but it has never failed, even on a couple of occasions when bad initial shooting on my part required fast pumping and a hail of lead to finish the job. It has killed turkeys from 12 steps to 50 yards. With a barrel bored to 10 gauge dimensions, it patterns turkey loads extremely well, its favorites being Winchester’s 3-inch Xtended Range 6s.

The receiver is tapped for a scope base, and I had one of Nikon’s fine Turkey Pro scopes on it for a while. Recently I replaced the scope with an Aimpoint 9000 that costs more than the gun. Complete with red dot and sling, the whole rig weighs just 8 pounds, and the 20-inch barrel doesn’t catch on branches as I hike through the woods. It does have a flabby 6 pound trigger and fragile fiber optic sights, but that’s the end of its shortcomings

Since the picture was taken, I’ve put on one of Mossberg’s Dual Comb stocks on my gun. The Dual Comb was the first factory stock I know of to offer an insert to raise the comb for scope use. That brings up another, often overlooked, point. Mossberg may be known for inexpensive guns, but they are innovators. The 835 was the first factory overbored gun. The 835’s little brother, the Model 500 pump, was the first shotgun available with a factory fully rifled slug barrel or an accessory muzzleloader barrel.

Inexpensive, innovative, reliable, and with an ambidextrous safety to boot, what’s not to like? I hunt with other turkey guns sometimes, but when I need an edge (and frankly, that’s most days) the 835 is the gun I carry.

I had a chance to shoot a Beretta O/U in .458 Win Mag a while ago. I’d never fired a big-bore rifle, but I pulled the trigger, the steel plate target clanged, and honestly my first thought was: “That was nowhere near as bad as a turkey load.” In fact, it was kind of fun, so I shot the plate about twenty more times.

Last time I fired that many 3 1/ 2 inch turkey loads, my shoulder, neck and head hurt when it was over. In my dazed state even simple tasks like casing guns and loading them in the car seemed very difficult.

A .458 shooting a 510 grain bullet at 2100 fps out of a 10.5 pound double rifle generates a 53 foot-pound shove of recoil. A 3 1/ 2 inch, 2 ounce turkey load at 1300 fps in an 8 pound pump smacks you with 66 foot pounds. When a cartridge made to kill elephants before they kill you is more pleasant to shoot than a shotshell for 20 pound birds, something is wrong.

The idea behind the 3 1/ 2 when it was introduced by Federal and Mossberg back in 1989 was to increase case capacity to hold more bulky steel BBBs and Ts for pass shooting geese, and it worked. Because steel is light, the payloads weren’t very heavy, and recoil was tolerable.

Had 3 1/ 2 inch loadings remained steel-only, all would have been well. Unfortunately, someone looked inside the new hull and said “Hmmmm. I wonder how much lead fits in there?”  The answer is up to 2 3/8 ounces. As you increase payload, you increase recoil, and 3 1/ 2 lead loads are awful.

I got yelled at once by a famous turkey hunter after I palmed the 3 1/ 2 shell he gave me and loaded one of my own 3-inch shells into the gun I borrowed from him. He didn’t know I had made the switch until I shucked the hull out of the gun. The turkey, lying 35 yards away, was long past caring whether it had been shot with a 3- or 3-1/ 2 inch shell, but the FTH yelled at me anyway.

If the turkeys I shot got up and ran away, I might agree there was a need for a
3 1/ 2 inch turkey load. But they don’t. They fall over dead. So, someone please explain to me: why a 3 1/ 2?