The Savage Trail Hunter Lite Punches Above Its Price

Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases.

For most of my adult life, the answer to the question “what’s the most-accurate hunting rifle for the money?” has almost always been the Savage 110. These days, there are a pile of bolt-action rifles that use manufacturing hacks to produce great accuracy on a tight budget, but Savage was the originator of the concept. The good news is that Savage rifles continue to perform with the best of them and, today, are being offered with a laundry list of options.

Savage’s bolt-action product lineup is one of the most diverse on the market. There are currently 29 different versions of the Savage 110 listed on the company’s website ranging from very spartan hunting rifles to highly upgraded precision-shooting rigs. I tested the Trail Hunter Lite, which combines the well-established features of the Savage 110 with some modern tweaks.

It’s no secret that Savage’s magic lies within the design of its action. Building an accurate rifle is all about alignment and concentricity; keeping everything straight. Ensuring the bullet enters the chamber as straight as possible is one of the absolute keys to shooting tiny, consistent groups.  This requires precision machining which, until relatively recently, was an expensive and time-consuming proposition.

With the 110 design, Savage’s engineers took the opposite approach to cartridge alignment: they let the case find its own way. The 110’s floating bolt head and front baffle mean that the bolt face aligns itself with the case head rather than the other way around. It may sound counterintuitive but allowing for excess tolerance in that critical area makes the rifle shoot better, not worse.

Design and Function

The bolt is a two-lug design where the lugs rotate 90 degrees to engage the lug seats in the action while the front baffle remains stationary, acting partially as an anti-bind feature. The extractor is a sliding-plate style. Ironically, that feature of the much-maligned post-’64 Winchester Model 70 has recently been copied on several modern actions. The ejector is a spring-loaded plunger.

The Trail Hunter Lite feeds from a detachable box magazine that holds four rounds, and can accept a fifth in the chamber. I’m not always a fan of detachable magazines on hunting rifles, especially for backcountry hunts, but the ability to slip loaded magazines out of your pocket and into the rifle after climbing into a stand or getting in position is certainly handy. The magazine sits flush with the bottom profile of the stock so it won’t poke you in the back when the rifle is slung. Mine fed, fired, extracted and ejected reliably throughout my testing.

The Trail Hunter Lite uses Savage’s AccuTrigger, which has been around for more than 20 years. In the days when factory trigger pulls were terrible thanks to perceived liability risk, the AccuTrigger gave consumers a nice, out-of-the-box trigger pull that was also safe. The trigger lever blocks the sear unless the trigger is manually pulled so the rifle is completely drop safe. When you consider the risk of something going wrong while getting in and out of tree stands or elevated blinds, a drop-safe trigger becomes a great idea. When the AccuTrigger was developed, then-CEO Ron Coburn had a rifle tested by dropping it 20 feet onto the concrete factory floor; it did not fire.

The AccuTrigger is adjustable from 1 ½ to 6 pounds. My test rifle came from the factory set at 3.75 pounds with a very clean break.  I did not adjust the trigger’s pull-weight, but lowering it would have been as simple as twisting the adjustment tool that was included with the rifle.

Barrel Features

The Trail Hunter Lite uses a 20-inch button-rifled carbon steel barrel with a heavy sporter contour. The barrel is milled with ten longitudinal flutes that run approximately half of the barrel’s length. The barrel is threaded 5/8-24 at the muzzle and secured with a knurled thread protector. Unlike some of the barrels that I’m seeing out there, this one has plenty of meat for threading without minimizing wall thickness. I mounted a suppressor during our range time and encountered zero issues.

Another innovative feature of the Savage that was far ahead of its time is the method of barrel attachment. The barrel is secured to the receiver via an external nut. Using a barrel vise and the appropriate wrench and headspace gauges, the end-user can swap a barrel in minutes. This also allows the factory to set each rifle to a minimum headspace rather than a wider tolerance—this is another reason that Savage bolt-actions have a reputation for great accuracy.

One of the elements that sets the Trail Hunter Lite apart is its Hogue-produced stock. The Hogue stock features an overmolded rubber design with textured gripping surfaces at both the pistol grip and the semi-beavertail forend. The pistol grip flares out at the bottom in the style of an older Weatherby. The comb is straight and with no cheekpiece. The length-of-pull is 13 ¾ inches between the face of the trigger and the center of the 1-inch soft rubber recoil pad. The barrel is free-floated from the nut forward but, since the forend isn’t very rigid, reasonable pressure can cause it to touch the barrel. The stock does not use a bedding block, instead relying on two aluminum pillars.

The Trail Hunter Lite is chambered in 14 different cartridges ranging from the 5.56x45mm to .450 Bushmaster. Both short- and long-action versions are available and magnums such as the 7 PRC and .300 Winchester Magnum are among the chamberings. My test rifle came chambered in .308 Winchester, a versatile cartridge that seems to be enjoying a comeback after several years of being overshadowed by the 6.5 Creedmoor.

Optics

The Trail Hunter Lite comes with two Weaver-style scope bases installed. In many cases, Weaver and Picatinny scope mounts are cross-compatible. I used a set of Nightforce rings with no problems. I wanted to mix things up in the scope department so I mounted a Vortex Razor HD LHT 3-15x42. For me, this scope checks a number of boxes for a hunting optic: second focal plane reticle, a capped windage turret and a useful power range without being excessively large. I’m a fan.

Since most of my shooting was done with a suppressor mounted, recoil was mild. The accuracy results on this rifle are, at first glance, a bit deceiving. I shot this rifle on a scorching-hot August day and it was nearly impossible to get the barrel to cool down in-between groups. With each load tested, the groups got progressively larger and barrel heat was the only known variable. The ability to shoot tight groups over a sustained period of fire isn’t really relevant in the big-game hunting context so take these results with a grain of salt. A rifle’s ability to shoot well out of the gate is what matters and this test rifle did well in those circumstances.

With the scope mounted, my Trail Hunter Lite weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces unloaded. If you add my Banish Backcountry suppressor, the package sits right at 9 pounds. For me, that weight is about right for a general-use hunting rifle. Any lighter and shooting from unorthodox positions can be challenging; any heavier and I don’t want to carry it very far.

With a street price under $700 and repeatable sub-MOA accuracy, the Savage Trail Hunter Lite continues the company’s tradition of serviceable, accurate hunting rifles available at a reasonable value. This model’s upgrades which included a Cerakote finish, fluted and threaded barrel and Hogue stock, set it apart from the baseline models in the company’s lineup. Other than mounting a scope and achieving a proper zero, this rifle comes ready to hunt.

Savage Trail Hunter Lite Specs

• Type: Bolt-action
• Caliber: .308 Winchester (tested)
• Barrel: 20 inch, 1:10 twist, fluted, threaded 5/8-24
• Weight: 6 pounds, 14 ounces
• Capacity: 4+1
• Stock: Hogue synthetic
• Finish: Tungsten Cerakote
• Sights: None. Two-piece Weaver-style scope mounts
• Safety: Tang-mounted three-position, trigger lever
• Trigger: Accutrigger, 3.75 pounds
• Price: $669
• Website: savagearms.com

---