Too Tall

Time sure does fly by.  I can't believe I have had my little Savage Mark II .22LR for over ten years.  Even worse is that fact that I have been complaining about the magazine for almost that entire time.

I picked up the Savage on whim, more or less.  I stopped by a gun shop barely out of the Missouri River floodplain looking for something else.  The .17HMR was just out at the time and the dealer had a bull-barrel Savage in that caliber that he tried to interest me in.  Next to it was this .22LR with the standard 21" tapered barrel and the price included a cheap Simmons 3-to-9 scope.  For some reason, I decided I needed yet another .22 rifle, and I bought it. The Savage is still sporting the Simmons that came with it.  I found that, once I got used to the trigger (not adjustable on these older models), the rifle shot very well and would put ten rounds of its preferred ammunition into a ragged hole at 50 yards.  As a bolt-action with a slightly longer barrel, the Savage makes better use of subsonic rounds than my 10/22. 

The Savage came with a 10-round, single-stack magazine. 

Not only does it protrude in a rather unsightly way, but it is in exactly the wrong place, right at the point of balance, and I can't grab it like I might an AR-15 magazine.  It winds up just being awkward.

 

 

The remedy was obvious -- a shorter magazine, but I could carry it by the pistol grip.  It's really very light with a synthetic stock.  I developed a habit of carrying it in my right hand sort of by the bolt and trigger guard.  Several times I have looked around various places for a five-shot magazine that I knew existed.  I never ran across one in the store.  Online, it seemed as if every time I thought to order one, the dealer would be out of stock.  Finally, last week, I was ordering some stuff from Midway and happened to think to check.  The five-shots were available, so I ordered two. 

Here's the difference: 

And here is the difference in the rifle:

So far function is flawless.  I really think the five-shots feed better than the longer ones, possibly because they flex less in the somewhat sloppy well.  I still like the ten-shot mags for convenient storage if nothing else.  With two tens and two fives, I have thirty rounds that don't rattle or get lost in my pockets and are available for immediate use. 

This is a happy hand.