Description
The Savage Arms 220 Harvester 20 Gauge exists because a lot of good deer country will not let you hunt with a rifle. In shotgun-only zones the law says shotgun, and this is what happens when a rifle company builds one anyway: a bolt action, a 22 inch fully rifled barrel, a detachable box magazine and a scope rail, in a 20 gauge that weighs and handles like a hunting rifle.
It is not a shotgun you would take to a dove field. There is no choke, no bead and no smoothbore. It fires one projectile at a time and it is built to group them.
What makes the Savage Arms 220 Harvester 20 Gauge a rifle in everything but law
- A fully rifled 22 inch barrel. The distributor record is explicit: no choke tubes, fully rifled.
- A bolt action rather than a pump or a semi-auto, which is the single biggest reason slug guns in this class shoot as well as they do.
- A two-round detachable box magazine, so you are not thumbing shells into a tube.
- A one-piece scope rail already fitted. There are no iron sights on this gun at all, so the optic is not optional.
- A 3 inch chamber, a recoil pad and swivel studs.
The stock is the part people underestimate
- AccuStock with AccuFit V2 in flat dark gray synthetic. AccuFit lets you set comb height and length of pull with supplied inserts.
- That matters more on a scoped gun than on anything with iron sights. If your cheek does not land in the same place every time, a scope magnifies the error rather than fixing it.
- Overall length 43.11 inches, matte black metal, right hand.
Savage Arms 220 Harvester 20 Gauge specifications
- Gauge: 20, 3 in. chamber
- Action: bolt
- Capacity: two-round detachable box magazine
- Barrel: 22 in., fully rifled, matte black
- Sights: none; one-piece scope rail fitted
- Stock: AccuStock with AccuFit V2, flat dark gray synthetic, recoil pad, swivel studs
- Overall length: 43.11 in.
- Manufacturer part number: 32803. UPC: 011356328038
Shotshell dimensions and pressure standards are published by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute.
Why the Savage Arms 220 Harvester 20 Gauge earns its place
- In a shotgun-only zone this is as close to a deer rifle as the law allows, and it is a long way closer than a smoothbore with a rifled choke.
- 20 gauge rather than 12. A rifled slug gun kicks; the 20 kicks noticeably less and costs you very little on a deer-sized animal at slug distances.
- A bolt action locks the same way every shot, which is why it groups.
- The rail is on it already, so the only thing between you and a zeroed gun is the scope and the rings.
- Savage built its name on rifles that shoot better than their price, and the Savage Arms 220 Harvester 20 Gauge is that idea applied to a slug gun.
Now the part that actually decides whether you are happy with it: a fully rifled barrel wants sabot slugs. Foster-type slugs — the ones usually sold as “rifled slugs”, such as Stars and Stripes 20ga Rifled Slug or Brenneke Magnum 20 GA — have the rifling cast into the projectile because they were designed to be stabilized by air in a smoothbore. They will fire safely through a rifled barrel, but they will not group the way a sabot will, and they tend to lead the rifling.
Buy sabot ammunition for the Savage Arms 220 Harvester 20 Gauge.
We stock Brenneke TOPAS Lead Free Sabot 20 GA; if you want a particular sabot load we do not have on the shelf, tell us and we will source it, because the difference on paper at a hundred yards is not subtle.
The second thing to budget for on a Savage Arms 220 Harvester 20 Gauge is glass, because there are no sights on this gun.
A Leupold VX-Freedom 3-9×40 is more than enough magnification for slug distances and leaves you money for ammunition; if you want a reticle built for slug trajectories instead, the Hawke Vantage IR 3-9×40 Slug/Muzzleloader is the specialist option, though we are down to one, which you will need — slugs are not cheap and you cannot zero a scope in five rounds.
Be realistic about the range of a Savage Arms 220 Harvester 20 Gauge. A sabot slug out of a good rifled 20 drops fast past about 150 yards and the wind pushes it more than a rifle bullet. This is a two-hundred-yard gun on a chart and a hundred-and-fifty-yard gun in the woods, and the honest answer is that most shots taken with one are well inside that.
If you want the same gun in a different form, we also carry the 220 Harvester Woodland in camouflage and the left-hand 220 Harvester, though the left-hand gun is down to the last few.
Every firearm we list ships to your chosen FFL and is transferred there after a background check.
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