Savage Arms: the definition of accuracy: from riches to rags to honors, this company is a study in commitment, vision and innovation! - Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence: 2003 manufacturer of the year

Shooting Industry, Sept, 2003 by Carolee Anita Boyles

"We bought the company in November 1995," he said. "Now, the company is privately owned by management and some silent investors."

The Innovative Stage

In the late 1990s, Savage reached its "innovative stage." Drawing once again on his engineering experience, Coburn started looking at new ways to manufacture firearms.

"It's all part and parcel of Savage stepping up to the next level," he said. "First, we've corrected our problems of the past. Second, we've added a focus to the company: accuracy and value. Third, we wanted to improve on our product. The only way to do that is to see yourself as better than your competition, even if you're not, and drive yourself toward innovative improvements. So we strive to do more than anyone else."

That striving created a new generation of muzzleloaders.

"I didn't want to be in the regular black powder market and be a me, too,'" Coburn said. "I wanted something better or not at all."

For five years Coburn watched the black powder market grow, but stayed out of it until be had what he felt was a better idea that offered the consumer something be couldn't get anywhere else: a muzzleloader that uses smokeless powder.

"Is it creative thinking or better marketing?" he asked. "It's more opportunism than anything else. It's watching what everyone else is doing, and getting out ahead of them."

Savage's smokeless powder muzzleloader is not without controversy. Long-time black powder shooters either love it or hate it.

"I'll never be able to change their minds." he said. "There will always be controversy when there's something new and unusual."

The Savage AccuTrigger Is Born

Coburn's vision and drive also resulted in the AccuTrigger. However, Coburn said, he only pointed the way.

"The engineers came up with it," he said. "They just needed someone to point them in the right direction."

The seeds of the AccuTrigger actually were sown in 1988, when Coburn decided to concentrate on manufacturing bolt-action rifles. As the company reinvented itself, the Savage rifle became an exceptional value. But Coburn still wasn't satisfied.

"People began to see Savage as comparable to anything else out there for the performance, but they still complained about the trigger. Not just of our rifles, but of everyone's," Coburn said.

In the late 1990s, that complaint reminded Coburn of something he had promised himself years before.

"I always felt very strongly that at some point, when I got the product to the point that I could go toe-to-toe with anybody in the industry, I would do something about the one thing we all suffer from, and that's a hard-pull trigger," he said. "I shoot other companies' rifles regularly, and I know that we all tug on triggers today."

Coburn got the company's two best engineers together and told them, "We're going to fix this. Redesign my trigger group and give me a crisp, no creep trigger."

The engineers, Bob Gancarz and Scott Warburton, came hack with an enormous amount of data about creeping and mushy triggers. Plus, they had a redesigned trigger group. It was just what Coburn had in mind. He then gave them another challenge: Take the trigger down to a pound and a half pull.