I recently started hunting and needed a hunting rifle for the great Alaskan moose. Problem for me, I’m a left eye dominant shooter. Thankfully, there are a lot of good hunting rifles out there that left handed. Here are a few left handed manufacturers I looked at:
- Browning
- Remington
- Ruger
- Savage
- Winchester used to make a left handed Model 70, but it’s not in production anymore.
I ended up purchasing a .30-06 blued Savage 111. It came with open sights, AccuTrigger, and a synthetic stock (The closest version now is the Trophy Hunter XP, but doesn’t have open sights, and has a detachable box, while mine doesn’t).
It is a great rifle. Naturally what makes it good besides the left handed bolt action, but it also has a 3 position top tang safety for easy access. Aside from the left handed goodness, the rest of the rifle is really solid. I am a big fan of the AccuTrigger. It’s very smooth, and it feels like you took your rifle to a gunsmith for a trigger job. Very smooth with a clean break. The barrel floats over the stock, so you don’t have to worry about moisture accumulating, or the stock affecting the barrel. Also makes for cleaning the rifle a breeze. The recoil pad is pretty good, but the top and bottom tips will get a bit crusty after you’ve taken it into the field a few times.
I did put a scope on it with Leupold hardware. I ran into a problem with it initially since my LGS didn’t have a left handed 1 piece base, so they sold me a right handed one, hoping that flipping it would work. It really didn’t, the cutout for loading was on the wrong side, so it was a pain to load the rifle. You can get the one piece, but I still don’t recomend this for any rifle (only 2 mounting screws, and it still partialy blocks the action. I’d go for the 2 piece. And if you do have a rifle with open sights, go ahead and get the 2 piece QR version. I’ve removed the scope multiple times and it always retains zero.
I am very happy with left handed rifle, and will look toward Savage for any future rifle.