Savage Arms Renegauge Shotgun: Best Competition Shotgun?

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Back in the early days of pins and 3-gun competition, we had few shotgun choices, and they all had drawbacks. The main autoloader in use back then was the Remington 1100, and it was known to be, shall we say, fragile. Oh, they worked, but they were kind of like jet aircraft. Hours of cleaning and maintenance and fussing for each minute of use in a match. Well, that is the past, and this is the now—and now we have the Savage Renegauge. The Renegauge is a “gas gun,” a gas-operated semi-auto, and it is one with an interesting design. (Can I just call it the “R” to save space? Just ask ‘in.) Called the D.R.I.V. and pronounced “drive,” this stands for Dual Regulating Inline Valve, and it is a self-regulating dual-port short-throw piston system. The ports drive the piston, which impacts the bolt/carrier assembly, driving that back against the recoil spring which is wound around the magazine tube. The bolt travels back, rotating the locking head, extracting the empty, and tossing it away before bottoming out, and then driving forward picking up the next shell fed out of the tube and lifting it up in line then chambering it before locking.

The neat trick here is that the gas system is built to automatically adjust for the proper gas flow. It meters what it needs, and excess gas (like from high-velocity loads) is vented out the top of the handguard. So, you can feed it the lowest-cost skeet loads for practice, and it will feed and function properly, but not be overdriven by the high-velocity nickel-plated loads, or buckshot and slugs. Savage offers the Renegauge in seven variants, five of which have magazine tubes only the length of the handguard. The other two, the Competition, and the Security, have magazine tubes that extend the length of their barrels. In the Security that means 18 inches and six-plus-one capacity, while on the Competition Savage has installed a 24-inch barrel with a nine-plus-one capacity. (There’s a magazine block in the kit, to bring the Competition down to hunting regulations capacity if you need it.) They all have the D.R.I.V. system, and they differ mostly in the finish. The various hunting models have camo or black/gray color schemes, while the Security has a gray/black layout and the Competition is black with fire engine red.

The receiver is aluminum, and as is the modern design methodology for shotguns, the bolt locks into a barrel extension so the receiver is just there to hold the various parts into one assembly. Interestingly, the top of the receiver is drilled and tapped for a scope mount, just in case. The Renegauge comes with a full panoply of accessories, regardless of which model you have. The stock is adjustable, with included plates to change the drop of the stock. There are replacement buttplates (with pads) to adjust the length of pull, and a replaceable cheekpiece design (with extra sizes) to adjust height of the comb. The length of pull can be varied from 14.25 inches out just past 15 inches. That may seem long, but one aspect of a long length of pull is, for some reason, that it diminishes felt recoil. I can’t explain it, and physics doesn’t offer any help, but longer seems softer for some reason.

If you can’t make the Renegauge fit you, you are really far outside of off-the-rack sizing. I mean, I could make it fit me, and that takes some doing sometimes. The firing assembly, held in place by a crosspin in the receiver, has a cross-bolt safety, and that safety has a large enough button that you won’t have a problem pressing when you need to. On the Competition, the receiver is given a bright red Cerakote finish, and the pin and bolt lock are black. The ejection port is generous, the loading port is more than generous, and the charging handle is easy to operate, in part because the dual-valve system throttles gas, and thus, the Renegauge doesn’t need a Buick-sized spring to control cycling. The one-piece action bar assembly is chrome-plated for ease of cleaning and to reduce the chances of gunk causing you a feeding problem. The various cycling parts are likewise chrome-plated because it is easy-enough to do, and it makes cleaning easier.

The barrel is carbon steel and Melonite-treated, but before they get to the surface treatment, Savage flutes the barrel for balance and weight. The rib is also steel, ventilated, and on the muzzle end Savage has installed a Hi-Viz Tri-comp fiber optic “bead.” I put that in quotation marks because it isn’t anything like a bead. It extends for over an inch along the top of the rib with most of it being a tube, but the rear end of it has been shaped to be a triangle from your perspective with one of the tips pointing up. After the Melonite treatment, but before it gets the fiber optic, Savage gives the barrel and rib a black oxide treatment, to create a non-glare surface, and one that looks good. The magazine tube rides underneath the barrel, and it extends the length of the barrel. To keep the magazine tube from being over-stressed, Savage installs a barrel/magazine tube clamp on the two, ahead of the handguard. The clamp is not a rail, this is a competition shotgun, but if you wanted to use the Competition for defense the clamp has an M-LOK slot on each side. Plenty enough room to mount a light. The Renegauge comes in a coffin-sized storage/travel case with all the goodies. The plates for drop, the buttstock fillers for length of pull, the cheekpiece sizes, are all in there, plus a box with extra choke tubes and the owner’s manual. Coffin? Yes, it was all I could do to Tetris-like fit it into the trunk of my sedan.

Disassembly? Fair warning: you can’t disassemble any shotgun that has been used and not get your hands, clothes, and bench grubby. Unload and close the bolt. Put the safety on. Use an allen wrench to loosen the clamp and slide it off. Unscrew the magazine tube, and be careful of the two-piece long magazine spring. Slide the handguard and barrel off together. There are eleven more steps to get it apart for a thorough cleaning which are all in the owner’s manual and in an online video Savage has put together. Of course, you will have to scrub the bore and clean out the collected powder, plastic, and whatever else has been left behind. In testing of the Renegauge, I put a carton of skeet loads through it to make sure it functioned 100% even with light loads.

(That, and to create once-fired hulls for my secret slug load.) Yep, it did. Then I patterned it with buckshot, because that was going to be the real test. I planned on using it up at The Pin Shoot competition (bowling pins that is), and to subject it to several cases of buckshot while there. The Renegauge comes with a set of choke tubes, including one intended for 3-gun/multi-gun competition, and perhaps even skeet, trap, or sporting clays. This is an extended Skeet2 choke tube and it extends outside of the muzzle. The choke pattern is Beretta/Benelli, and what I found was that even the most-open choke Savage ships was too tight for my needs. No problem, I just ordered up a cylinder choke in the correct thread size, and I was good to go.

Up at The Pin Shoot, the task is simple: hose bowling pins off the table, fast. The distance is 25 feet and new shooters scoff at this, “How can you miss?” With great ease, we tell them when you are trying to get eight of them off the table in under four seconds. And since this was a test, and others did not have the advantage of being a famous gun writer, I let shooters I knew use the Renegauge as well. Between the five or six of us, and the daily shotgun shoot-offs, plus the multiple entries of the shotgun optional event, we went through enough buckshot to fill the bed of a pickup truck in a week. The Renegauge did not fail us. Several of us made the walk up to the prize table, and we earned much loot in the shoot-offs.

This proved to be so much fun that I prevailed on Savage to let me conduct extended testing, and I spent the time in-between shoots in further creating empty hulls, and testing buckshot. Which is how the Renegauge made a second trip up to Central Lake for the Pin Shoot and got even more buckshot in its diet, with no failures whatsoever. This resulted in more trips for prizes and shoot-off cash, and with that I had to conclude the festivities and ship the Renegauge back to Savage. “What about slugs?” you ask. Well, my intention was to give the Renegauge a few runs with slugs, but I have a dedicated shotgun for that and so does everyone else who was shooting the slug match. So, it never got a chance there, but I have no doubt it would have acquitted itself admirably as well on slugs as it had with buckshot.

What then, is the Renegauge good for? Well, clearly, on pins it is da bomb. Once you find the right choke combo to match your buckshot load for the needed pattern you are set. Then, there is good old 3-gun and multi-gun competition. There, reloading against the clock is the detail you must master (that, and hitting your targets) and the loading port of the Renegauge is large and highly conducive to getting topped off quickly. The weight might seem to be a bit much for skeet and trap, but at just over eight pounds you can count on your swing follow-through being there. The adjustable pull, drop and comb height means you can move the pattern around (you’re actually moving your face around, it being the rear sight of your shotgun) to get the pattern where you want it to be. Yes, the Competition would be useful as a defensive shotgun, but do you really want to be using something with a literal two-foot-long barrel?

That’s why Savage makes the Renegauge Security for your defensive needs. But if you do select it, the 9+1 capacity might prove very handy. Plus it does deliver buckshot with aplomb. And considering the totality of the gear you get, the sturdy case, and the ultra-reliable function, the price is not at all out of line with other shotguns in this performance cohort. In fact, you can easily spend a bunch more for shotguns at this performance level, and not get any more reliability nor gear than Savage provides. Yes, it is a deal. I did agonize over sending it back, but send it back I did, because I already have shotguns that do what the Renegauge does. But, if I were starting over, and I wanted one to do what the several I have can do, the Renegauge would be top on the list.

Savage Renegauge Competition Specs 

• Type: Hammer-fired, self-loading
• Caliber: 12 Gauge
• Capacity: 9+1 rds. 
• Barrel: 24 in. 
• Overall Length: 46 in. 
• Weight: 8 lbs., 3 oz. 
• Finish: Melonite steel, Cerakote
• Sights: Ventilated rib, red bead
• Trigger: 5 lbs., 1 oz. 
• MSRP: $1,659
• Contact: Savage Arms 

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