Which Factory rifle?

Excluding the high priced factory rifles like weatherby and nosler. Which factory rifle do you condsider the most accurate out of the box?
I know that Savage is a good one. I have two and both are very easy shooters. In fact the 270 in the Savage 110 combo cost me $5. I won it in a drawing at a Ducks Unlimited. My 300 win mag is the Savage heavy varmint stainless fluted barrel. That gun is a pleasure to shoot.
I have a Ruger M77 that is not a tack driver, and a Rem 700 in 260 that is not either. I see some good reports on Winchester but I don't own one. If you take a not shooter to a gunsmith and have them "accurize" it will it really help and what do they do to it?

Not sure if there is an accurate brand. Had mixed success with different ones.

I won a Remington CDL in a raffle a few years back. I decided to upgrade to a synthetic stainless BDL in 270. it shoots just under MOA. I have an older Howa in 243 that is a MOA shooter too. I have a m77 in 25-06 that only is a shooter with ballastic tips.

Savage, hands down. It is a rare one that won't at least approach MOA, many will better that by quite a bit. They have always been the most accurate rifles for the money on the market, though Remington gave them a good run for the money with the long out of production m788's. These days there's no real competition in their price ranges. With most production rifles today, even expensive ones, you are very lucky to get one that will do 2MOA out of the box, despite what their marketing departments tell you. But, 2-3MOA is good enough for a big game rifle at ranges of 300yds or less.

A gunsmith or you yourself both have some options for accurizing an iffy bolt action rifle. Among the things that can be done are floating the barrel, bedding the action, polishing the trigger surfaces or replacing the trigger completely, putting decent sights on it, recrowning the muzzle, rechambering or even rebarreling and truing up the action. How much good any or all of those things will do depends on the rifle and the man working on it. For me, the first thing I do is to give the working surfaces of the trigger a good cleaning and polishing. Often that's all a rifle needs to make me happy. Rarely will I replace a trigger unless it's for a target rifle, and I only rarely encounter one as I mostly focus on hunting rifles. If the crown looks OK under fairly high magnification, then I would float the barrel, shoot it to see if it helped. If not, then I'd bed it with a product like Brownell's Accuraglass gel, though more and more rifles today (like Savages) feature aluminum bedding blocks and/or pillars, which eliminates the need for fiberglass/epoxy bedding. That's the limit of what you can do at home without a lathe, action wrench, barrel vise, etc. With an inexpensive rifle you quickly reach a point of diminishing returns where you can never sell it for what you have in it.

You have to consider what you have to work with also and not have unreal expectations. Factory rifles generally do not get the best barrels put on them, and chambering and crowning are not always perfectly accomplished with automatic machinery. A while back you could get a kit to put a fiberglass Rolls front end on a Volkswagen - that made them prettier, but still a Volkswagen. I have to laugh when I see a Handi-rifle with a creepy gritty 8lb trigger and a scope on it that cost 5X+ what the rifle did. You know from your own experience that often a handloader can make as much difference in the accuracy of an out of the box rifle as any minor tweaks to the rifle itself.

I have had good luck with Savage and Really Good luck with Rugers.

Ken.

I have a Remington 700 5r
It shot moa or less from day one
The groups that were moa was my fault
I was just learning how to reload at the time

I know that you said no to Weatherby, but I assume you mean the Mark V. How about the Vanguard S2 series? They are in the 5 to 6 hundred range. Have a great trigger that you can adjust and don't have that stupid accutrigger/glock thing going on. I have several and they all shoot subMOA right from the box.

Savage !..................

My first bolt action big bore was a Remington model 700 in 30 06. It has been doing the job for over forty years. Four hundred yard shots on a steel plate, benched. Army snipers used to use the Remington so it must have been good.

Mine shoots well right out of the box so I have done nothing to it, but cannot help wondering what it might do if pillar bedded and trued up by a really good gunsmith. I believe in the idea that if it ain't broke don't fix it. Good gun good scope lots of dead deer. Is it a benchrest gun? No my 223 is. Again out of the box with a 6-18 Tasco. Trigger pull of a few ounces. I can hardly shoot it offhand. It goes off semiaccidentally.

Kind of hard to beat a 700 for sure.

Mark I also still think that the older guns shoot better. That 06 is over 40 years old. I should go look at a new one, but I would really have to scope it and shoot it, off the bench to make any comparison.