NRA Gun Of The Week: Sauer S-101 Highland XTC

The J.P. Sauer & Sohn S-101 Highland XTC is a carbon-fiber-enriched bolt-action hunting rifle meant for long treks into the high country with chambering options that cover many of today’s and yesterday’s favorite cartridges. This is a multi-lug, turn-bolt rifle with barrel-to-bolt lockup that tips the scales at roughly 5.5 lbs. for short-action variants and slightly more for magnum-length actions. Watch the video above to see it in use.

Sauer creates this ultralight rifle while providing a fully-featured package with detachable box magazines and a full-length stock. And from front to back, inside to out, J.P. Sauer and Sohn includes features conducive to good shooting. At the butt end there is a soft, recoil-mitigating pad, an upswept comb for uncompromised adaptability and an open radius pistol grip with left- and right-side palm swells. Though there are no texturing treatments applied to the grip areas of the stock, Sauer does include a Schnabel fore-end up front with a forward-facing, Euro-style sling-attachment point.

Aiding in accuracy is Sauer’s aluminum bedding system within the carbon-fiber stock, in addition to the barrel’s cold hammer-forged rifling and concentric bolt lock-up. A six-lug-bolt arrangement includes dual, plunger-type ejectors, which work in concert with the sliding-plate extractor found on the unit’s face. The arrangement creates a fast and strong, push-feed action that, from our experience on the range, ran smoothly and flawlessly.

Our testers found the gun’s polymer, five-round detachable magazine is easy to load and simple to remove while being robust and lightweight. The addition of a threaded muzzle is a handy feature, too. The gun’s single-stage trigger comes from the factory with a pull weight of two pounds, and it is crisp.

Specifications
Manufacturer: J.P. Sauer & Sohn
Action Type: bolt-action, centerfire, repeating rifle
Chambering: .308 Win.
Receiver: steel
Barrel: 20"
Finish: Diamond-Like Carbon
Stock: carbon-fiber composite ERGO MAX
Sights: none; drilled-and-tapped
Magazine: three-round detachable box
Trigger: 2-lb. pull
Length: 40"
Weight: 5 lbs., 8 ozs.
MSRP: $3,000