woodchukhntr,
While minor pitting near the muzzle will do nothing to enhance accuracy, I doubt it will hurt it much either.
If the asking price is below market value, the seller has probably taken the blemishes into account, when setting his price.
I realize my story is a fluke, but back in the mid 80s, I ran across a scoped US 30/40 Krag carbine. Cosmetically, it was pretty nice, and the stock was original and looked as new. A look down the bore showed it had shot a lot of corrosive priming with little or no cleaning. He only wanted 60 bucks, so I bought it, figuring it was cheap enough to justify a new barrel.
I took it home, and after cleaning the bore, the pitting looked even worse, but the rifling was strong, so I took it to the range. It was no tack driver, but I have had rifles that couldn't match the 2 1/2 inch groups that old girl shot !!! This surprised me, because I was expecting groups in the minute of barn neighborhood ?
You know ? I never did put another barrel on it, but the pits always collected a lot of copper. 10 years later, when I got sick of buying copper solvent, I took it to a gun show, and a dealer gave me $200 for it. I told him the bore was bad, but he wanted the stock for a nice carbine he had with bad wood.
If the price is right, I would buy that Savage, but take Hank08's advice, and see if he will knock a few more bucks off the price.
As they say, "You get what you pay for", but once in a while, buying a flawed item will fetch much more than the price would indicate ?
