Thanks All.  The problem of my Savage shutting down while ridding was getting worse so I pulled the carb today to take a look inside.  Sure enough I found the 3 Cs (Crud, Crap, and Corrosion).  So off to the parts store I go for a can of carb cleaner.  

After giving the insides of the carb a good bath I decide to try the white spacer mod to get rid of the backfire.  Well both projects were a success the bike no longer shuts down at high speed and it no longer backfires when I shut it off.  

For the curious my 96 Savage has the original air box, a K&N direct replacement air filter, all of the stock jets, and stock exhaust.  I used 2 stainless steel washers (found in a pack of mixed size washers bought at Radio Shack) which equals ½ the thickness of the white spacer, set the float at 6 mm instead of 6.9 mm, and set the idle mixture to 3 turns out.  

Thanks SuzukiSavage.com members for all the great reference material giving me the information I needed to make my Savage what I want it to be.

There is nothing like a little success to make one feel good.

Well done.

Back up there Hoss .. it is pilot jet running to lean in the low throttle range that creates the backfire... 90 % of the time anyway ... and we are assuming that the exhaust has no leaks.   So the likely solution is to richen the pilot circuit.  If you are more than 2 turns out on the pilot adjusting screw, then go for the next larger jet.  Mikuni reommends that you you use the jet that keeps the adjusting screw as close to 1.5 turns out as possible, when the carb is running as desired...with no backfire.