My first rifle I owned that I used for 3-gun sports a Leupold Vari-X II 1-4X20mm, but in the last few years I haven't been to a match with shots past 100 and rarely did I shoot at that distance. Almost everything was 25 and less at my (then) home club, and 75 and less the other places I shot with the exception of an occasional stage with a 100 yard shot. So, I switched to red dots, which are fine even out to 150-200.
Today I shot a match with a stage that had shots at 300 and 200 yards, so I broke out the ol' Colt with the Leupold. The thing is, I've never fired a shot past 240 yards, so 300 yards was completely new for me. We fired a total of 32 rounds (Virginia Count) at two IPSC metric targets, half at 300 from prone and half at 200, freestyle (I went prone). I had six total misses, but the rest were decent hits (not a lot of Ds) and about half As.
Since we didn't score the targets in between (yeah, I know, it's technically a violation of the rules to have that many shots per target, but no one minded), I don't from which distance my misses occurred, nor do I know if I was high/low/left/right. My hits were pretty much spread around the paper. And since I've never fired a round at 300 yards, I have no idea where my rifle hits even if I have perfect sight alignment, perfect trigger press, and perfect follow-through.
I do know that at 240 yards from prone using the magazine as a monopod (as I shot today), I can shoot an entire magazine (28 rounds) into about a six inch group in about the middle of the A zone of an IPSC metric target. The gear is a Colt 16 inch HBAR with the Leupold mounted in a once piece B-Square mount. Ammo is Black Hills blue box 68gr OTM. I'm zeroed at 50 yards, which also apparently yields a second zero pretty close to 240 yards.
I held on the center of the A zone at 200, and a little high (about the top of the A zone) at 300 (estimated because 4X is not enough for me to see that kind of detail). I'm guess most of my A hits were at 200 and all of my misses were at 300.
So ... obviously I need to shoot some more at 300 and beyond in order to do better, which is going to be tough since access to 300 yard ranges where I live is tough. I could run my load etc. through a ballistics computer to estimate where I need to hold with respect to elevation at 300 yards, and then confirm that estimate with some live fire when it's possible.
But ... what if my windage is off at 300 and greater, but perfect at 240 (the longest range I can shoot at my home club) and less? What would be the likely causes? A natural effect of the gyroscopic procession of the projectile? Or would it more likely be that my mount/scope isn't perfectly aligned with the receiver/barrel? How (other than shooting at really long range) can you tell if everything is aligned properly? And if it isn't what do you do about it?
I know I need to shoot some at 300 to figure out where I am hitting, but I'd like some thoughts to mull over for when I get to actually do that.
Bookmarks