Long range rifles

I'd prob be happy with the Caldwell version. I just need to know velocity and direction for god sakes. A calibrated piece of string would make me content.

 

That guy showed up at one of our rifle clinics, still had the price tags hangin from all his kit, kinda like Minnie Pearl

 

I would get a kestrel then to start. That might be a basic way of thinking, but if you progress, you’ll want high Gusting averages, and low and average speed.
I use the elite but I’ve never forgot how to do any of the math. To include a wind solution.

 

Signed up for a small private match Saturday. Just had superficial shoulder surgery, hope I can hack.

 

https://cmpauction.thecmp.org/detail.asp?id=5678&n=XM-3-Sniper-Rifle-S6539515

....or stay married?

 

Thats a tempting bid. But you have a pretty nice arrangement with wifey and Id hate for you to lose your armory.

 

That's a hard choice. Do you want to pick up a piece of military sniper history, or are you willing to build a clone yourself?

 

$10k, because we know it’ll go that high, is a lot of beans for a rifle I’d very seldom shoot, if ever.

I have some parts of history already in my collection, so there is that draw to it. If this were an M24 I’d be all over it. It is pretty sweet and will be worth far more than what CMP sells it for in even a years time. I’m super excited to see CMP selling off recent surplus sniper gear. Wondering if there will be any M40s and M24s coming off the line and sold to public.

I also wish “once a mg always an mg” would be shunted. 120sec with a mill, band saw, grinder, hell Dremel tool, can demil an M14 into a permanent semi-auto rifle. Even with the destruction of all those rifles in the 2010s... the military is still sitting on an obscene number.

Mostly posted for discussion sake.

 

Yup. And realistically, you could throw any old NXS 3.5-15 on a GA Precision Gladius, have a rifle built to similar specs and possibly higher quality for about 6 grand, and get the same experience from it. And you won't feel bad shooting it til the barrel is shot out.

 

Man I hate gambling stages. Miscounted my rounds and lost 4pts. That 4pts took me from 10th to 18th. Sigh.


Day was good. Temps were low and I was burning up an unproven load recipe, 139 Scenar over 42.0 of h4350. Couldn’t get any guess of MV to work with what I was getting for actual drop between the 455 and 835yrd target groups.

Temps were 24F-30F as the day progressed, but the mirage was saying the sun was doing a lot more to the air than the temps would suggest.

Winds were a fluctuating 3-5mph full value to 10-12 half value, which was giving me .2 and 1.3 mil at the 835. Yeah that was fun.

Finally got shit sorted about half way through the match. Thankfully I went in knowing I’d do shitty so I’m happy with having 10 people behind me. Last stage was a 0/0 on your dials, hold for wind and elevation only. Targets were hit to advance, starting with 455 then 835, back to 455, back to 835, so on and so forth. Actually did better on that stage than many others, also on the off hand switch stage I was hitting more left hand left eye.... figures.

I was catching my splash thanks to the added weight of my chassis and zoomed out a but, but I do need a brake to better control the recoil flip. Barreled action leaves tomorrow for threading and recrown. I’ve got an orphan PWS FSC30 I can spin on, that should help.

Buddy and I are also going to do some proper load development across his Labradar, then work up some proper ballistics tables.

My fundamentals are still strong, just got to remember how to put it all together.

 

If you need help with a quick reference wind chart for your gun, I can help you get sorted once you get a solid drop and BC. I use a leader arm board and try to time the high wind, but you know how it is. Anyways one less thing to figure out.
I’ve miss counted rounds at matches too, forgotten gear and realized 250 miles away, ect
So can’t help with that.

I got good ways of figuring out spin for particular guns/barrels/ twist too if you want to add it in to your dope.

 

Attached my orphan Aimpoint to the M14 and got her doped in for a 25/250 zero yesterday. Also verified zero with my m4gery.

 

Hi yall, I asked you guys a few months back for advice on purchasing a scope, and got lots of good advice so here I am again crawling back for help. I settled on a vortex viper Hst 4-16x44 on a Savage 110 Storm in .308 and its exactly what I feel like I need for a combo hunting/long-range scope. In college so can't afford to specialize one gun for one activity.The big issue today is that I cannot get a consistent enough group to feel comfortable taking it hunting or taking it out past 100 yards. I've put about 140 rounds through it, and through a medley of user problems and trial and error I have finally gotten the rifle down to where it should be shooting perfectly. Action screws, scope mounting, etc. I have used a couple of different types of ammo and have had mixed results. But generally, the trend is some groups are great, some are awful. I'm not above the reality that I'm an inexperienced shooter who may not yet have the skill to shoot consistent groups, but the drastic variability makes me think that something else is going on. Today I was using Hornady 150g performance. It is only occurring to me now in hindsight that may be using such a round could have something to do with the inconsistencies.
Here are my first two groups at 100yds.
You can see my first shot, cold bore, is way up top left seems excessively inaccurate to me but I don't know. The next three shots 2,3,4, are all touching. This is one of the better groups I have ever shot. I am thinking that today might be a good day at the range. My next 3 shot group, is extremely disappointing. You can see them below, 6,7,&8. Pretty rough.
Here is my next group, the point of aim being the red lettering below the group.
This group is not as horrendous but is still discouraging.

Target change. About ten minutes go by and I'm assuming the barrel cooled down while that was going on. I ask the guy next to me why I'm so inconsistent and he gives me a convoluted explanation about the wind-down range being affected by the berms and creating a wind eddy. Fair enough, I decide to do my best to wait for the wind to die down before I shoot.
1,2,3, a great group for me. Once again I am excited and decide maybe the rifle likes this round, so I make adjustments.
Shot 4, Point of impact was right on the point of aim, and I get my hopes up. Still waiting on the wind, the next two shots are top right. The third group speaks for itself. Also very bad. WHY GOD WHY CAN'T I SHOOT MORE THAN ONE GOOD GROUP AT A TIME.

If anyone has any solutions or ideas as to what is going on any and all thoughts are appreciated. Every time I leave the range I end up pissed off feeling like I just wasted 50 dollars. The gun should be fine, the scope is tight, action screws tight, I try really hard to focus on my breathing and trigger squeeze on every shot, I don't anticipate. I just have no idea what the hell I'm doing wrong. Is it wind? Do I need to let the barrel cool before each group? 150gr too light? Am I just a bad shot? If I am that's fine, I just am tired of not being able to tell if it's me or another variable. At this point, I'm ridiculously frustrated as I really expected to be doing more with this rifle at this point. Even if I never have the skills necessary to shoot long-range I feel like any idiot can be more consistent at 100 yards. Any advice is sincerely appreciated, sorry for the long post.

 

Most of it is you. Don’t feel bad, the Internet is full of bullshit, so people that post their groups are just doing the whole my dick is bigger thing. There’s an unrealistic expectation sometimes and people are to quick to blame components. That’s not to say there aren’t people that are good. I’ve placed in nationals and I’m a 3/4 moa shooter. Meaning I can shoot 3/4 moa any day of the week. I can usually do better most days.
There’s people that shoot bug holes any day of the week.

So first, are you setting your parallax correctly?

Your ammo of choice might have the potential to group ok, but did you plan on using it for long range? Because a 100y group and a bullet used for long range is not the same thing.


Hows your recoil management? Are you able to spot you shots through the scope, or do you lose the target when the shot goes off?

No, wind has little to no effect at 100y. There IS something called a no wind zero. This is used to get a solid .1 mil zero before making a wind chart that’s .1 accurate. Right now I wouldn’t worry about that, for obvious reasons, and I wouldn’t worry about it because a second focal plain isn’t going to be used the same way. It takes to long to dial and shoot to .1 of a mil in changing wind patterns. Again, non of this has anything to do with 100y work.

You said everything was torqued down, but is it? Blue loctite is your friend.

Last, it takes sometime for a barrel to break in. It can be upward to 200 rds, and be a little as 30.

Yes you want the barrel to cool down, but between groups. You should be able to print a 3 round group even with that borderline pencil barrel. There are ways of getting a accurate cold bore prediction, but it doesn’t apply to groupings.

Try a five shot group. 3 rounds per group really doesn’t tell you a lot. You can usually tell which is you with experience, but you also want to see what your SD’s are looking like.

 

First, it’s you, but that is perfectly okay. You’re further than most because you are asking for help AND it’s here, where the douche baggery is low. It’s not a waste of ammo/money, but it’s frustrating as hell.... you should have seen my shit-show Saturday... was embarrassing.

You look to have the accustock. When you say your action screws, are you including torquing of the accuwedge screw?

Is your barrel floated? Slip a dollar between the barrel and stock and slide to the action. Does it hit anything before just about the recoil lug?

What are you shooting from? Bench, prone, standing, etc? What is your rifle resting on, what is your posture? If you are shooting off bags or a bipod, does that push the fore end of the stock in contact with the barrel? Are you resting on the barrel, not the stock?

If you are trying to tighten up groups try bagging the front and rear of the rifle. It should sit in the bags and stay more or less on target without you touching it. Once there slip behind with your firing hand in normal spot. Non-firing arm gets curled under with your hand at your stock/shoulder. Using your body to move the rifle about the front support, and that rear hand for the small motions into target.

You want as stable of a position as you can get, and remove the you from the equation. Let the bags do the work At this point you should see how the rifle moved on target with your breath and pulse.

Unless you are in a wind storm, your groups wont be that open from wind alone at 100yrd. I wouldn’t trust s fellow shooter on the range for advise unless they take the time to watch what you are doing. Not saying he’s full of it, but highly unlikely it’s just bad wind calls.

But yeah. Let us know what you are working with. It’s likely something mind numbingly simple.

 

Okay, I'm happy to hear that. I would rather it be something I can improve over something with my gun. Everything Is in with Loctite, parallax is good. I figured the out of the box ammo would work for now as I work up past 100 to 3&400, as I'm pretty sure that's not even considered long-range by most of your standards. My recoil management is admittedly poor, and I think I need to get a bipod to help with that? Fundamentally I'm not sure what to do.

 

I would refer to what coprin mentioned about bags. This will help with getting steady.
Also here’s some visual aid and some explanation better than I can give with just words alone. I can say with confidence that a bipod will not help with poor recoil fundamentals. It with bags or a bag up front and a bag in the rear will help with steadying the rifle. Something else to work on. I wouldn’t get to overwhelmed with all of this. Start there with the basics. Building a shooting position, getting a natural point of aim, dry fire. You can do this at home and check how steady you are. On the range, do the same thing, but you work on your recoil management in addition.

I will double ask about your parallax, you are checking it by swing your head side to side? Not relying on the numbers on the knob?paralax has worst effect at short range than at long range.

Lastly, I noticed you don’t have a bubble level on your scope. It helps immensely. It’s not essential, I never had on in the military but I had to learn how to plumb the reticle to the earth and know what acceptable error was. Levels all and all are just much easier to negotiate with. Cant is only mild at 100y and is more of an issue at long range, 3 degrees of error is about 1 inch at 200y, but logic would have it that the inconsistency from shot to shot and readjustment of the rifle from lack of recoil management with induce small degrees of error that compound.
https://youtu.be/whVH-FaZyQs
https://youtu.be/i5hvm1tbDyg

 

Im shooting off a bench, with the range's sandbags. Today I filled up a sock with popcorn seeds and used that as a rear rest and It worked a lot better as the bags feel really stiff and hard to manipulate. I don't think there's enough pressure to unfloat the barrel but I'll check next time. I'm not familliar with the accuwedge screw, but I have all of them torqued to 40.

 

Crazy how this thread is still going 6 years late after such a simple (and vague) original post

 

Got it. I will look into a level and watch those videos when I get home. I wasn't even really aware of recoil management fundamentals so I will work on that.