Long range rifles

you need to yell “fore” so folks down range understand there is an incoming projectile

 

Basically, it was explained to me as keeping your eyes open and the trigger pinned to the rear so you can see exactly where your shot broke, and on certain setups where the shot landed. Useful for feedback on position/wind/elevation calls.

 

A few guys at work are into competition shooting, so we always have cool rifles in our office. This is todays show and tell.

 

https://guntalk.com/news/training/follow-through

Simply put, it's easy to move the rifle after the trigger breaks, but before the bullet leaves the barrel.

It also helps with spotting your shot/miss. I know when watching my competition videos, when I miss a second shot, its almost always because I didn't follow through and started pulling the bolt back and moving to the next position immediately.

 

Damn. That's almost the same as my competition rifle.

 

damn, you guys are awesome, thanks for all the info so fast. you guys went above and beyond and that fills in so many blanks for me. I'm going to screenshot all of this so I can reference it later. As far as my rifle goes it's chambered in .308. I figured .300 win mag would be too hard to learn on. To be completely honest I didn't know there were so many different subsets of long-range shooting. I do really want to get into some sort of competition but you guys are right the fundamentals at close to mid-range need to be ground out first. I think @corprin is probably right, for now, ill be better off with a nicer SFP. I guess if I'm hunting at any sort of range ill probably have the time to do what I need to do to get on target without exposed turrets and ffp. Regardless, it seems like I could go either way and be at the very worst okay just starting out.
I bought an old marlin model 60 from a pawn shop which is essentially what I have done the majority of my shooting on, but I was dumb and bought an absolutely atrocious scope off the shelf at Cabelas and I really have trouble getting good groups even at 50 yards. That's probably still more on me than the scope, but that's beside the point.
More questions- (sorry), as far as mills vs Moa goes, does it matter? I'm not familiar with mills at all but it seems to be what a lot of advanced shooters use. I could be totally off on that and is it just personal preference. I know you can use mills to range objects which might be useful for hunting but I guess in the civilian world with laser rangefinders that may not matter as much. The other thing is my base. Corprin mentioned getting a 20 moa base, which Im pretty sure i understand the reason for canted bases, but I also think I read somewhere that with "flatter shooting rounds" (I know absolutely 0 about ammunition) that it could be hard to get a zero at 100 yards, which seems counter-intuitive for hunting. Maybe I misunderstood what that meant, im not sure.
Thanks again to all of you for the information, gathering what I can from google/youtube leaves a lot of gray area that is only cleared up by actual experience, which without a scope on my rifle, I don't have haha.

 

...just found this thread and sub'd. while i'm a total amateur when it comes to long range, i'm always down for learning and checking out cool setups. Currently i'm running a R700 in 308. it was an ADL that I converted to the Hogue overmolded BDL. I can hit whatever I point at under 400M... does that make me a schlong ranger? honestly, i have never had a chance to go farther than 400M, but would love to try. Pics to come shortly!

 

308 is dope, and probably the single easiest cartridge to get to know and build a setup around, as it's been around forever in a precision rifle guise. Fundamentals first, then a long range class or lots of reading put into practice is a functional path to long range competition and hunting.

On the Marlin 60, I scored a 239/250 on the AQT at my last Appleseed, all irons (tech sights with an .042 aperture, to be precise). They're fantastic rifles to train with, so if you can get a scope setup together that works for it it'll teach you gobs about drift/drop on a cheap platform. I plan to scope mine too if I can get a scope mount that doesn't slide on the top of the rifle.

Mils VS MOA: I prefer Mils, as 1 unit per thousand units just makes sense to me, but both are valid. I advocate for Mils primarily because most tacticool shooting disciplines have moved that way, so communication at the range is simpler.

On canted bases, most any scope will have enough adjustment range to be able to zero with a moderately canted base like a 20MOA base. This picture should show what I mean fairly well.



As you can see here, you're just adjusting into the usually unused upward portion of scope adjustment, which means you get more downward, which means you can dial out further before resorting to holdovers.

Edit: IF you want to read more about long range shooting, trends, gear, tech, etc. The wiki/sidebar in the /r/longrange subreddit is chock full of info for beginners, precisionrifleblog.com is dedicated to primarily ELR and PRS shooting but has lots of generally applicable info. Additionally, these four

$20 Precision Long Range Shooting And Hunting: Getting started, caliber and equipment choices

(one)

$20 Precision Long Range Shooting And Hunting v2: Fundamentals, ballistics and reading the wind

(two)

$20 Precision Long Range Shooting And Hunting: Choosing and using a Long Range Rifle Scope

(three)

$20 Precision Long Range Shooting And Hunting: Precision Rifle Handloading (Reloading)

(four) books by Mr Jon Gillespie-Brown are books I've seen highly recommended as gospel. Additional sources are

$23 Long Range Shooting Handbook: The Complete Beginner's Guide to Precision Rifle Shooting

Ryan Cleckner's book on Long Range Shooting, his podcast, and the entirety of the (probably a bit elitist, but still smart) Sniper's Hide forums.

 

@jttx As for MIL/MOA, no it doesn't matter...until you get to a class or competition. Functionally, it doesn't matter, but MILS have won the battle and its what every one is shooting. If you go MOA, you'll be speaking a different language than every one else. The whole shooting line will be on MILS and if any one gives you corrections, it will be in MILS. If you want to know what someone was holding for wind, they'll likely give it to you in MILS. It's been a couple years since I ran into any one who was shooting an MOA scope.

If you are going to shoot on your own, it doesn't matter much, you'll get used to whatever you have.

 

sounds like mills are the way to go. Thanks for the visual @EubeenHadd

 

No problem. Definitely look into some of those resources I mentioned further down the post in the edit, as 90% of my long range knowledge base spawned from those sources and the Vortex Nation Long Range 1001/1002/1003 podcasts, which are also good sources of info (if skewed towards Vortex products for obvious reasons)

 

@EubeenHadd lists some good resources. I'd also list the whole Sniper101 series by tiborasaurusrex on youtube (over 100 vids that are really in depth).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJUaiRIEduNXoal2_PkBZi0vDCIcEPxUn

 

ah hahah gun porn

 

I work at a college, what do you think they would say if I brought mine in?

 

Depends on what college. In Montana, you're prob a lot better off than during your ROTC gig.

 

I’d def second this and @EubeenHadd’s list of books. I primarily shoot recreationally, and many others have had amazing input so no reason to add to. I can confirm that the videos, forums and books (read some, not all) mentioned are all great resources. Read, read, read, watch, take notes, and shoot, shoot, shoot...

 

lol Montana State, work for Veterans Upward Bound but by no means a gun friendly campus. I’m sure the cadets have their ceremony rifles and M4 paint guns like all ROTC but still...

 

If it makes you feel better, I did pretty dang well with a pretty basic 16in AR platform w/ a non-turreted SFP scope in this past competition out to 865 yds and beat fellow average joes with an open class 6.5CM setup 5x what mine cost. Work on the skill, that's where you earn your money back.

I prefer mils, mainly because that is what the majority of precision scope reticles come in. Sure Nightforce has the MOAR reticle, but like it was said earlier, most miss correction calls will give you your adjustment in mils anyway, so why make it hard on yourself? Just make sure if you get a mil reticle, your turrets have mil adjustments too. The bane of my existence when I was a college kid with LR aspirations was having a mil reticle then trying to dial in MOAs.

 

VT wasn't exactly gun friendly either, but I can tell you the reaction when you were taking one between your car and the armory was a lot less severe than if you tried to do the same thing at UVA in Charlottesville where the old money kids went.

 

Same at Princeton. We had to use M1s for any flag details. Anything too tactical was nuts. Even had campus police called for doing drills with M4s in our own parking lot.