Post by Bill on Oct 12, 2011 9:07:34 GMT -5
Ok, I buy a new Remington Sendero in .264 Win Mag so I can go hunting Mule Deer that #1 I know are going to be some trophy size Mulie's.
#2 are going to be at some pretty long ranges. 300-800 yds.
Then I work up a load that shoots a 140 grain bullet at 3200 FPS.
Then I practice with it until I can hit every target on first shot between 100 and 800 yds and verify my drops at those distances.
Then I go out Sunday and shoot it again for practice to get me better with it. One of the guys I work with also wanted to come along with me and my hunting partner and practice with his .308 Win that he hunts with. He knows we also do a lot of shooting with our .308's buy mostly just for practice as I nor my hunting partner have ever hunted with the .308 but do shoot over 1000 rounds a year each through it just for play.
So after we do a bit of shooting at different ranges with the .264 Win Mag we get out the .308's to play with.
We have targets set out all the way from 100 to 800 anyway so we just use those.
We are set up just in some pines and the weather is nice and not too hot or too cold. Wind is about 7 to 10 mph from the east with very little wind in the first 200 yds. Elevation is about 5000 ft.
We had punched up all the spec's into the laptop and had our drop sheets lying there next to us as we had done with our .264 Win Mags. My hunting partner and I have identical .264's with only the scopes being different.
The .308 Wins were all three Remington 700's but two were SPS Varmints and mine was the 700 VSF. All three had stock changes on them. One a Bell and Carlson Medalist with adjustable butt and comb and one a H-S Precision also with adjustable butt and comb and the last one a H-S Precision stock that is the standard model.
One has a MK 4 Tactical 8.5X25 and one has a Nightforce 5.5X22 and one a Supersniper 6.5X20. Barrels and actions stock except for trigger jobs on them.
After we verified our scope setting at 100 yds I went directly to the 300 yd target. A 10's wide rock about 16"s high. I called the top left quarter of the rock and the kid that we brought with us who is an ex Marine corp sniper was on the spotting scope said he was on the target I fired the shot. Perfect hit. I locked in a second round and tripped the trigger and again a perfect hit. Well my hunting partner who is very very competitive could not take it and he flopped down prone next to me with his .308 and the game was on.
Derek our marine sniper would call a target at one of the ranges from 300 to 800 and we would race to get on the target and try to bang it first. I finally took Matt out at the 800 yd target with a first shot hit followed by 3 more. Took Matt about 5 shots to get on it as he had miscounted his drops on his scope and had to go back and verify his scope setting and then redial the right amount to get a hit. Beleave me I quit at that one. ;D Always quit when your ahead. Well Derek took over my position along side Matt and it was again game on. We had a 300 yd reactive steel target set up at 300 which consists of 2 steel 6" targets. When you hit one the other one pops up and then you hit it and it flops down and the other pops up. Those two began a game of I will pop it up first and if you don't hit yours I will. Those two hammered it until Derek blew the rear 6" target literately off the stand. It had been double welded and reinforced to the point we didn't think it could be broken. Wrong. Well this caused the front target to flop down and pretty much ruined the game, ALMOST. These two then started to bang away and the front bar that protects the lever that makes it work the targets back and forth from being hit. It was 6"s high and 1.5"s wide. About 10 rounds each later Matt conceded. Figured they better quit before there was nothing left to rebuild. ;D I figured that the bar had taken about 6 hits from each of them and when we looked at it when we went to pick it up when we left I wasn't wrong. Its going to need a major overhaul.
Derek decided to let me shoot and so I took his position next to Matt and he and I again started the game of Derek calling a target and a race to hit it first. After about 20 rounds each and without many misses by either of us ;D (I was cheating) Matt was dialing like crazy and I just used the bar's on the NPR 2 reticle and only dialing when I had to. He finally caught on and started working on doing that also.
Derek then said he had just ranged a rock at 1200 yds and directed us to it and the race was on again. Problem. We had only set up our drop table for the targets we had. Neither of us wanted to stop the game and go run another set of drops. So it was estimate the drop and bang away and correct for the miss. Derek called my first shot dead on at 6:00 but could not see a hit. He said he followed my bullets vapor trail right into the target but could not see the hit through the spotting scope. Well Matt and I fired 4 rounds each with the same results. All rounds at the 6:00 but no sign of a hit. My last shot was again 6:00 and dead on but no hit be Derek said I took off a branch of a tree 20 feet above the ground in front of the target. Well we decided we had to go look at the rock and see what was going on. We drove down to the rock and after inspection found not one single mark on it. I asked Derek where the branch he seen come down was at as I didn't see a tree anywhere around the rock. Well after some searching we found the tree and the branch. It was at the 1050 yd mark. And I was hitting the ground with the bullet at about 1125 yds.
The reason Derek could not see the hits was there was a rise in the ground at 1000 yds that made it impossible to see a hit until you hit the target on the next rise. We ran the drops and at its apex the bullet was 46 feet above the line of sight and it was dropping like a rock past 1000 yds to the point that I would hit where the ground dropped away with the bullet coming in at about a 45 degee angle making walking the bullet into the target with spotting shots impossible unless you hit within about 3' of the target. After we went back and ran the drops and graphed the trajectory and looked at the way the ground lay we now think we can hit that rock.
The funniest thing about the whole day was when we were loading back up to go home Matt looked at me and said "Are you thinking what I'm thinking" and I just answered "Yup" Why did we buy .264 Win Mags in brand new Rem 700 Sendero's to go hunt mule deer. Their isn't a heck of a lot we can't kill with the .308 Win's out to around 900 and possibly 1000 yds.
We all agreed though. This was one of the best days of shooting that any of us had had in a long long time.
#2 are going to be at some pretty long ranges. 300-800 yds.
Then I work up a load that shoots a 140 grain bullet at 3200 FPS.
Then I practice with it until I can hit every target on first shot between 100 and 800 yds and verify my drops at those distances.
Then I go out Sunday and shoot it again for practice to get me better with it. One of the guys I work with also wanted to come along with me and my hunting partner and practice with his .308 Win that he hunts with. He knows we also do a lot of shooting with our .308's buy mostly just for practice as I nor my hunting partner have ever hunted with the .308 but do shoot over 1000 rounds a year each through it just for play.
So after we do a bit of shooting at different ranges with the .264 Win Mag we get out the .308's to play with.
We have targets set out all the way from 100 to 800 anyway so we just use those.
We are set up just in some pines and the weather is nice and not too hot or too cold. Wind is about 7 to 10 mph from the east with very little wind in the first 200 yds. Elevation is about 5000 ft.
We had punched up all the spec's into the laptop and had our drop sheets lying there next to us as we had done with our .264 Win Mags. My hunting partner and I have identical .264's with only the scopes being different.
The .308 Wins were all three Remington 700's but two were SPS Varmints and mine was the 700 VSF. All three had stock changes on them. One a Bell and Carlson Medalist with adjustable butt and comb and one a H-S Precision also with adjustable butt and comb and the last one a H-S Precision stock that is the standard model.
One has a MK 4 Tactical 8.5X25 and one has a Nightforce 5.5X22 and one a Supersniper 6.5X20. Barrels and actions stock except for trigger jobs on them.
After we verified our scope setting at 100 yds I went directly to the 300 yd target. A 10's wide rock about 16"s high. I called the top left quarter of the rock and the kid that we brought with us who is an ex Marine corp sniper was on the spotting scope said he was on the target I fired the shot. Perfect hit. I locked in a second round and tripped the trigger and again a perfect hit. Well my hunting partner who is very very competitive could not take it and he flopped down prone next to me with his .308 and the game was on.
Derek our marine sniper would call a target at one of the ranges from 300 to 800 and we would race to get on the target and try to bang it first. I finally took Matt out at the 800 yd target with a first shot hit followed by 3 more. Took Matt about 5 shots to get on it as he had miscounted his drops on his scope and had to go back and verify his scope setting and then redial the right amount to get a hit. Beleave me I quit at that one. ;D Always quit when your ahead. Well Derek took over my position along side Matt and it was again game on. We had a 300 yd reactive steel target set up at 300 which consists of 2 steel 6" targets. When you hit one the other one pops up and then you hit it and it flops down and the other pops up. Those two began a game of I will pop it up first and if you don't hit yours I will. Those two hammered it until Derek blew the rear 6" target literately off the stand. It had been double welded and reinforced to the point we didn't think it could be broken. Wrong. Well this caused the front target to flop down and pretty much ruined the game, ALMOST. These two then started to bang away and the front bar that protects the lever that makes it work the targets back and forth from being hit. It was 6"s high and 1.5"s wide. About 10 rounds each later Matt conceded. Figured they better quit before there was nothing left to rebuild. ;D I figured that the bar had taken about 6 hits from each of them and when we looked at it when we went to pick it up when we left I wasn't wrong. Its going to need a major overhaul.
Derek decided to let me shoot and so I took his position next to Matt and he and I again started the game of Derek calling a target and a race to hit it first. After about 20 rounds each and without many misses by either of us ;D (I was cheating) Matt was dialing like crazy and I just used the bar's on the NPR 2 reticle and only dialing when I had to. He finally caught on and started working on doing that also.
Derek then said he had just ranged a rock at 1200 yds and directed us to it and the race was on again. Problem. We had only set up our drop table for the targets we had. Neither of us wanted to stop the game and go run another set of drops. So it was estimate the drop and bang away and correct for the miss. Derek called my first shot dead on at 6:00 but could not see a hit. He said he followed my bullets vapor trail right into the target but could not see the hit through the spotting scope. Well Matt and I fired 4 rounds each with the same results. All rounds at the 6:00 but no sign of a hit. My last shot was again 6:00 and dead on but no hit be Derek said I took off a branch of a tree 20 feet above the ground in front of the target. Well we decided we had to go look at the rock and see what was going on. We drove down to the rock and after inspection found not one single mark on it. I asked Derek where the branch he seen come down was at as I didn't see a tree anywhere around the rock. Well after some searching we found the tree and the branch. It was at the 1050 yd mark. And I was hitting the ground with the bullet at about 1125 yds.
The reason Derek could not see the hits was there was a rise in the ground at 1000 yds that made it impossible to see a hit until you hit the target on the next rise. We ran the drops and at its apex the bullet was 46 feet above the line of sight and it was dropping like a rock past 1000 yds to the point that I would hit where the ground dropped away with the bullet coming in at about a 45 degee angle making walking the bullet into the target with spotting shots impossible unless you hit within about 3' of the target. After we went back and ran the drops and graphed the trajectory and looked at the way the ground lay we now think we can hit that rock.
The funniest thing about the whole day was when we were loading back up to go home Matt looked at me and said "Are you thinking what I'm thinking" and I just answered "Yup" Why did we buy .264 Win Mags in brand new Rem 700 Sendero's to go hunt mule deer. Their isn't a heck of a lot we can't kill with the .308 Win's out to around 900 and possibly 1000 yds.
We all agreed though. This was one of the best days of shooting that any of us had had in a long long time.