Daughter #3 will be joining us on our annual Wyoming antelope hunt this fall, along with her fiancée. This will be her first big game hunt and, for that matter, her first hunt period.
Along with her older sisters, I got her started shooting when she was about 4 or 5. She now lives out of state, is a practicing attorney and has several of her own guns including a Kimber .45 and a Rock River LAR-15. Last week she was visiting and Sunday we were joined by one of my sons-in-law for some time at the range. The primary purpose was to help her choose a rifle for the antelope hunt. I had taken my .243 Win, .257 Roberts, .280 Rem, one of my .30-06s and my Ruger .308 Scout for her to try. After checking zeros at the 100 yard line, we headed to the 600 yard range.
We started Daughter #3 out with the Savage 11 FXP3 in .243 with 95g SST’s at 2925fps. While not especially zippy, that load has proven to be very accurate, printing about .5” in my 3-shot tests. For some reason she had problems with the clays on the 300 yard berm, consistently drifting just to the left due to a light breeze. She then switched to my old Ruger in .257 Roberts with 110g AccuBonds running 3163fps and stuck with it for the rest of the day. This has been my favorite rifle since I got it and all of my girls have liked it as well. After busting a couple of the clays at 300 she decided to skip the steel at 500 and go for the 12” steel at 600. First shot was just off the left edge, due to not compensating for the breeze. Next was just off the right edge due to over-compensation. The next three rang the steel with hits grouped just left and a tad below dead center. Not bad for someone that hasn’t shot that rifle in a year or two.
Son-in-law and I were taking turns breaking clays at 300 and ringing the 600 yard steel using one of my .30-06’s and a .280 Remington. We also tried clays at 100 using my .308 Ruger Scout in its new synthetic stock and the new brake I had installed the night before. The scope was removed so all we had was the factory ghost ring and front blade. (Note for self – get some bright paint for that blade before taking it to the range again!) While I consistently hit just off the edges at 2 o’clock, son-in-law consistently broke the clays. I hate to be outshot with my own rifles but was glad son-in-law was doing so well.
The wind started kicking up just after noon and we decided to call it a day. Hopefully we will get her at least one more range session before the Wyoming antelope hunt but if we don’t I think she will be fine as long as we keep the range down to 300 or less.
