Something interesting happened today. A buddy invited me out to his 1000 yard range. I was planning to sight in my 416 Remington at 100 yards as I had to remount my scope after the mounts rattled loose. I had just loctited all my scope mount bolts on my 4 power votex viper. We headed up the mountain and set up the hood of my SUV in line with the 1000 yard target There really wasn't an area to set up for 100. My buddy let me use his phone app to calculate vertical adjustment for the .416 Hornady Interbond round nose and I estimated my load of 79gn RL-15 to be 2380 fps. The program showed 72 MOA from my 100 yard zero. I dialed the turret up 72 MOA, got on the sand bags on my hood and fired. Dust flew around the target and my buddy confirmed the hit. It hit low on the 52" x 30" plate. None of us could believe it and were estatic. First shot, using a ballistic app on a phone, without re-zeroing the rifle after remounting the scope, in safari rifle. I adjust up 1 click (1/2 MOA) and let another go. Another hit near the center of the plate. We drove down to check out the plate. It was difficult to distinguish the splatters from their 308 and my 416, but 2 has a distinguished round .375 size lead stamp shape instead of a bb size center like the others.
Not a hunting scenario, but I was damn proud (and dumbfounded) to hit a 1000 yard target with a 4 power scope in a dangerous game caliber with a round nose bullet, a remounted scope that wasn't re-zeroed, and a guessed velocity.
Tried again about 15 minutes later and went through 15 more rounds without a hit. A slight breeze did pick up so maybe that round nose bullet just went way off with that, maybe I just got lucky, maybe the barrel was fouled now changing the point of impact, or maybe my scope bases loosened again. I'm not sure what changed, but I may try it again another time.
