Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Must.... pry.... harder...

The ol' bean seems to be allowing me to shoot once a week (not twice!) so that's what I've been doing. Conditions were good yesterday... meaning I'm caught up on shop work, and the athlete kid was off at a track meet and wasn't needing shuttle service after school... grin... and oh yeah, it was reasonably calm out and only raining
a little. So off I went to my 500-yd spot.

This spot has a plate at 450 yds that is relatively easy to get to for maintainance (repainting, rehanging, replacing) and I'm still working my way back to form so I've been focusing on it lately. I have a 600-yd plate that's been compromised by logging that I need to go retrieve and set up in a different spot... 600 yds is my real goal in hunting rifles. For this Imaginer 600 yds is a challenge in a hunting context- meaning first-shot hits almost always. 450-500 is pretty much in the bag as far as just hitting a vitals-sized plate.

Anyway, yesterday was fun and my 7 WSM, 7-08, and '06 were making the plate go "whop!" with brutal regularity. I drove over and repainted it a couple times so I could track group size. With cold barrels I was right around 3/4 MOA or better... which certainly doesn't suck, but my goal is to regularly print half MOA at those ranges so... it ain't enough to just PYCOTC, sometimes you gotta pry HARDER!

If anyone around here (Eugene area) wants to PYCOTC and whack steel, let me know, I've got several spots set up out to 800 yds or so, and I go up all the time. You get to Elmira, I'll drive from there... This 500-yd spot is great for gaining (or regaining in my case) confidence and skill at mid-ranges; it's got fun stuff to shoot at from around 250, to 500 yds. In my experience it's around 600 yds that chit gets squirrely fast... at least for me & my hunting-weight rifles. That makes it interesting-- and the next goal-- but sometimes it's just nice to hear the steel plate complain.

Crown Royal bag full of lentils is THE cool rear bag... lol...