Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting For those of us who have to shoot in hot weather...

I do most of my shooting and load development after deer season. But lately, I've been at the range with a couple of 6.5's and my 280 Rem. Hot though! High 80's and 90's here and it takes forever to get through 5-10 shots.

So, I came up with this. Air mattress inflator, some clear tube and a bore guide. Luckily, I have power at my 250 yard range. When I'm at the long distance range, I use a battery powered inflator. Barrels cool off in 3-5 minutes just by pushing ambient air through them. I suppose if I really wanted to get fancy, I could put my inflator in a cooler with a bunch of frozen gel "ice" and blow cold air through it.

Anyway, I thought I'd pass this on, as it works great!

Nice work. I've been thinking about getting something like this.

Makes sense! We have have a wooden upright rack next to our bench and an electrical outlet, so we leave actions open and point a drum fan on the rifles.

That will certainly do it. I lived in East Texas for a good while(Jacksonville), and I know the heat and humidity y'all get to deal with!

Thanks Jordan. A bore guide and a quick trip to Walmart is the ticket. Be sure to run your tube all the way to the chamber end of the bore guide.

Very nice setup!

I park right next to the firing line. I hop into the car and the rifle and I both enjoy the air conditioning for a few minutes.

That's what I do, but good to have options.

It is often 85 degrees or hotter at dawn during the summer months. We try to stop shooting around 10 am with temps hitting 100 or so. An air pump moving ambient air might cool the barrel off but it takes quite a bit of time.

I got sick of waiting so I rigged up a 20 lb CO2 tank. This old picture shows a regulator but all that is necessary is a ball valve. Add a piece of rubber hose tapered at the tip and you are set to go. Local welding supply companies have the tanks for sale. Cools off a very warm barrel in 15 seconds.

Here in eastern Canada we don't get the hot weather as much so I can usually rotate through a few guns and let them cool in the shade. Works well enough.

In the past, I have used those gel filled freezer packs that have been frozen wrapped around a wooden dowel. I lay two or three of them over a hot bbl and that will cool them off pretty quick. I keep a few of those in a small cooler that been in the freezer all night.

Now that is slick! 😁

Nice! But AZ shooter knows what’s up!
Im in the same boat as him…Think Palm Springs is same if not worse…Really can’t do much for 3-4 months.
In summer the low of 80 - 85 is at 5 am before sunrise. 90 by 9, 100 by ten and so on, until we max out at 110-120.
So when I see guys talking about 85 that’s our late fall into early spring weather.

That's one thing I love about our winters; I rarely have to wait for barrels to cool. The summer requires some waiting.

we don't have the day heat out here like most of you down in the low 48, but when doing load development with my big magnums, barrels tend to get hot quick, my simple cooling fix without all the doodads cluttering up the bench ....... is a deep cooler full of ice & water, plug the barrel and stick in the cooler, shooting again in a couple minutes, when done I hose barrels with Rem oil, wipe and good to go

when the shootings done ya got somewhere to keep the beer cold

First cold barrel shot. Hope to get them cool from there, but if you are off with first shot, things ain't going well the rest of the range trip.

When I lived in Texas, I shot with a guy who used a 1gallon shop vac. He taped a small section of pool noodle to the end of the vacuum hose and would put it on the muzzle end. He sucked air through the barrel with it.

That's where I got the idea for my setup, but in a much smaller package.

I usually bring 4 or 5 different rifles to shoot. If your groups are getting too big after 5 shots, something is wrong. Don't blame it on the heat..

My shooting temperature here ranges from 20 degrees up to 105 degrees. If it's colder or hotter than that, I'm doing something else.

Cold:


Hot:

Had to confirm that load the other day. It was only 95 degrees. I also had 3 other rifles with me.

If you are shooting a barrel burner, like a fast 6mm, the op's little gadget may be a very good tool to use. The guys I shoot with in longrange comp use the little ones that you charge with a USB from a car cigarette lighter. Those are cool little gadgets.

Shooting that .308 in tomorrow's "long range comp" ? Looks like a no excuses rifle for sure. Please post some pictures! See bunny winds in the forecast.

Too bad bsa didn’t sign up for southwest nationals. We all couldn’t hung out did cool guy stuff.

Not to late to sign up. He will be on the waiting list, but with 360 shooters there are always cancellations. Shoot that .308 in FTR for 3 days and have enough record shots (125) for a LR classification card.