Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting Ideas for dedicated LR rig

Sweet! Sounds like Minitucky shoots AND feeds! Who woulda thought a Montana could do both of those things!

A full-value wind of about 5mph that is a little shifty or gusty will play hell with your wind holds with those 55's. You're going to be rockin' once you get the 75's up and running.

No pics yet. I've got the scope sitting in a set of high rings right now. I should have the mediums by mid-week, so it'll probably have to wait until Friday for pictures. I'll snap a few while I'm looking for Yogi

Montuckys dont shoot or feed. Anyone with one needs to PM me immediately and I'll buy it for its weight in scrap steel

You lucky bastids got a spring yogi hunt eh, I'm jealous. We had one but years back our PC's axed it to win votes from Torontonians, and now our Lib-tard govt. wont re-instate it...no big game hunting till August 15th...

That is about what most of 'em are worth until you get a real barrel installed. Gotta love a "project" rifle that costs a grand out of the box.

Yeah, totally... Haha!

F*ck, and here I thought 25 rounds of 55 grainers into 12" at 440 yards off a back back WITH a burning hot barrel was decent from a Montana....




I better intsall a real barrel. TRUTH be told, I haven't shot any sub .75 MOA groups yet from it.

Though theres 350 rounds through it now, and I've never once cleaned the barrel, didnt even remove the packing oil. Its ok though, my break in procedure is almost done and Im about ready to clean it and see just WTF.

My barrel break in was to drag it behind the truck and then give it a kiss. Mine went .55" yesterday for 3 at 100. 5 into an 1.2" and I couldn't touch the barrel by the 4th.

Also good to note that my project rifle was 1500$. Tanner that sounds like a solid shooter, likely due to your break in procedure. have you got serious with the 140 speedwise yet? Also have you tried the 165s to any extent yet?

I need to buy mas 165s, then I'll dick with 'em. I think around 2900 they will shoot lights out. I would guess my 140s are doing low 3100s, I'll clock them real soon. I don't mind a bit slower load so long as it shoots well and is temp resilient! May mess with Magpro though,just for S&G's.

$600 Remington 700SPS in .243Win
$360 for a #3 barrel from the local benchrest smith/barrel maker
$300 (approx) for him to thread,chamber,headspace his barrel to .243AI
$215 for B&C Medalist M40
$40 for EGW angled base
$60 for Burris XTR 30mm rings
$280 for a 6.5-20x 44mm Vortex Viper on special from Doug at Cameraland
$120 for a Timney 510 trigger
Balance spent on tax/misc under-guessed prices most likely. If I had spare $$$, I'd spend it on bedding/trueing work from the smith, and then better glass.

That said, I've got a nice SPS-V already, and have seen no need to change its barrel or trigger.

Jord, the son of a biitch sent me 400 Amaxs! I suppose now I HAVE to take a dremel to my mag box/bolt stop....

Do it with a smile...

Here's the talley so far:

- $535 Remington 700SPS Varmint in .243Win
- Barrel - sticking with factory for now. No reason to change
- $150 (approx) for smith to chamber and headspace barrel to .243AI
- $575 for McMillan A5
- $20 for Weaver base
- $30 Burris Signature rings with canted inserts
- $1130 for a 6-24x50mm Vortex Viper PST FFP EBR-1 MOA (can't purchase scopes from Doug since he can't export them to me)
- Trigger - will come later. I'll suffer the X-mark pro for now, which is fairly decent after I made some adjustments
- Dyna-Gun Shield on the exterior metal and DBC in the bore


Before anybody calls me out, YES, the total is more than $2000. And yes, I had to throttle back the feel-good cosmetic expenses on a .223 project, in order to get this one set up how I wanted it, for what I feel is a decent LR rig.

Count your blessings and bust out the Dremel. I'm thinkin' 400 HPBT's would have been nice, but a .430 BC is always better than a .400 BC, so get to it.

The barrelled action is at Henry's for a re-chamber and re-crown job this week. The Viper PST is sitting in the basement waiting for the rifle to come back, and the McMillan A5 is on order. Have about 300ct 105AM and 300ct 105HPBT sitting on the shelf for testing and load development. Patiently waiting...

243 AI is an excellent long range candidate.

Finally got the barreled action back from the smith with the new chamber and crown. Last night I applied DGS and DBC and mounted up the scope, and will be doing some FF load testing soon. Now just waiting on the campfire bolt knob, 20MOA rail, and A5 stock!

Threw together some FF loads and hit the range yesterday. Here are some pics. Rifle weighs 11.5lbs as shown, including the bipod. Bore-sighted the scope at 25 yards, and then went to 100 and then 200 yards. Some targets were shot at 100 yards to get on paper, and the remaining groups were at 200 yards. Each target is labelled with the distance.













Can't wait to get the last little pieces together to complete the rig!

How do you like the optics in that scope?

Not apples to apples for a few reasons, but on 6x it's brighter and clearer than my FX3 6x42. I would say that the optics are a bit of a step up from the Bushnell Elite 4200 4-16x42, Hawke Frontier 4-16x42SF, and the VX3's that I've used.

Good to hear, thanks.

The only Vortex I have tried was a bottom end variable on a buddies 7mag and it was a POS. Stands to reason they make good high-end scopes.

Next time we do a shoot at Homestead you'll have to come out with that rifle!