Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires SK Rifle Match

I see dozens of lots of SK ammo in use every year in silhouette.

Standard Plus is the default and normally very good. The Rifle Match should be a step up but often is not. It is extremely lot sensitive. Even Center X is lot sensitive.

I have seen a single lot of rifle match that in an Anschutz 5418 with 3-groove Benchmark I used to own, shooting at 77m turkey distance? Fire one shot, aim at that bullet hole for succeeding shots and it would just make that bullet hole "blacker". I have seen other lots that were so bad that guys wouldn't want to use it even for practice.

If you want SK / Lapua ammo that is safely a step up from Standard Plus you need to go to Midas.

In fairness the “really bad” rifle match was 5 or 6 years ago. The stuff we have seen in the past couple years has been uniformly very good. Even the “low end” standard plus has shot well. Maybe not Midas good but you don’t feel compromised using it in any match short of Nationals level stuff.

Some of the best silhouette shooters I know (among the best on the planet) will use Standard Plus for 40m chickens and 60m pigs, and possibly 77m turkeys. Then they use Midas for 100m rams and maybe turkeys. I do the same for big shoots but I am not as good as them!

I look after the order for my club every year. Out of 25+ cases of SK? One or perhaps two will be rifle match. It’s just not consistently worth the extra money over standard plus.

And come to think of it, it’s not the great shooters that try rifle match. It’s normally the guy that has been shooting for 2-3 years and thinks if he buys ammo better than standard plus he will score better. Then ultimately if they improve they go to the standard plus / Center X or Midas combo.

Here is a target shot with my competition rifle. Two 10-shot groups at 100 m at the bottom with standard plus, one at the top with Midas. And the top and bottom groups in particular really demonstrate what I expect with standard plus versus great ammunition. These are typical in that you won’t see much difference in horizontal, but with the high-end stuff the vertical goes away. On 100 m rams with that big window under the belly, vertical in the ammunition can kill you.

Like most silhouette shooters, I shoot 90% standard plus. And then in the shoots that matter, Midas gets used for rams and possibly turkeys.

That’s my long winded way of saying that rifle match can shoot really well, but I don’t depend on it.

Mind you if you’re only shooting at 50 yards, it should be great. A lot of cheaper 22 ammunition shoots really well at 50 yards, and falls apart if you stretch it out to 100. In a 541 I used to own, American Eagle would shoot ragged holes at 50 yards, and be hard pressed to beat 2 inches of 100.

CCI Standard Velocity has that tendency as well in my experience. It can shoot really well at the 40 m chickens and even 60 m pigs but beyond that accuracy falls off.