Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles I found a very interesting rifle today

Alright, some nitty gritty. Range day time. Ran into an issue with some slightly bad brass. TIR's were high. In the .009-012" range. Way more than what is acceptable by my standards. Not a huge issue, I'll work around that. Here's a pic of the rifle when I took it to the range the other day. Still had the infamous Zeiss Conquest 3-9x40 on top:

Pretty big fn gap on that objective huh? Don't worry, that got fixed!!! This scope is almost useless to me, with the bassackwards turret dial and no hash marks in the reticle. It may get sold on ebay. Just sayin.. You guys that use these and love them, my hat goes off to you. I like a simpler approach though: Here's what it is now:


Groups shot that day were less than stellar. Using "once fired" brass from a different rifle. Kept them in the 1.5" ish range, with Hornady 180gr BTSP interlocks. Generally those shoot better in all of my rifles..:




Knowing the rifle should shoot much better, I had to check some things. Found the ammo was not real straight. Brass has uneven neck thickness. Good enough for "hunting" ammo though. Now today I was better prepared. I shot some brass that was fireformed in this rifle. It chambered better, it had a .002-.003 shoulder bump and was ready to go. The only thing was the TIR was high on some of it: IE: up to .012"!!! I shot that at 100 yards and then said "f it, I'm shooting the straighter ammo at 400!!!" Well, here is one group shot at 100:

Rifle likes that book max, but I'm going to bring the chrono out next time and bump the charge up 1/2 grain. Don't tell Barnes!. I want better than 1" basically..

Well, here are some of the 400 yard results:


This was the first 400 yard group. I had loaded some ammo with an arbitrary load of 59gr Big Game, but this ammo had much better TIR numbers^^^> I figured I'd use it to check the dial at 400. Worked pretty good, and oddly enough, no adjustment on the dial:

It's not perfect, but it's pretty close, for what it is..^ I'll paint over the ".556" info on top of the dial..

I was pretty happy with that for starters, but had to shoot some of the #5 charge weight (book max that did good at 100):


Oh, before I go any further I have to tell you that I switched scopes. Went with one of my favorite scopes that are inexpensive and track very well. I just bought this one on ebay for $122. It's a $350 AR scope that has been discontinued. This is a SFP scope, so those of you that think you need a FFP scope, move on, this is not the thread for you. This is the first outing at 400 yards, so stay tuned for better.. :