Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting Cost efficient rifle for practice?

My opinion for lots of affordable practice is a 223 bolt action. For center fire rounds, for the non reloader, it doesn’t get any cheaper. For some reason they’re less expensive than the 22 Hornet, 222 Remington, and 221 Fireball even though they hold more powder and larger amount of brass. The other advantage is that it’s more available than the others even in these times. I reload but I still have gobs of factory 223 that I use to train or practice with every now and then. It won’t match the other rifles you have but the trigger time is very valuable. Things to make sure you get the most value is to treat each trip to the range or wherever you go as a serious session. Change up a few things like only shooting at 200 or more yards, never again shoot at 100 yards. On occasion, set up the paper target at 300 or 350 and see how you do and if the drop is what it needs to be when compared to shorter distances. Try a few times going out to 500 with paper targets, but be careful spending a lot of time there as it can screw you up if little progress is made. If that happens, stop at that distance and come back later. This could tell you if your turrets or zero stop is working too. I can’t see the 223 being a performer much past 650 yards but the form, technique and experience you gain from all that cheap practice will pay off on all the other long range you do. Another thing that I found helps is to shoot other targets. Steel is good and small rocks are good fun. Too much paper targets gets boring and I feel lends itself to more mistakes or sloppy shooting. Shooting things other than paper does something to the brain that seems to enhance focus. To get the most out of those targets, the size is important. A 5-8" steel target at 500 yards is better than a 24” or torso type steel gong that most kids can hit after a little warm up. Same goes for the size of rocks.