Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires I think I need sensitivity training...

So, took a CZ 455 heavy barrel .22LR to the range today and stunk the place up.

Gun has a CZ fluted barrel, laminated thumbhole and the Mr Fly trigger (which is pretty darn good). I put a nice Tasco World Class Plus straight 24X on it. I also made up some targets with different sizes of rings to work with the 1/8 target dot reticle. The target/reticle combo worked very well.

I tried a bunch of ammo at 50 yards, with little success. It was very windy (I had to put rocks on the target stand to stop it from being blown over) and at one point I realized that I needed to retighten my scope rings (they weren't so bad). Best groups were probably in the 5/8 to 1 inch or more range but they often didn't "track" meaning that some shots were consistent with sight placement when the gun was fired, some were not.

So I kept playing with the way I washolding and resting the gun, and was able to make a few groups that did track the way they should. They ran around 3/8 or a bit smaller.

It seems that the gun is very sensitive to even the lightest pressure changes forward of the action, including where the forend is rested and if I put any finger pressure on it.
Ran out of time before I could really prove it but that's where I'm at.

Never had this problem before, and I don't want to start making changes without learning more.

So lets have it - does this sound familiar to anyone, and what are the fixes?

Couple questions first:

1. Which ammo did you try?
2. How many shots per group?
3. How many foulers did you shoot between each ammo swap?
4. Was the stringing horizontal, vertical, or both?
5. Which rings?
6. Did you clean the bore?

As far as scopes, a Tasco would not be be my choice...I'd use a SS ..in 10x or higher.

Wind is a huge factor....

If it was that windy I don't know how you could have any idea of what the rifle is capable of much less arrive at the conclusion that it was sensitive to anything besides wind drift - which all 22's are. A 5 mph wind will drift a 22 LR cartridge a half-inch at 50 yds, go back on a calm day and you may have an opportunity to develop some definitive conclusions.

drover

M1919 -

1. CCI standard, select, pistol match, Aguila standard, high velocity, Federal target, automatch, RWS high velocity, Remington target.
2. 5. Shot two or three groups of each (only 1 RWS). Like I said - losing daylight.
3. No couplers
4. Not much stringing to speak of.
5. Cheap rings.
6. Gave it a lightly oiled pass thru followed by 2 dries when I got it to get the dust out. Fired around 25 rounds of old Remington target off paper before I switched to paper.

FYI - the Tasco is one of the old Japanese made ones. I have a couple of similar variables that have been very good.

And, yes I can appreciate the effect of wind. When I got there I figured it would be a bust.
But despite the wind I thought I could see a real difference between holding and nudging the forend vs leaving it alone. Maybe it just seemed that way and I'm coming to a premature conclusion.


Gun is new to me. By the next time I get to the range ill pick up the T-30 bit I need to pull the action and look for any weirdness. Then I'll start low on the torque and work my way up at the range until I see what I can see.

pretty good point Driver. I agree, except that there was something besides wind going on I think.
Truly, hard to tell though.

But I get Black Friday off, hopefully the weather cooperates...

It would be worth checking the parallax too.

I would shoot again on a wind free day if possible, wind plays hell with .22 lr grouping. Plus, and I hate to point this out, but none of the ammos you were testing are really known for accuracy. The best of what you've got in my experience would be the CCI SV.

I think the other guys about covered the possibilities, any of which could have been your problem singly, or in combination. Number 3 on M1919's list is a prime candidate. Depends on the actual differences between lubes, but sometimes it takes quite a while for one to "settle in" after an ammo swap. I sometimes hurry it along by running a pull-through with solvent down the bore to at least get the old lube out.

I'd go back on a still day, avoid firing while there's any wind at all (and set out a couple of wind indicators to be sure), with the ammo that did the best last time. Check the scope for parallax while on a steady rest, and focus carefully to minimize it. Be very consistent in positioning your head behind the scope. Honestly, at 24x, if it's not adjustable for parallax, there might be a lot present.

Good luck.

EDIT: Flyers, inherent in even the best standard grade ammo, make evaluations tough. The two fellow geezers at my range that hold regular "dot-shooting" matches usually use SV, which is very reliable and consistent, but still get flyers on occasion. I think DigitalDan said Euro-stuff is better in that regard.

EDIT: Flyers, inherent in even the best standard grade ammo, make evaluations tough. The two fellow geezers at my range that hold regular "dot-shooting" matches usually use SV, which is very reliable and consistent, but still get flyers on occasion. I think DigitalDan said Euro-stuff is better in that regard.[/quote]


The quote is worth repeating. I've never had great accuracy luck with CCI SV ammo. Not a slam, just an observation concerning my rimfires rifles. What has been consistent in accuracy for me was RWS, Eley, Wolf, SK, Norma, and some of the old PMC ammo. The one I have always used the most is RWS Subsonic. This has been by go to Squirrel hunting ammo since my discovery in the late 70's and in most of my rimfires it shoots like match ammo. At the current $.05 a round it is hard not to like it.
Having said all that, wind and cheap rings can be an accuracy killer along with action screw torque unless the rifle is pillared and bedded.
Unless your scope has been abused those old Japanese Tasco's were darn good scopes. I assume your 24X model has the AO adjustment and it was set perfectly for the distance you were shooting.
Since CZ's are good shooters,[except the one I "had"], you can temporarily eliminate that from the list.

The target below was shot with 50 consecutive rds. of RWS Subsonic or Norma Subsonic [which is made by RWS], I don't recall which one it was. The rifle was a Kimber Hunter Silhouette I bedded in a Kimber Varmint stock and the distance was 50yds. The black portion of the target is 1 1/8" across. This is rifle is fun to shoot but not the most accurate one I own, so hence a flyer or 2 which could have been the shooter. If I was to shoot 50 rounds at one target again I would adjust the poi to be above or below the center of the black. It became a guessing game with the center gone. Ignorance on my part.

Jim, your sure not the first one to shoot out their aiming point. Hasbeen

Thanks all

You know, its kinda funny - I did a lot of things that I know aren't the best, but still expected a certain result based on past experience., as in "I've gotten away with it before".

Dumb me.

In this case I took my rare opportunity to go to the range on a day I knew was windy (and it got worse before it got better), and with only a 2 hour window.
Because of the wind I left the good stuff in the ammo bag and used the avaerage stuff.
I only ran a few rounds of each through each gun (I had 2 to try) not letting the lube layer form.
Since my rest wasn't the best I shot with my left hand on the stock, applying whatever light pressure I needed to get on target for each shot.

So, I got what I put into it. Didn't get away with it this time at all.

The good news from this outing -

When I only applied pressure to the pistol grip of the thumbhole rifle, it shot well under MOA even in those conditions (the wind had lessened but was still steady and gusty). Touch or reposition the forend and its over.

I really like the Mr Fly trigger. I don't know if I'd pay the $170+shpg it sells for but I might. Then other rifle has the Yo Dave kit in it and its good but this is much better.

I learned that if I want to have a good day, I'm going to need to take a weekday out of work when the weather is good. It will be $$$, but ill probably do it.

I re-learned that you can't skip the basics. This is the first time ive ever had ring problems on a .22, but they did start to loosen. They are going in the trash, gonna order proper ones today.

I also learned that I'm too old and fat to shoot between my heartbeats anymore. Not sure if ill be able to fix that. Sounds like a lot of lettuce and jogging....

I have a varmint model. Unfluted. Likes SK ammo. Worked on trigger myself. Very fine. When you have a calm day apply very light hold on pistol grip. Mine is much more consistent that way

Euro ammo is far, far superior to US stuff. Have had a common response to Wolf, SK and others with all of my rimfire so.....bug holes.

Krag'


I start with the basics.. good scope, solid rings, tight fasteners, parallax verification, solid rest....etc

Don't negate a good cleaning. I've had guns of known repute where accuracy began to fall off.......a couple passes with a bore snake and 10-20 foulers brings things right back.

I like to eliminate ammo from the equation early by starting with known good....

Midas +, Center X, Eley Black, and Federal Gold Medal UltraMatch (discontinued). Once you have proven the mechanics are solid with the above and ammo is removed from the equation....you can work towards less expensive stuff.

I've seen it take 10 shots between ammo swaps to get things to settle in.

I've had excellent results with Norma TAC and Norma Match.

Thanks M1919

Thats a good sense approach all right.
I've have very good luck with Midas+, RWS subsonic, RWS rifle match, Federal Ultramatch, etc.
I've also had great luck with RWS high velocity and, don't laugh - Aguila standard velocity.
For many years, CCI standard velocity and subsonic have been mainstays. The Aguila is now.

So I'm going to circle the wagons a bit, set myself up better and do just what you suggest.

One odd thing though - I have seen a few web mentions of CZ thumbhole that needed pressure only on the grip to shoot consistently. Including papa here on the fire. I wonder why that would be, and if bedding is a cure.

LOL!! Dumb rookie move on my part for sure. To be honest, I'm willing to bet if I changed the point of impact the 50rd group would be much smaller. Oh well.


Kragman1,

I'm willing to bet that bedding would cure the sensitive hold. Pillars are a big plus along with bedding.

Trying to shoot consistent precision groups with. 22LR on a windy day is a futile pursuit at best. Those groups mean nothing and are not indicative of what your combo is capable of. Wait for calm day.

Edited to add that if your gal is to just burn Ammo for fun then by all means blast away, but don’t make the mistake of thinking you are shooting anywhere near what the rifle/scope/Ammo combo is capable of.

Had the same thing happen the last two times out with my rimfires. Tried like crazy to get groups like the ones I know my rifles and ammo are capable of and had a gusty wind from right to left to contend with all day. Groups were all over the place, so we just gave it up and started shooting targets of opportunity for fun. Clay pigeons laid at different distances, dueling targets, etc... and just made it a fun shooting day.

Some days it just doesn't pay to try to get serious ....

Bob

And some days it pays to use wind flags.

Another minor point goes to precision work on targets after you aim point tuns into a hole. Imagine you're using a ring target with numbered rings. Pick a number for POA and adjust POI to the 10 ring. It's a method used for over 100 years and is remarkably useful with larger caliber rifles.

I love busting randomly placed clays. And then the fragments. Then the crumbs....

Used to be able to shoot clay rabbits too. A different kind of fun!

Excellent^^^

It happens....

No, I think someone just hates you.

Problem might be because it's a CZ.


(Just joking, but had to say it, no-one else had.)

Maybe I should have called it "Brand X"....? lol

No worries, there are brand haters for every brand.

For myself, my problem is the opposite.
I see a potential gem in every .22 I come across if I just find the right ammo, get the action screw(s) right, etc.

As far as CZ goes, I have a 455 Lux that is light, handy, and really shoots. I've never done anything but cycle ammo through it either.

Hoping that the Varmint I posted about shoots as well.

The quote is worth repeating. I've never had great accuracy luck with CCI SV ammo. Not a slam, just an observation concerning my rimfires rifles. What has been consistent in accuracy for me was RWS, Eley, Wolf, SK, Norma, and some of the old PMC ammo. The one I have always used the most is RWS Subsonic. This has been by go to Squirrel hunting ammo since my discovery in the late 70's and in most of my rimfires it shoots like match ammo. At the current $.05 a round it is hard not to like it.
Having said all that, wind and cheap rings can be an accuracy killer along with action screw torque unless the rifle is pillared and bedded.
Unless your scope has been abused those old Japanese Tasco's were darn good scopes. I assume your 24X model has the AO adjustment and it was set perfectly for the distance you were shooting.
Since CZ's are good shooters,[except the one I "had"], you can temporarily eliminate that from the list.

The target below was shot with 50 consecutive rds. of RWS Subsonic or Norma Subsonic [which is made by RWS], I don't recall which one it was. The rifle was a Kimber Hunter Silhouette I bedded in a Kimber Varmint stock and the distance was 50yds. The black portion of the target is 1 1/8" across. This is rifle is fun to shoot but not the most accurate one I own, so hence a flyer or 2 which could have been the shooter. If I was to shoot 50 rounds at one target again I would adjust the poi to be above or below the center of the black. It became a guessing game with the center gone. Ignorance on my part.

[/quote]

Are you referring to RWS SSHPs or RN?

I had a 453 for a while, after a 455 was kinda disappointing. It would put both the SSHPs and Aguila Rifle Match (the old gold and black box) regularly into the 4s, sometimes the 3s. I talked myself into selling it to buy something else, also now gone. Too soon old, too late smart.

My current 455 in SS lies somewhere in the middle of the previous ones. It's decent as a hunting rifle, and has the best trigger of the three, right out of the box. This one will stick, unless it gets gifted to a grandchild perhaps. Pretty busy now, but need to give it another go with some of the good stuff.

Aguila Match has been good enough to merit a try, if for no other reason than the Eley priming has that peculiar odor that might make the other boys at the range.think you're using the real deal.

One of the dot shooters bought a 457 in the At-One stock. He had me fire a 5-shot group with it yesterday. Result: one elongated hole with a lot of SV that's been especially good for him. Don't want to tote that one in the woods, but they really did the new action up right. Very solid, good trigger, and all the stuff we've carped about with previous models fixed. The At-One stock in brown looks much better in person than the fancy-colored ones they show in the Boyds ads.

I was referring to the HP's.

Thanks. Still have 7 or 8 hundred of those on hand.

Bought a couple cheap bricks of the HSHPs. More pistol ammo.......

The recovered RWS Subsonic hp's I removed from Squirrels looked like Nosler Partitions. An awesome accurate and quiet round.

And some days it pays to use wind flags. (Digital Dan)

This was discussed at length in a recent thread here.

In our state senior games, Rimfire Benchrest at 50 yards is 12 targets with 25 bulls each for a total of 300 shots for a possible total of 3000 points. One shooter has shot a perfect 3000 three years in a row. That means he's never missed the half inch 10 ring in 900 consecutive shots. This year he shot 80 Xs. That means taking out the pin head center completely. His rifle is custom and he told me he shoots Center-X ammo. He uses five wind flags.

The guy is a retired SWAT officer. Who says cops can't shoot?

Paul

I agree completely. I have a wind flag myself and used to shoot competitive benchrest. But that’s not the same thing we’re talking about. We’re talking about finding the best possible rifle/scope/Ammo combo which is best dome when you take out every other factor that could affect your group size. The other thing is beating the wind once you’ve found that right combo which is a very different thing altogether.

How can a shooter test each of those factors while ignoring the effect of the wind? Unless the shooter tests under ideal conditions of no wind or mirage, if such exist, or in a tunnel which few of us have access to?

In reality, most shooters tend to ignore the wind, thereby confounding their results. That is what we're talking about here.

Paul

Thats a great point Paul, but not really the original point...

Yes, I was aware that the wind was going to spoil my shooting and decided to give it a try anyway.

But - at the end of the day (while it was still windy) I noticed that aiming by using pressure on the pistol grip only I greatly reduced my group size.

That's what I was really getting at. And it turns out that others have noticed the same thing with the same model.
I'm just trying to learn more about that.

My solution, FWIW:

No one is saying ignore the wind, it’s actually the opposite. You try to minimize the effect as much as possible by testing loads on calm days or early in the mornings and late afternoons. We’re talking about load development. Not Just shooting when you have to regardless of conditions. Any bncherester or precision shooter will tell you that you don’t test loads on windy days.

Respectfully, if you don’t get it, nothing I or anyone else can say will make any difference so there’s no point in getting into an argument over it. You do it your way and I’ll do it mine.

The real point is we all enjoy shooting and that’s why we’re here. Have fun and I’ll do the same...

Actually, we're all saying the same thing.

Good shooting to all.

Paul

This is your problem.

ConradCA - this is one of the made in Japan (Asia Optical) scopes, not the Chinese ones with the same name.

It IS the first rifle I've had it on, and there COULD be trouble with the scope but I doubt it, especially when my groups closed up nicely once I noticed how the rifle responded to pressure.

Thats what this post is actually about - learning about the pressure problem. I've never had a rifle that was so dramatic to light finger pressure.

As for a rifle being sensitive to the touch. I have a Remington 504 that I fought with for years regarding sensitivity. I would get mad put it away for anywhere from a month to over a year at a time. I tried a lot of different stuff. Even ended up adding a third action screw and a Lilja barrel that was used in a Precision Shooting article just so that I would have a barrel of known quality. I've never saw a rifle this sensitive. To me, it was useless for much of anything. It took very little to turn three shot groups in the .3's into 5 shots in the 1 1/2" or larger range.

One day while playing around with action screw torque I decided to really crank down hard on the middle screw. As it came from the factory this would have been the rear screw. I had always left it just snug because that is what I've always read regarding middle screws. Lo and behold, the sensitivity is almost gone out of it. Enough so that it is one of my favorite squirrel killers. Not my most accurate .22 but then again I haven't tried any of the true quality ammo in it since discovering it's secret. CCI SS will stay in the 1/2" area pretty easily and sometimes 5 will go a lot smaller. Like I said, all of the sensitivity isn't gone so a better shooter than I could probably make it sing a pretty tune. This same rifle also likes a pressure point out near the end of the barrel.

Regarding the Rem 504 sporters in general. I have a sneaky suspicion that a lot of there accuracy problems is/were/are related to a stock problem. What that problem is I don't have a clue but I have read about a few that no matter how they were bedded or what was done to them didn't become good shooters until the stock was changed. I mention that because you say the problem exist with other 455 thumbholes. The barrel I bought was a very good shooter in a 504 Varmint stock. That article is where I got the idea for the third action screw, the bedding and a couple other ideas. Food for thought.

As others said, don't jump to any fast hard conclusions until you have shot it in better conditions. Preferably several times just to be sure of consistency.

Thanks Dave!

Yes, its way to soon to do anything but shoot more and pay attention.
I don't know much about these guns other than the heavy barrels seem to be lesser shooters than the light barrel guns (if you can believe everything you read).
From a distance, I've wondered if the rotoforging equipment they have is truly up to precision displacing the extra barrel material (its kinda related to what I do for a living...). Or if the action footprint only leaves enough stock wood for sketchy "bedding", meaning that it gets by OK with the light barrel guns, not so much with the heavy barrels. Its all just conjecture though.
I'm guessing that there's nothing special about this, and that I'm about to learn some stuff that a bunch of people already know. I'm just looking for a head start on the learning part. ha ha!