Savage 110

It was too hot to work today, so I headed to the range to try out those .30-06 loads I loaded last week. They feature 150 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip bullets and Reloder 19 powder.

I got set up at the 100 yard line, chatting with another shooter who was trying to zero an AR that he uses for patrol work.

After we posted fresh targets, I settled in on the bags and fired the first set of three. When I looked into the spotting scope I saw three holes, real close together.



So, I let the rifle cool off and worked with another rifle for a little while, then I got the Savage back on the bags and fired the second set of cartridges, exactly the same except for another half-grain of powder. When I looked through the spotting scope I saw a much wider dispersion. Interesting.



So, again I let the rifle cool and then loaded the third set of three cartridges. I got solid on the bags and started trying to stack them in the same hole.



Darned interesting. Both the 61.0 grain load and the 62.0 grain load shot within MOA in my old Savage. The load between them shot a group over 2 inches wide. I can't blame my technique or the rifle. It felt really solid on the bags and I tried to make every shot count. I didn't call any fliers. Each of those nine shots are as well as I can fire that rifle. I think these three targets demonstrate the difference that a half-grain of powder makes, when you take into account things like barrel harmonics.

Now that I've found the load that this particular barrel likes to shoot, I'm going to load a bunch of it and get out to the range to do chrony work and zero the scope to that particular load.

That's four loads I've found for this rifle that shoots into MOA, with two different powders and two different bullet weights. For a base-level Savage 110 with a sporter barrel and a 6X hunting scope, I am very pleased with the way it shoots.