.223 Saturday

I drove out to the Woodworth Shooting Range this morning and was pleasantly surprised to find it open. The range website said that it would be open, but you never know.

I wanted to confirm the zero on my AR15 and shoot the Handi rifle in .223 Remington.

I knew that dead-nuts accuracy might be a problem. We've had the windiest April I can ever remember and the weather weenies tell us that the winds would be variable from the Southwest at 16 mph, gusting to 23 mph. Yeah, at least. The temps were hovering around 80 degrees under partly-cloudy skies.

I set up the .223 Handi on the bags and watched the wind flags. They were mostly standing straight out, but occasionally they'd dip long enough for me to squeeze off a shot. The guy two benches down from me actually had his spotting scope blow off the table, and we had plenty of "cold" time for blown-down target frames. I made sure I was on paper at 50 yards, then walked down to the 100 yard line with a couple of sandbags to hold the target frame to the ground.

Six shots later I was done. The little rifle told me all I wanted to know. The first three shots went into 0.475, the group at the top of the page. The last group, which looks like two shots, but is three shots, went into 0.679. This little rifle is a shooter if the bags are right and the winds are still. I'm shooting the Hornady 55 grain V-Max bullet over 25.0 grains of IMR 4895. I'm not sure what the velocity is, but the load is in the middle of the load map and I should be getting about 3000 fps from the cartridge.

That's a fine target from a $300 rifle and a Japanese scope. While we were shooting, I noticed a crow on the ground, just to the left of the 100 yard berm. If he'd been there after that second group, I might have been tempted to send one toward him. Fortunately, he had the good sense to leave the area. Crows don't get old hanging around rifle ranges.