I took that rifle out yesterday while I was shooting the ugly rifle, trying a new load that features the Hornady 105 grain A-Max using RL22 powder. That 105 grain Hornady is a long bullet and I wasn't sure if my 9.25 twist barrel would stabilize it. I've tried 107 Matchkings in it, and got keyholes at 100 yards. Still, I loaded a bunch, in powder increments from 41.0 to 44.0 grains of RL22, and took them out to see how they'd shoot.
At 42.5 grains I found a pretty good load.
The first two plopped down in that 2" target dot just 0.38 from each other. The third shot fell over an inch above the other two, opening the group to 1.5 inches. Just damn!
I took a deer with that rifle last year, and I know that in the deer woods I'll seldom need a third shot. The most important shot is the first one. Yet, this rifle does have a magazine and I should be able to shoot more than two shots without seeing the bullets walk up the paper.
It's aggravating.
Well, all I can say is that it's not the caliber. I have an early-80's Winchester 70 Sport in .243, and I have fired sessions of 50+ rounds with it at Boomershoot, and it is capable of sub-MOA work (I'm not always that capable!).
ReplyDeleteMy favorite load is factory, the 95-grain Federal Fusion # F243FS1. It's more consistently accurate than any I've been able to handload, even though my best reload, an OLD Hornady 83-gr SPBT over 44 grains of IMR 4831, ignited by a CCI 250, seated at 2.710" seems to put in at least an MOA group.
I went to Boomershoot twice with that rifle, and it didn't have the steam to do much at the 600-plus yard targets, but it was fine off the table at the 385-yard 4" boomers and associated small steel down there.
My whole point in going to that exercise was to show myself and others that this whole business of high-precision riflery was attainable by the average shooter with an average rifle and scope (the scope is a Nikon 3X9X40 with a BDC reticule for 300 WIN Magnum).
I made that point, because I was able to get first-round, cold-barrel boomers both of those times at the opening of fire on Sunday morning. From my position, I would have been first-round lethal on medium game to 550 yards, which is the distance that most .243 bullets start to fall off the cliff.
.243 is the caliber to have if you're only having one!
I've owned two Rem 788 rifles in 6mm Rem and both were tack drivers, i.e., 3 rounds in 1 ragged hole. However, both had standard sporter barrels and not pencil thin barrels.
ReplyDeleteActually, Pawpaw, that group is fine for 100° temperatures.
PS: Looking at those bullet holes with 150% browser magnification the bullets were clearly yawing.
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