Zeroing you guns?
- Thread starter bigboreblr
- Start date
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
We don't usually shoot any 5-shot groups when we are working up a load.....pretty much a waste of ammo. I will eventually shoot some 5-shot groups with my .204 once I get it dialed in. So far I have just worked up a good enough load to take it on a prairie dog hunt and I haven't shot it since I got home. Just about done with planting and habitat work so hope to get back to the range and reloading bench soon.
Foggy47
5 year old buck +
Where do you go on Prairie Dog Safari's WT? I have not shot any prairie pups for a long time. Trigger finger is itchy. ;) Lots of fun....and a great way to learn how to shoot.
Jerry-B-WI
5 year old buck +
What kind of brush do they recommend? I'll usually use a bronze brush for the first two times with powder solvent and after that I use a nylon brush with the copper solvent.
Native Hunter
5 year old buck +
My son shoots a 300 mag CA Ridgeline, and that gun is picky. However, I worked out a handload that shot really great. I have a 300 mag CA Long Range. My gun isn’t picky and will shoot about anything well.
First pic below is 4 shots from his gun with the handload. Second pic is his handload in my gun.
Nice that we can shoot the same handload.
First pic below is 4 shots from his gun with the handload. Second pic is his handload in my gun.
Nice that we can shoot the same handload.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
I did some limited prairie dog shooting in Wyoming while I was out there hunting antelope and mule deer. Last year we booked a hunt and stayed at the lodge on the Rosebud Reservation. You must be with a Native American guide in order to hunt reservation lands. Our hunt included 3 nights lodging, 2 days of shooting, home cooked meals and an open bar. We enjoyed it so much we are going again next year.
South Dakota Prairie Dog HuntingPrairie Highlands Lodgehttps://www.prairiehighlandslodge.com › prairie-dog-...
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
Nice shooting and loading. That is what we all strive for.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
I know the trend seems to be moving towards nylon brushes but I still use bronze brushes and Butch's Bore Shine. I actually wore out a bronze brush during that barrel break-in procedure.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
While I have shot the 300 win mag I don't own one and really have no desire to own one. Too much recoil and too expensive to shoot IMO, if you don't plan to hunt anything bigger than Bison. I have tagged 2 large bulls with my 30:06 and the 200 grain Nosler Partition bullet performed just fine.
This bullet smashed through a rib on the entrance side and came to rest against the hide on the far side...
and still retained 120 grains of its origninl weight
Finding a blood trail wasn't an issue...
I am a little over 6' tall for comparison...
I know the 300 Win Mag will work just as well but I have a lot of confidence in the 06 so that is what I prefer at this point. I also have to admit, that I haven't yet shot a group like Native Hunter's groups either. That is remarkable for a big bore.
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Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
A lot of people do shooting math this way. You'd be more likely to miss than hit at 400 yards with a 1 MOA zero error.
1 MOA would put the center of your group distribution roughly 4.2" (1 MOA) right of POA. If the plate is round, any elevation offset also reduces your windage buffer because the plate curves away from center of your group. The below is just a sample of applied ballistics WEZ hit prediction calculator, it uses weapon/shooter level of precision, wind reading capability, atmosphere, and weapon ballistics to calculate hit probability. It's wider than tall because of wind error. Pretend that shot distribution is @ an 8" gong @ 400 yards and move the center of the shot distribution pattern to be just outside the right or left edge of the circle and that would be roughly what I'm getting at. Not only would more than half of the shots miss, but some of them by quite a bit.
Acceptable hunting standards is a tough metric to quantify. Off working the public sight in day at my local range a number of days, i'd bet that most hunters have at least 1 MOA of error in their zero even AFTER zeroing at 100 yards because their capabilities and rifle's precision aren't good enough to decipher lower without a shit ton of shooting. I'm pretty confident I could get within 2 clicks (0.2 mil or 0.5 MOA) to true 100 yard zero by only shooting at 25 yards but since a guy can look down the bore at 100 yards and hit paper and then adjust i dont see an advantage to doing it.
omicron1792
5 year old buck +
That’s a 1000m target! Of course you could miss there!!!!
I would say most hunting rifles and factory loads can’t shoot 0.5moa. And a lot of hunters don’t have 200 yard ranges to shoot. Most zero at 200 by being 1.5 inches high at 100.
You are looking at being a long distance shooter with precision rifles. I’m talking about pulling the ole 30/06 out after a year and hunting deer!
And, your points are all well taken.
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
That sounds like it would eat up most of a day. There are lots of differing views on this. I don't buy that doing a barrel break in procedure makes a difference but acknowledge some people that are way more knowledgeable than me would disagree. Just pointing it out for others to google it if they are considering doing it on a new barrel. If a guy has lots of time and doesn't mind, no harm in doing it!
Native Hunter
5 year old buck +
That's a nice looking steak!
I really love a 30-06 as well. One of our backup rifles is a very light, Stainless Remington 700 in that caliber. I load a 150 grain Hornady SST as a deer load for that rifle, and it will shoot 1 MOA or less. I did have to get a guy to do a trigger job and glass bedding on that rifle, but I'm very happy with it now.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
I agree Wind Gypsy and I know there are a lot of guys who do nothing special for barrel break-in and their rifles shoot just fine. I had never done this before but with this rifle I decided to give it a try so I could form my own opinion. I can't say for certain that all that cleaning and 40 rounds of shooting made any difference at all....but I can say for certain that it didn't hurt a thing - this rifle is going to be a shooter.
I also had quite a bit of factory ammo that my wife's .204 didn't particularly like so I wanted to shoot that up in order to get the brass to reload. And....there are those that say a barrel isn't in to its "sweet spot" until 100-200 rounds have been fired through it, so there is that school of thought also.
Would I do it again? Yes - most likely I would based upon my experience with this one.
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
Yeah, it's just a sample of a shot distribution in relation to a circle target for a visual because I didn't want to explain shot distribution in relation to a target with words haha. It doesn't say how big the target is, the ammo, system precision, or wind error but I don't think it paints all that misleading a picture. A 270 shooting a 140 partition @ 3000 fps (hotter than most factory ammo) would have a 6+" windage error if 5 MPH wind were unaccounted for @ 400 yards. So if your zero error puts a guy at the edge of the target, a misread of the wind by only 2.5 MPH would put him 3" further off target.
I'd argue that next to none of them truly keep a normal distribution within 0.5 MOA. Maybe 3 shots here and there.
If ballistics of a gun puts you 1.5" high at 100 when zeroed at 200, i'd argue thats the best way to do it! And it works well for most centerfires.
I just like chatting about this stuff and I'm not trying to "be right" or argue I just know that a lot of these things are common thoughts that we think of and I definitely used to think of it that way. Especially when folks think they have a MOA gun because they shot a 1 MOA group at 100 a couple times and think that means they can hit a 3" target at 300, 4" target at 400, etc. There's a lot more to it than that.
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Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
Yep, I typically don't mess with load development until 150-200 rounds on a barrel. Or more accurately, i don't expect velocity to have stabilized before then. I had a barrel that was still speeding up with over 300 rounds on it a couple years ago.
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
Hornady brass is still low quality in that it isn't the most consistent and primer pockets frequently loosen up without many loadings. That said, it isn't bad enough to be limiting for the vast majority of shooters. People still win PRS matches with it. Probably not many bench rest or Fclass folks using it. It's just that there are so many premium option out there now with Peterson, alpha, and ADG putting out lapua quality level brass for lots of cartridges.
Frontier is hornady's cheap ammo, wouldn't be surprised if they used even lower quality brass. They make pretty good ammo all things considered. The biggest reason they've become more common is they introduced so many cartridges that are popular in precision shooting circles 6.5 creed, 6 creed, 22 creed is on its way, 6 ARC, 6.5/7/300 PRC.
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