I had a nice trip to the range yesterday. As is typical for this time of year, the 100-yard range was full of hunters checking zeros and sighting in rifles. Not a one of them was shooting from field positions. With the 100-yard range full, I took my T3 .223 over to the 300-yard range. I was the only one there, although one very chatty old fellow came over to watch me.
With an audience, I decided to start off easy with 10 shots prone over my backpack with no rear support at the 8” target. I promptly watched the steel move ten times and heard ten very satisfying “pings”.
I then did the same from seated with my trigger sticks, using my grenade/compass pouch for my rear support. Another 10/10.
Then I switched to setting up my Spartan Pro Lite bipod and shooting prone without a rear bag. I shot 9/10 that way.
Then I repeated the seated-supported drill with the trigger sticks, but dropped two shots the second time around.
Still fairly happy with my performance at the 300-yard line. The only way to stay perfect is to stop shooting. The only way to get better is to keep shooting.
Since I now had to reload my magazines, my audience departed.
Then I decided to shoot at the 200-yard target. This is where things started to go wrong. I started with seated-unsupported. My broken leg is still tender and not fully healed. I broke the right malleolus, the “hammer” bone that touches the ground when sitting cross-legged. Distracted by that, I fired my first shot. High miss. Second shot. High miss. WTF! Oh… I forgot to turn the scope back down from 1.6 mils high to 0.8 mils high. Not sure that made all the difference, but I hit the next eight. Lesson learned? Check the turrets.
I don’t think I am quite ready to take offhand shots at 200, so I decided to shoot some standing-supported shots. I stuck my backpack upright on the table, leaned over it, and pinged the 8” steel ten times.
I wanted to shoot the Carl Ross drill, but with the 100-yard range being crowded, I decided I would have to modify it. I stuck a black dot in the middle of each to provide a better aiming point (is this cheating? Maybe?). I put 1 1/8” dots on targets 1 and 2 and 3/4” dots on 3 and 4. Then I set up the targets and decided to shoot “rapid-fire, controlled-pairs” (as rapid fire and controlled as possible with a bolt action). I wanted to practice a quick first shot and immediate follow-up shot.I prepared a timer on my phone and gave myself twenty seconds to fire each pair.
This went pretty well offhand with 9/10. I’m counting the one that touches the line as a hit. Cheating myself? Maybe?
The other one was just off to the right (it grazed the other target).
Of note, it doesn’t appear to have affected me too much, but I noticed after shooting this set that I was still set to 0.8 mils high. Apparently, I am a slow learner. I turned it down to my last-recorded dope of 0.1 mil high. More on this below…
Without pausing to check the targets, I went straight into the next position, seated-unsupported. This was a goat rope. With twenty seconds to go from standing to seated and fire two shots, sitting on top of my malleolus, and with the ten pounds of flab I put on since breaking my leg pushing into my diaphragm, I felt absolutely terrible. Shots all over the place, but generally very low due to how I was trying to time the shots. A 7/10. But this is why we practice, right?
Seated-supported was worse, 6/10. I am not adept at deploying the trigger stick. I got my shots off, but they were rushed.
My prone shots over the backpack without rear support were steady and felt great. The group is decent, but the elevation was clearly off. When I put away the rifle, the turret was still at .1 mil high. Not enough of a difference to account for the misses.
As I wrote this post, I reviewed my dope and realized I probably made an error in recording it. I think I meant to write that it was hitting 0.1 mil high at 100 yards. After reviewing my saved target, I see that my ATZ is actually “down 0.17 mils.” So… I think I was actually high by about 0.27 mils.
I need to keep a more careful shooter’s log.
who's got time for that? Bandsaw or a zip wheel.squarish it off with a flap wheel. Break the edge of the crown with a carbide and your done. M12 die grinder works nice for this..
