Monthly Archives: August 2015

Remington Model 870 Express Tactical Magpul

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A quick note for home defense folks. There is buzz in the air over shotgun home defense.

I met a young woman at the range pumping 12 gauge holes in a 6 inch bullseye at 25 yards with the Remington Model 870™Express® Tactical Magpul®. In fact she was having a good time and no issues with recoil or a stock that did not fit her. This is a woman that loves her shotgun! Bad guys beware!

http://www.remington.com/products/firearms/tactical/shotguns/model-870-express-tactical-magpul.aspx

NRA has this piece below on shotgun home defense. Check it out!

http://www.nrafamily.org/articles/2015/8/3/choosing-a-home-defense-shotgun/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=insider&utm_campaign=0815

Nosler Bonded and Copper Bullets Best for Meat Hunters by Ed Hale

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It is a known fact that keeps the campfire talk burning, that if you shoot a deer with hyper-velocity 3000 fps plus, small lead core bullets, that there will likely be an explosion of damage on impact especially if a rib bone is struck on entrance, the bullet’s lead core will separate from the jacket and will fragment thus penetration will suffer and game may be harder to find lacking a blood trail. But there is more to this than meets the eye.

Further, that lead fragmentation is more widely distributed causing more loss of delicious venison suspected of metal and lead contamination. As a grandparent I want my grand-kids to eat the best venison I can provide so I shoot the best bullets that hold together.

Nosler provides one of the best bullet solutions among others but I trust Nosler. Simple as that! I have been shooting Nosler’s for decades when hunting.

To date, there have not been any cases of human illnesses linked to lead particles in hunter-harvested venison according to a study conducted by Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Connection and  Minnesota DOE et al. But better hunting bullets ensure to prevent this.

I had this lead bullet conversation with a friend the other day whose brother owns a 25-06, a fine long range rifle for deer and antelope at far distances. What happened was that the deer was struck in the lung area but no exit wound occurred. The deer ran off, the shooter later followed looking for a blood trail and found not a drop. The only thing the hunter had was the visual direction of the animal after the shot. He knew he hit the animal well but it took him a few days of searching to find that deer not far, in fact, from the hit. It had no exit wound to leave a blood trail. This hunter, like me, reloads his own ammo and decided never to use that jacketed lead bullet for anything but punching paper. I can’t say that I blame him because we hunters want a clean kill and the meat for the table too. Lesson Learned!

Best high power 20 and 30 caliber hunting bullets on game are bonded with lead to the copper like the Nosler AccuBond and maintain a high percentage of weight and  negligible fragmentation.

 

 

Full copper bullets too like the Nosler E-Tip are designed to create a petal like a flower instead of a mushroom and keep an even higher percentage of weight and no-lead at all.

 

Large calibers like .375 and 40 calibers with lead cores that are un-bonded will fully penetrate because of the bullets large size and its weight/momentum and will fragment little.

A blood trail is necessary in bow hunting and in gun hunting big game for a fast recovery. In order to have a blood trail to follow you need an exit wound. Now there are some out there who do not believe an exit wound is needed. Nuts!  It is your best chance for a fast recovery and flavorful meat with less stress hormones in the meat which can make the meat taste less inviting. Keep the hunting bullets that are not bonded for paper punching unless they are sizable 150 grains or larger. On the further down side is the fact that lead bullets that can fragment often require more of the surrounding meat to be tossed out suspecting fragments in the meat.

In the many articles I have written, bullets like the Nosler E-Tip  and AccuBond are designed not for the target shooter but for hunters who want to maintain bullet weight while mushrooming thus creating a large wound channel for blood to flow and full penetration with an exit wound and to prevent fragmentation.

Accordingly, the Nosler E-Tip is one of the finest hunting bullets available providing full Penetration and little or no fragmentation, a no-lead solution.

Further that the E-Tip is gilding alloy copper and leaves no appreciable copper in the barrel, and no one likes scrubbing copper out of barrels. Go buy some Nosler AccuBonds or E-Tips Today! You will be glad you did. © 2015

Bullet Wind Drift Correction – by Ed Hale

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If you want to know calculated wind drift correction at long ranges of 200 to 600 yards you need accurate data from a chronograph and an on-line ballistic calculator such as the JBM Ballistics calculator at www.jbmballistics.com. Go to trajectory data input.

Here is a wind table I have created of wind correction in inches needed to be on a 6 inch target if the rifle was zeroed at 250 yards with a BC of 0.489 and bullet muzzle velocity of 2950 fps.  To the left is wind speed and to the right is the wind correction needed to keep the bullet on target at distances out to 600 yards.

At the bottom of the table is the bullet drop as it is affected by gravity. This table now needs to be proven at the ranges and corrected as needed for real world data. I interpret that at wind speeds of 5 mph or less that you can shoot all the way out to 294 yards as the True Max Point Blank Range without need to compensate for gravity to stay in a 6 inch circle. At 400 yards the bullet will drop at the same rate 32 feet per second per second no matter what the wind does and will drop 15 inches (in yellow)  based on its ballistic coefficient (wind drag) or you can compensate by turning your vertical adjustment up 3.5 MOA.

Tools:

Chronograph (cost 80 to 120 dollars)

A Camera stand that can connect to the Chronograph base

Data of Ballistic Coefficient for your bullet

A Ballistic Calculator such as www.jbmballistics.com

 

Once you shoot your rifle to get data for your bullet speed using the chronograph, In theory many serious hobby ballistician’s use the 6 inch circle as the ideal target bullseye of the heart lungs of a whitetail deer when plugging in data to the calculator. Some will use 8 inches for Elk heart and lungs. The lungs of a deer are laterally longer than 6 inches but you get the idea. So you have a little print out of this field tested data on your stand.  You note a  buck is standing at 500 yards facing left and the wind is blowing right to left at 10 mph where should you aim?  I mean if you are practiced at this.  Laterally you should aim around 17 inches to right of the lungs just forward of the rear ham muscle and adjust your vertical height on the scope accordingly to compensate for the 33 inch drop which is 6.4 MOA. This kind of shot needs to be practiced in training to be sure of the shot. If you have not practiced this kind of shot then let the deer walk away. Perhaps another day he will be at 100 yards, right? It is about the ethics, a clean kill and training.

This table does give me confidence in a 300 yard scenario if my rifle is correctly supported and the wind is 5 mph or less as it is often at dawn. © 2015

 

Savage 11/111 Long Range Hunter Rifle and Leupold VX-6 Scope and Nosler Bullets Out of the Box (Part 1) By Ed Hale

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savage 11 photo 1

I chose this 7mm Remington Magnum caliber to test because of the availability of ammo and brass for reloading and its outstanding accuracy record at any hunting distance. I chose the rifle because it has so much versatility with the built in cheek rest and muzzle brake. Due to the popularity of this rifle, it took my friends at Savage some time to obtain one for me to test for NH Rifleman publication. We will be testing this rifle with  the Leupold VX-6 3-18 44mm CDS Illuminated Boone and Crockett system and with Nosler E-Tip Expandable solid gilding copper bullets in 140 and 150 grains.

Hunters can spend many thousands of dollars on a fine hunting rifle and never equal the engineered quality of this Rifle at this price point MSRP of $1136. Yes it is not cheap but for what is in this rifle it is truly amazing if it can shoot as well as they say. Read on…

For the Techies like me…The rifle is for right handed shooters with a barrel rate of twist of 9.5 thus for 140 grains to 175 grains bullets are stable.  Stability is calculated at http://www.jbmballistics.com/cgi-bin/jbmstab-5.1.cgi where bullets are very stable above a factor of 1.5.

THE RIFLE

The rifle weighs in at  8.65 pounds without scope. Barrel Length is 26 inches and includes a 2 inch muzzle brake that can be turned on and off by a simple twist. Ammo capacity is three rounds and the cartridge is based on the large .375 Holland & Holland Magnum and necked down to 7.2mm or .284 inches. I think of this rifle as a 24 inch barrel with a 2 inch muzzle brake.  So what is so engineered? I liked the Savage videos below to share with our readers all the details. The adjustable cheek rest needs an allen wrench to change the height.

Stock – The AccuStock is engineered to seat the floating barrel firmly in a metal housing. A video presentation makes this clear.  http://savagearms.com/accuracy/accustock/

Trigger – Next is the innovative and Adjustable AccuTrigger  which allows low trigger weights and with Safety primary. The trigger on this rifle is set just under 3 pounds at 2 pounds 15 ounces and breaks crisply. Video http://savagearms.com/accuracy/accutrigger

Barrels are button rifled with a floating bolt head and head-space control and video clips are seen here. http://savagearms.com/accuracy

Recoil Pad and Muzzle Brake

The rifle has a state of the art recoil pad and absorbs lots of felt recoil. But the best option is the Muzzle Brake.  Savage added a 2 inch Muzzle Brake that can be turned on or off, adding more or less to velocity and recoil absorption (Pictured below with the brake activated. See the background through the center holes)

muzzle brake

THE SCOPE

The Leupold Scope is the VX-6 3-18 44mm CDS Illuminated with Boon and Crockett Reticle. We will set the scope on 10x for 100 yards with no Illumination. The body of this scope is too short for the existing mounts on the rifle so a set of high rings and a longer forward mount was purchased from Weaver to move the rings closer together.a zero to 600 ad

THE BULLET

etip

See the You Tube videos of Nosler bullets and E-Tips on the internet.

On one video the bullet began expand on impact of ballistic gel and at 5 to 6 inches and beyond it creates a maximum wound channel of 4 inches for an ethical kill and maintained more than 95% of bullet weight throughout and mushroomed perfectly.

BULLET GROUP TESTS (OUT OF THE BOX) SUB MOA August 7, 2015

Bullets were reloaded according to SAAMI spec’s and Nosler Manual Powder and Load recommendations for each bullet. IMR 4831 powder was chosen because it was available and had a starting load that was already proven to be accurate.

140 grain 100 yard Test at a MV of 2950 fps with 62 grains of IMR 4831 with the Muzzle Brake turned off ( Recoil was very acceptable with 140 grain bullets)

DATA and Photo’s

Group 1 = 1.06 inches

DSC_0025

Group 2 = 0.812 inches

DSC_0026

Group 3 = 0.687 inches

DSC_0027

Average = .853 inches

JBM Ballistics Table for Drop, Velocity, Energy and Max Point Blank Range MPBR for a 6 inch target. Max Point Blank Range is 293 yards when sighted for 250 yard zero. If the wind was 10 mph the shot would be limited to 220 yards without any correction. The maximum height of bullet flight is at 3 inches high at 141 yards.

jbm 140 grain 2950

 

I was thrilled with the rifle, scope and bullet set up as this combination shot sub minute of angle right out of the Box! WOW!!!

© 2105