It was a Sunshine day at the Match and not too hot. Wind conditions in the morning were ideal but worsened somewhat through the day thus attention to wind flags was essential. I was shooting F Class Open with the Savage Model 12 LRP- Long Range Precision Rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor which weighs in at 11 pounds and the Leupold VX-3i 6.5-20x55mm. I am very pleased with this rifle and scope that I am testing for Savage and Leupold at a retail price of around $1100 for the Rifle http://www.savagearms.com/firearms/model/12LRP and $1160 or so for the Scope. https://www.leupold.com/hunting-shooting/scopes/vx-3i-riflescopes/vx-3i-6-5-20x50mm-30mm-side-focus-cds-target/
A few weeks earlier I shot this combination at the Sig Sauer “Reach for 1000” with the new Hornandy® 143 grain ELD-X™ Match bullets with the HEAT SHIELD tip and cartridges right off the shelf. I was popping balloons at 1000 yards with them.
The most common calibers used at these matches are 308 Winchester, 6mm and .223 Remington. For 600 to 1000 yards the 6.5 Creedmoor is making lots of friends these days as trajectory is much flatter with low recoil. My vertical drop setting for 600 yards was 9 3/4 Minutes.
I was using H4350, CCI BR-2 Primers with Sierra 142g HPBT. Match bullets. Velocities were chronographed at just over 2700 FPS and Standard Deviation for a 5 shot group was under 10 with ES of 21 fps. 100 yard groups were around 1/2 inch. In an earlier article I sent out an email this past month and Brian Litz of Applied Ballistics fame chimed back that 1/2 inch groups are all you need with SD<10 and ES as low as you can get.
Jason and I waited till 8:30 AM to register for the shoot (cost $20.00). We hooked up with Barbara Lamb and her husband Art. Barbara is an avid and excellent long range High Power shooter. Art her husband graciously offered to do Pit duty for the three of us. Wow! A big thank you to Art for doing Pit duty. Since Barbara, Jason and I were the only ones shooting F Class Open we had our own little club to the right of those shooting open sights. See below open sight shooters all wearing shooting jackets.
Setting up for open sights below.
Rifles below are in 308 Caliber. The left is Barbara’s and the right is Jason’s.
Using Barbara’s spotting scope, Jason scored for her.
Jason shooting for score below. He has worked on his physical plant as he is on a special diet as well as his shooting form. Lookin’ good!
My Savage M12 LRP in 6.5 Creedmoor with McMillan Stock below and Leupold’s VX3i 6.5-20x50mm. Recoil was easy on the shoulder! I was testing some Nosler Custom Brass and loaded them out of the box with the Sierra 142 g HPBT at 2700 FPS. I knew that I should have shot them first to fire form the brass and establish a better neck tension but time was short. I encountered a few shots that shot low believing that neck tension was insufficient in the Out-of-the Box Brass thus my score was a miss for those rounds. Lesson learned! I shot very well otherwise scoring lots of 9 and 10’s and an occasional X. As a new prone target shooter here I was otherwise pleased. I have written and tested big bore for Africa years ago such as the 416 Rigby and the 375 Ruger which I own and hand-load down for deer.
Most shooters here were older but I noticed a few young shooters. Here below is Elahh Peterson (age 21) shooting with an AR-15 with Open Sights with a shooting jacket.Elahh began shooting at Nashua with Sea Cadets once a year but Nashua F&G stole her away to shoot regularly.
All had a good time with friends sending bullets down range!
Good Shooting!