C'mon, guys. (accuracy claims)

[Walkalong]

Long-range shooting, even at a target 1.5 MOA wide is TOUGH.

Dang straight.

The true Marksman, to me, is the person who can be dropped into a reasonable situation, judge the distance, and hit the target/game with the first shot, almost all of the time.

Let me say 500/600 yards as a limit. Deer hunting limit. A good marksman should have no problem with that. I am talking about grand dad who went into the woods for needed meat for the table, who might encounter a variety of shots, but need to shoot one time, else hunt for quite some time more. Some of those old guys could really shoot, but never set foot on the field of competition. The children of those guys had better bring home 4 squirrels with the five rounds they were given, and five was better.

Farther than that it starts becoming very challenging to even the best shooters.

 

[taliv]

"In 1919 My Great Grandfather fired a 98 -8x with an '03 ........He came in 48thplace in that match. It was the Presidents match fired at 1000 yds...the x is 10" (1MOA) and the 10 ring 20" (2MOA) with iron sights..."

Wheeler, sounds like he did some great shooting. But I'm curious about what target they were shooting at. The old high powder targets did not an "X" the center ring being a "V"

president's match is currently shot at 200/300/600. did it used to be shot at 1000? i'd be kinda surprised

 

[ShakyJake]

Hi 1858
Great post, both entertaining and educational. How about dropping the other shoe so to speak and tell us how your Marine friends did with whom you were shooting. Sounds like a great opportunity to pick up pointers, even if just by watching masters at work. I have recently acquired a Marlin 882 and am enjoying the chance to check out this thing called accurate shooting. Loads of fun.
TaKe CaRe
Ted

 

[Slamfire]

You're kidding right?! At least give the novice shooter some hope!! If you manage to break 300 (200, 300 and 600 yard course of fire) under the stress of a match, in the sun and wind and all trussed up like a nutter from a looney bin you should be proud of yourself!! I know quite a few folks who've been at this game for a while and are thrilled when they break 400.

Oh God, you are so right. A first time shooter breaking 300 is doing good. When they break the 400 level they have made real progress.

A bud of mine shot this 99-7X standing, with an AR15, at our local 100 yard reduced match.

This guy has several President's 100 patches, but even this was so exceptionally good I had to take a picture.

Our club's worst score, at the 100 yard reduced 500 point match, was a seven. I was not there. I don't know how you shoot 58 shots at a six by six target and only manage to get seven points.

 

[LiquidTension]

I don't know how you shoot 58 shots at a six by six target and only manage to get seven points.

Well obviously they all went into the same hole in the 7 ring. That'd be my story haha.

My best group was 9 shots under a quarter at 50 yards from a Savage MkII .22. No, I'm not discounting a flyer - I only fired 9 shots. I had to keep the ammo in even rows because of mild OCD I guess. Al Thompson was there and can verify that it was from a shooting position that was not entirely stable (doing a half split while sticking my rear out and leaning on a random range table). My usual groups with the Sig 556 and AR run about fist sized at 100 yards for 10 shot groups. I'm still trying to find a load for my 700 in .308, but so far the best group I've gotten was about 1.5-1.6 MOA with handloads. My biggest problem is eyesight. Any groups without magnified optics are generally unimpressive.

 

[52grain]

last year i took aim from the 2nd story of a rented house in atlantic city and hit a pigeon on the champs elysees in paris. Didn't post about as i hit him in the left eye when i was aiming at the right. But i did have to cut down the load in my black powder great plains. At full power the day before, a german family complained about the ball whizzing past their house.

rotflmao!

 

[MCMXI]

Hi 1858, Great post, both entertaining and educational. How about dropping the other shoe so to speak and tell us how your Marine friends did with whom you were shooting. Sounds like a great opportunity to pick up pointers, even if just by watching masters at work.

One of the two didn't shoot at all since he was the RO. The other only shot an AR10 that he'd recently built. He wanted to get his NF scope dialed in and put a few rounds through his new toy. He shot 25 of my reloads and was having issues with the BCG not going back all the way. He later discovered that the gas key was loose!

I think that many of us get too comfortable shooting a discipline whether it's Benchrest, F-Class or groups at the range. In F-Class type matches, High Power or PALMA, the target sits on a 6'x6' frame and the puller can call shots too, so you generally get immediate feedback that you can adjust for. When you take a shot and have no idea where the bullet landed it can be very frustrating. How do you adjust for that? If you "KNOW" your elevation is on which it should be if you have the correct velocity and BC data, and you feel that you were holding on the target when you squeezed the trigger, all you can do is assume you're off on the windage. Then it becomes an iterative process. Adjust for windage and take another shot. This is the real world of long-range shooting outside of structured matches. There aren't always going to be wind flags from you to the target or trees or bushes or even long grass to help. Too many movies such as "Shooter" (which I enjoyed) give completely the wrong impression as to what's involved with long range shooting. Watching Travis Haley on that rooftop in Iraq gives a much better indication of the challenge of hitting man-sized targets at unknown (estimated distances) let alone MOA targets. There's a good reason why he had a semi-auto with LOTS of ammunition.

 

[gunsandreligion]

I can shoot a barret semi .50 at 2000cm (in my yard) standing, rapidfire (2 rpm) and get 1/4 inch (sorry I mean FEET.)groups all day long.

Believe 1/2 of what you hear and all of what YOU SEE!

1/8th of what you hear and 1/4 of what you see.
By the way since this is confession, Good Father I addmit to having "exagerated" about getting 1/4 inch groups at 75 yards standing, with my stock 10/22(realisticly, it can, if I really try hard, get 1/2 inch groups benched at 50 yards.)Please forgive me and I will do those 3500 Hail Marys.

 

[Hammerhead6814]

I'll say this:

I've yet to shoot a sub-MOA group with any rifle I've ever held.

 

[gunsandreligion]

I'll say this:

I've yet to shoot a sub-MOA group with any rifle I've ever held.

thats becouse you held them.you gotta stickem on a rest and pull the trigger with a air broom.

 

[HB]

I recently did some shooting at 100, 200, 330, and 505 lasered yards. For the 505 and 300 yard targets, I used a 2'x1' piece of steel.
Of course my friend pulls out his .243 and says "Ill hit it in 2 shots." 12 shots later the plate was unharmed at 505 yards from the bench. It was windy is the best excuse he could come up with.
The next shooting was at 300 on the same plate. I fired my Yugo SKS offhand and connected on about 2 or 3 of 15 shots. I was very satisfyed with this considering the longest range I had fired it at previously was 75 yards. From a bench it did much better, with about 10/20 shots connecting.

Long(ish) range is hard

HB

 

[twofifty]

Reading this, I have to laugh. Last hunting season I took a sucessful (but totally unnecessary) offhand head shot on a deer at about 30 yards. Felt real good about it at the time (I hate to waste meat), but right now I'm thinking "What the heck was I thinking"?

Don

you didn't have to think, likely because you'd practiced position shooting with that rifle/load, and therefore KNEW you'd make the shot.

Am I close?

 

[C-grunt]

I had a Savage 10FP with a Leupold Tactical 3x9 on it a few years back. I was able to shoot that rifle pretty darn well. At that time I lived near the range and shot at least 2 or 3 times a month. Now that I live about 40 miles from the range and have a baby, Im lucky to get to the rifle range a handful of times a year.

That Savage really liked Winchester 168grn Supreme Ballistic Silvertip. It just had to shoot best with the most expensive ammo the store carried. It shot better than my handloads and even Federal GMM.

Id say benched at 100 yards it averaged about 8/10 of an inch or maybe a little more for 5 shots. My biggest was around 1.2 inches and the smallest was about 6/10s. It did shoot just under a 1/2 inch once or twice but those were flukes.

Now I never got that rifle out past 200 yards, which itself was seldom, and ended up trading it for a Bushmaster AR.

My friends and I are trying to get a monthly distance shoot together with a steel silhouette and distances between 300 and 600 yards. It will be out in the desert and shooting from field positions. We will be using ARs, milsurps and scoped rifles. No competing, just fun with friends.

Hopefully Friday I will be buying my new distance rifle. Its a Stevens 200 .223 with a Mueller tactical 8-25x44 scope. I will slowly upgrade the parts on this rifle as I go along. But I believe in this form it will serve me well to get re-acquainted with distance shooting.

 

[MachIVshooter]

what did I learn that day?

Without "splash" or other signs of impact, you're merely guessing. Without wind flags or trees to show wind direction you're merely guessing and reading the wind is VERY difficult.

This is so very true, and doing our rat shooting on the Eastern plains of CO, I can vouch for how frunstrating wind can be. That .17 Rem. is a laser beam at ranges under 200 yards. But.......the little 20 gr. bullets might as well have sails when the breeze picks up. The .220, with the heavier 55 gr. pills, is more resistant, but yes, I have seen a good breeze move my shots over by a couple of feet at the 400-ish yard mark. Lucky for us, the baron and dry landscape where we usually shoot reliably produces dust puffs with most every miss, so "walking the bullets in", as I mentioned before, is pretty effective.

The only rifle I own that I would bet my life on to reliably score hits on a man sized target in excess of 500 yards is my AR-50. Those big bullets don't get pushed around nearly as much as small bore stuff, and I think the rifle itself is more precise than any of my others.

 

[MJ]

 

[jimmyraythomason]

I once took my scoped Marlin Model 60 to my grandfathers house to show it off. At that time (1972) my grand dad was 82 years old. Behind his house was the "ash pile",(he burned coal for heat). We set up his favorite target,old PET milk cans. These cans had a small dimple on the bottom and he would shoot at that dimple. I shot first and had a decent 10 shot group(actually pretty good I thought) maybe nickle size. Pap's turn. He used an old Stevens single shot and shot longs in it. At the first shot the dimple disappears. Second shot ,no change in the target,third shot,still no change in the target. I accused him of missing the last two shots. He laughed at me and said to go look a little closer. One entry hole NOT RAGGED,just one smooth hole but 3 very close exit hole on the opposite side. Let me point out that he was shooting .22 longs in an old ironsighted relic. I also would add that the old man was blind in his left eye(having lost it to a rooster's spur at age 3) and was awaiting cataract surgery on his good eye. He learned to shoot at a time when you hit your target or your family went hungery. He died in 1979 at age 89. I still wish I could shoot as well as he.

 

[CZguy]

jimmyraythomason,

Thanks for sharing that story. It has brought back some fond memories for me of shooting with my Dad and Uncle around the same time, and has brightened my day.

I think that's where I developed my fondness for Lyman peep sights. I've never felt the need for a scope unless I'm shooting past two hundred yards.

 

[armoredman]

I am no rifleman, compared to some here. But that's OK, I have fun. This is how I shoot my vz-58, old pic, differant stock/forearm/sling/optics now, but same way, no sandbags.



looks like this now...



Shot like this at 75 yards while sighting in EOTech. I know I can do better when I get out to the 100-200 yard range. OK, so, well, maybe.



P07 shot like this at 25 yards, range bag, not sand bags, didn't work very well.



It gave a 5 shot group like this. Where is number 5? I have NO idea.... Wished I'd stopped at 3...




That's my shooting, certainly not the greatest, not the worst. As for qualification, I qualify Expert or Distinguished Expert with my Department every year, with the issue Glock 17/19. Not too hard, POST has been dumbed down, no 50 yards shots at all, only 6 at 25, scoring is the 8 ring on a B-27. And I still manage to drop one or three out at 25 every year.

Anyone who wants to can join me here on the Casa Grande free public range, nice place.

 

[SSN Vet]

Here's my accuracy claim...

I have never shot a true 1" , 5-shot group at 100 yds....

so there, call me a liar...

I have recently aquired a rifle and optics combo that I think can do it...

and I have the bullets, powder and (hardest of all to get) primers for what should be a killer load...

looking forward to spring, when I can stop shivering long enough in-between shots to give it a real try.

 

[MachIVshooter]

looking forward to spring, when I can stop shivering long enough in-between shots to give it a real try.

I can relate. It's been cold here. I also try to drink no more than 2 cups of coffee and eat a good breakfast on range days. I've had the shakes so bad from too much caffiene and no food intake that I fired a couple magazines and packed it up.

 

[WNTFW]

I always bring some food with me. My shooting buddies have come to realize I will never starve to death at a range.
No matter where why shooting ranks with everybody that day, I am always the best fed. The menu is first order of business for a range trip.

 

[C-grunt]

Yeah its been cold here too. Went down to the academy today to shoot. It was like 63 degrees at noon!

 

[Afy]

on a good day this is what I can do for two or three five shot groups at 100 'meters' with my Savage:

generally with the majority of my rifles staying under 1 MOA at 100, 'edge to edge' isnt too much of a problem. Getting sub half, edge to edge is a whole different ball game. I do shoot off a bench, but not free recoil. The trigger on the Savage is too heavy to allow that.

 

[MachIVshooter]

Yeah its been cold here too. Went down to the academy today to shoot. It was like 63 degrees at noon!

*&#% off. It was 7 below yesterday morning, about 2 today I want summer.

 

[exbiologist]

Guns don't have to be ugly to shoot well either. This was the second sub 1/3 inch group my .264 shot while developing an antelope load.

100 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip, 71.5 gr H4831SC, 3725 fps.
But in all honesty most of the time it shoots them between .4 and .6 inch.