"Long" distance shooting

[Papa Whiskey]

I can shoot 2" groups at 200 yards all day long with with my .257 Wby. But I'm lucky to get 3 shots inside 8" at 300. What the heck am I doing wrong?

 

[daorhgih]

Groups.

What is your bullet weight, and what is your twist? Are you in free-air the entire range length?

 

[WNTFW]

Papa Whiskey,
A little more info on you setup might help. What sights/optics? What bullets or other load data can you give? What position are you shooting from? Could be a whole bunch of things. What rifle? How are the groups opening up. Are they stringing vertically, horizontally or randomly? Any pattern?

 

[Furious_George]

^Those are definitely good questions. That's an extra 100 yards for the wind to mess up your shot. Do you use wind flags?

 

[Papa Whiskey]

Let's see... Weatherby mark v ultralight off of a pretty comfortable card table/ sandbag set up. Careful hand loads with barnes 100 gr. Tipped tsx and 66 gr. Imr 4831. Bottom of a pretty deep rock pit so very little wind but shots seem to string more horizontally than vertically. Probably just poor shooting but everything just looks so pretty at 200!

 

[Papa Whiskey]

No wind flags but I'm about 200 feet down and seriously zero discernible wind

 

[Geno]

As I understand it, a vertical string tends to indicate that your barrel is touching the stock. Weatherby's standard Mark Vs do have a pressure point design near the tip of the stock. Even B&Cs replacement stock has this feature. They can easily be removed. I would free-float the barrel.

Geno

 

[unwise11]

yes. free float all day. no need for a pressure point. thats Turrible.

 

[bubba15301]

are you lettig the barrel cool off between shots ? hot barrel will string the shots also. especially a light weight barrel

 

[WNTFW]

The easiest things to check first would be:
Barrel crown - probably not it but very easy to inspect.
Stock screws for looseness.
scope or sight looseness

Vertical stringing can be:
Air in lungs not being consistent
Shoulder pressure not consistent
Lug bottoming out in stock or stock screws loose.
Flexing stock & changing pressure on barrel
Like bubba15301 said heat
Load could be too light or inconsistent.

Setup could be bad.
If using a front bag it could be in a bad spot.
No rear bag - that can be a killer.
NPA could be off.
Scope Parallax??

I did shoot in a borrow pit for a while. The wind was alway dead or 6/12. The thing was I had more wind than I expected at times. Now I have shot in wind that made 300yd hits erratic, but it was obviously strong.

 

[Walkalong]

Strange. 2" at 200 and 8" at 300 doesn't add up. Bullets are destabilizing somewhere in between, or you are just making bad shots.

 

[oldfool]

ain't got a clue
but at what range would that bullet w/ that load go transonic ?

ok... scratch that, not even close

 

[WNTFW]

Walkalong,
I agree with you. It seems bullet going off between 200 & 300 that much is a head scratcher. I have a feeling it is more than 1 problem and they really come into play at 300. Most of what I listed would have an affect at 200 & 100. So bad shooting doesn't play in to the decent short range shooting. Usually bad shooting shows at every range.

 

[Zak Smith]

If you can shoot 2" at 200 but it opens up to more than 4" at 300 yards in identical conditions, I'd try a different load.

 

[hammerklavier]

What power scope are you using? And what zoom levels at 200 vs 300?

 

[WNTFW]

I just reread; your shots are more dispersed horizontally.
That could be your trigger finger/hand. Inconsistent location or not pulling straight back. Cheek weld/parallax. Too much angle behind the rifle or butt slipping on you.

It does seem like a combination of things to add up to and extra 4-5 inches though.

It could just be the bullet/load ain't holding up, but I would think the horizontal dispersion is not supporting that.

I did have a scope where the eyepiece would move around. I would shoot 2 in 1 hole then get a flier of about 4-8 MOA. Took a little while to figure that one out. But it did it any distance even though it was sporadic. It was mostly horizontal but did it vertically at times . . .

"200 ft down" wow, maybe being that close to the center of the earth is throwing you off. Around here we have nothing like that.

 

[BrocLuno]

Try longer bullet with slightly better ballistic coefficient? Sierra Match King available in .257?

 

[Zak Smith]

Not a BC problem.

 

[BrocLuno]

Understand, but trying another bullet will allow him to see if the pattern remains the same or changes. That might help indicate. Already reloading, so double check? Has to be a wobble coming from somewhere, as the groups are tight enough at 200? Seems there is something going on with velocity reduction?

 

[kludge]

Aside from something changing with your shooting fundamentals, wind (which you say isn't an issue), load (which I don't get, not transsonic at 300 and the bullet will get more stable as it slows down), I'm going to go with... scope parallax... which can actually be a function of the shooting fundamentals - your shooting position and location of your cheek weld, and therefore the position of the eye behind the scope is different from shot to shot, changing what should be a 3-4" group at 300 into a 8" group.

It has happened to me.