Shawn Carlock
Sponsor
Went out to set up for the up coming LRH class this weekend and did a little shooting with the 338 AM. Having already made a second round hit on a rockchuck at 1073 yards a few weeks ago I knew of the rifles potential but had never put bullets on to something that showed a group at distance.
I setup my R&R flash target with a fresh coat of paint at 1276 yards. The R&R targets are really great for this kind of shooting as they make it easy to detect a hit with the naked eye. The circle on this model is 12" in diameter. I setup the AM with a Harris "s" bipod and pod-loc on the front. The rear was supported by a Red-Tac poly bead light weight rear bag that I use for field work. I broke out the Kestrel and Dell with Exbal, entered the conditions, 67 degrees, 47%, 26.4 bar, 3624' and a cosine of .98. The Exbal program gave me an elevation correction of 23.50 MOA. I dialed in the 23.50 MOA and having shot out to 1148 yards on a disk in different conditions to get my dope justified was pretty confident in elevation. Now for the killer, wind, I studied the leaves and grasses, consulted the Kestrel and determined that there was a slight wind from right to left to the tune of .50 MOA. I dialed .50 MOA right wind. I settled in behind the AM and launched a 300 SMK down range toward the plate. I recovered from the slight recoil in time to watch the last of the trace drop into and strike the plate through the Nightforce 5.5-22 NXS. I could see the hit on the edge of the plate at 2:00. I loaded, held off for the second round and launched the second round to connect with that hit also. I loaded a third round, looked at the wind picked up an increase in wind to the left and held the right edge of the plate when I launched the round. The third round scored a hit also. I loaded the 4th round quickly trying to shoot the same condition if possible. I fired the forth round and had the bolt back by the time it struck the plate. Loading the fifth round I thought the wind had backed off a little so I went back to a center hold and fired the fifth round striking the plate for the fifth time. I got up from my prone position, turned off the video camera and went to the spotting scope to access the group on the plate. After looking through the spotting scope a little I was kind of disappointed as all of the rounds were only and inch or two from missing the plate. While driving the 10 minutes down the retrieve the plate it occurred to me that I usually shoot my 18" square fixed disk here. Also in these conditions with my 338 Edge I would have been happy to have kept 5 consecutive hits on the 18" plate, the group I had just fired having to hold differently almost every shot was still on a target that was not quite a 1 MOA target. While this performance is not the best I have done at this distance it is the best I have done at this distance in conditions like this before. I can't wait for really good conditions and a chance to shoot at 2K.
