DT7
Well-Known Member
It has been a long path from a bent barreled mess to the ting of steel at 1760.
My project started out with a gun I rolled over in a four wheeler accident.
I had the action trued and a shillen match barrel installed.
I fought bad groups with 165 grain loads and a laminated stock but was still able to use it to hit steel at 1000 yards.
I found a used H-S precision stock with aluminum bedding block and bedded it with Devcon and my grouping improved immensly.
I also bought some 208 grain Amax's and some H-1000 and worked up a sub MOA load and started getting the itch to stretch her legs beyond 1000.
We have a trip planned to the utah salt flats every year and I thought that would be the place to give it a try.
I tested things out and my 1 inch tubed Mark II leupold didn't have enough come up for a mile so I ordered a Murphy precision 20 Moa pic. rail.
Before I had the reciever drilled and tapped I did some measuring with a long straight edge and some trigenometry and determined that the actual MOA gain on my action was going to be less than 20 so I spent some time with a file and carefully worked the front perch down and the rear perch angle to match and then dropped it off to have it drilled and tapped.
I also bedded the pic rail with Devcon also and all told I ended up with 28 MOA on my picatiney rail. I figured that would give me plenty of come up.
I installed the scope in Nightforce rings and Badger reducers, btw the Badger reducers didn't just drop into the Nightforce rings, they needed some clearance to fit the bottom rings.
Bad weather prevended me from getting the gun sighted in before our trip last weekend so I had to sight it in before the fun began.
There were 13 of us out there and we got things set up, steel targets at 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 880, 1000, and 1760 yards.
I sighted in at 100 yards and then after letting it cool I shot steel at 700, then 800, then our life sized antelope shaped target at 880, and then 1000 yards.
My dope was very close to the dope I had proven a couple weeks before at 4500 feet before I had my pic rail on, we were shooting at 4200 feet last weekend.
The antelope would have been one shot kill.
The wind was less than 5 mph and it was getting closer to dark so pulled out my dope chart and accidentally read the dope for 1950 yards wich after dialing up to max I still needed 4 mil dots to get there.
I fired three shots and then went out to see where they impacted. After quite a bit of searching we finally found the impacts about 150 yards beyond the target.
My wind dope looked to be perfect but it took me a minute or two to figure out that I read the wrong dope.
By the time I figured out what I had done it was just about dark so we put a lantern on the target and I fired three more shots in the dark. One with the cross hairs dead on, one on the first mil dot, and the third on the second mil dot.
Well due to driving four wheelers looking for the impacts we werent able to find one of the impacts but one of the shots we found was short but the other one was about 8 inches right of the target and the elevation was good.
Now I just had to figure out which one was the one that was good.
Well the weather wasn't as nice the second day, in fact we had to take down our shade because the wind picked up and two of our campers went home with damaged or ripped off awnings caused by Kestrel measured 35 mph winds.
We spend most of the day shooting pistols and ARs at closer ranges. About mid afternoon the wind started to drop off so I got my shooting mat set up and settled in with my Ruger and went right to work at 1000 yards again.
I hit 4 for 6 with windage of 3 left 2.5 left 1 left and then 1 right at 1000 so I decided it was calm enough to try for the mile again.
I fired the first shot and waited there while someone went down range to check impact and they reported back that I had hit about the bottom edge of the target two inches to the right. I was watching the mirage and it had changed from right to left so I kept the same dope and sent another one and heard the report of steel. Woo hoo, contact.
Well as it turns out I was so focussed on the change in wind that I forgot to raise up a little higher so the shot impacted about 8 inches in front of the target and skipped into it.
So I fired one more shot raising up a bit and hit bonified steel at 1 mile. While we were trying to get another gun dialed in to the mile the wind picked up and the conditions never did get calm enough to try to print a better group on the 3'X4' target but the hit, skip/hit, and near miss would have printed about a 20 inch group, just over MOA at a mile. With a 300 mag and lowly Ruger no less.
We thought the weather would get better for another go at it but no such luck.
I may have to make another trip down to the salt to try again before next year and give it another try.
Sorry for the long write up but it has been a fun and exciting process to succeed at building a shooter from a bent wreck.
Thanks for reading, Dan
My project started out with a gun I rolled over in a four wheeler accident.
I had the action trued and a shillen match barrel installed.
I fought bad groups with 165 grain loads and a laminated stock but was still able to use it to hit steel at 1000 yards.
I found a used H-S precision stock with aluminum bedding block and bedded it with Devcon and my grouping improved immensly.
I also bought some 208 grain Amax's and some H-1000 and worked up a sub MOA load and started getting the itch to stretch her legs beyond 1000.
We have a trip planned to the utah salt flats every year and I thought that would be the place to give it a try.
I tested things out and my 1 inch tubed Mark II leupold didn't have enough come up for a mile so I ordered a Murphy precision 20 Moa pic. rail.
Before I had the reciever drilled and tapped I did some measuring with a long straight edge and some trigenometry and determined that the actual MOA gain on my action was going to be less than 20 so I spent some time with a file and carefully worked the front perch down and the rear perch angle to match and then dropped it off to have it drilled and tapped.
I also bedded the pic rail with Devcon also and all told I ended up with 28 MOA on my picatiney rail. I figured that would give me plenty of come up.
I installed the scope in Nightforce rings and Badger reducers, btw the Badger reducers didn't just drop into the Nightforce rings, they needed some clearance to fit the bottom rings.
Bad weather prevended me from getting the gun sighted in before our trip last weekend so I had to sight it in before the fun began.
There were 13 of us out there and we got things set up, steel targets at 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 880, 1000, and 1760 yards.
I sighted in at 100 yards and then after letting it cool I shot steel at 700, then 800, then our life sized antelope shaped target at 880, and then 1000 yards.
My dope was very close to the dope I had proven a couple weeks before at 4500 feet before I had my pic rail on, we were shooting at 4200 feet last weekend.
The antelope would have been one shot kill.
The wind was less than 5 mph and it was getting closer to dark so pulled out my dope chart and accidentally read the dope for 1950 yards wich after dialing up to max I still needed 4 mil dots to get there.
I fired three shots and then went out to see where they impacted. After quite a bit of searching we finally found the impacts about 150 yards beyond the target.
My wind dope looked to be perfect but it took me a minute or two to figure out that I read the wrong dope.
By the time I figured out what I had done it was just about dark so we put a lantern on the target and I fired three more shots in the dark. One with the cross hairs dead on, one on the first mil dot, and the third on the second mil dot.
Well due to driving four wheelers looking for the impacts we werent able to find one of the impacts but one of the shots we found was short but the other one was about 8 inches right of the target and the elevation was good.
Now I just had to figure out which one was the one that was good.
Well the weather wasn't as nice the second day, in fact we had to take down our shade because the wind picked up and two of our campers went home with damaged or ripped off awnings caused by Kestrel measured 35 mph winds.
We spend most of the day shooting pistols and ARs at closer ranges. About mid afternoon the wind started to drop off so I got my shooting mat set up and settled in with my Ruger and went right to work at 1000 yards again.
I hit 4 for 6 with windage of 3 left 2.5 left 1 left and then 1 right at 1000 so I decided it was calm enough to try for the mile again.
I fired the first shot and waited there while someone went down range to check impact and they reported back that I had hit about the bottom edge of the target two inches to the right. I was watching the mirage and it had changed from right to left so I kept the same dope and sent another one and heard the report of steel. Woo hoo, contact.
Well as it turns out I was so focussed on the change in wind that I forgot to raise up a little higher so the shot impacted about 8 inches in front of the target and skipped into it.
So I fired one more shot raising up a bit and hit bonified steel at 1 mile. While we were trying to get another gun dialed in to the mile the wind picked up and the conditions never did get calm enough to try to print a better group on the 3'X4' target but the hit, skip/hit, and near miss would have printed about a 20 inch group, just over MOA at a mile. With a 300 mag and lowly Ruger no less.
We thought the weather would get better for another go at it but no such luck.
I may have to make another trip down to the salt to try again before next year and give it another try.
Sorry for the long write up but it has been a fun and exciting process to succeed at building a shooter from a bent wreck.
Thanks for reading, Dan
