I shoot High Power and a few years ago they started allowing scopes instead of iron sights which I think is very good policy, most of us in the game are not brand new any more and I for one was having a hard time at 600 yds with irons trying to decide if the fuzzy target was in the center of the fuzzy sight so my scores at 600 were going down and I could not figure out if it was the rifle or the load or my vision so if you put a scope on my model 70 match rifle you can't feed it with stripper clips for rapid so I bought a ruger precision rifle to use for high power and really like the adjustability of the stock and the action being in line with the stock I believe reduces felt recoil. I liked the rpr I used for High Power so much I bought another and put my 6.5x284 reamer in the factory barrel and it shot pretty well and used it for hunting, the gun is a little heavy for carrying but is very comfortable to shoot so I like it for hunting. The 6.5x284 is a great round but the factory barrel is short ,24 inches , so the velocity gain over my 260 rifle which has about27 inches was not good enough. So I decide to chamber a 30 cal barrel in 30-284 and put it in place of the 6.5x284 barrel. I think all of the 284 class cartridges are better off in long actions so the bullets can be seated to better advantage but I like the ruger rifle so much I went with it. It was a little fussy to find a load for and stay in the 2.920 length of my magazine but hornadt 180 interlock bt bullets seem to not mind being jumped and 5 shots are staying in 3/4 min at 200 yds. I switched to 190 sierra because there is a 600 800 900 and 1000 yd match this weekend and I thought it would be fun to shoot this rifle in it. I found a load that would put 4 shots in 1 inch and one flyer to make the group 2 1/2 inches at 200 yds repeatedly so I started investigating my brass and if I neck sized only the flyer would go away and if I used first time shot brass which is .008 undersized near the shoulder for my chamber and as much as .005 nonconcentric I would get 3 inch groups. taking some of the first time brass and indexing the nonconcentric high in the chamber when I shot the rifle improved the group to about 2 1/2 inches. When I size the brass near the shoulder gets reduced about .005 ,since this thing seems to be cranky about brass I tryed a rod with some sandpaper to try to increase the die dimension at the shoulder and I havent resized yet to see if I changed the size of the die but they seem to be pretty hard and difficult to measure at that point but I'm not confident I changed it much. When chambering a round in a rifle with a plunger ejector the ejector is going to push the case in the chamber to one side therefore out of concentric so I am rationalizing this rifle doesn't like this so when neck sizing only the case isn't being pushed to one side of the chamber however almost all actions any more have this style of ejector and seem to shoot well so I could be wrong. I loaded 5 rounds last night with the first time brass which fits loose in the chamber but increased the oal so the bullets would be jammed in the rifling to leave square marks from the lands, which we used to seat this way when using vld's that seemed to need to be loaded very close to the lands, so my thought is that being shoved into the bore the bullet should center the case and bullet and maybe it will shoot. the easy cure would be to make a load for the 100 peices of first time brass and practice off hand with them then just neck size for the match this weekend but I don't know if I have enough time as some people want me to work.
Funny, I agree with the UK shooter comment, I did shoot with them in Raton NM, and Canada... fun folks, like our north Canada cousins, a hoot once they get going. Cheers.
