308Win @ ELR

[M67]

Please bear with me on this one, i believe i will stay within he ELR rules.

I am going on vacation and will have the opportunity to shoot alot, alot of places, and at whatever range - basically i am going home, whre there is few people, and far between them. I will bring one rifle and and a rangefinder. This is a limitation, since it is a Zeiss PRF and it will not measure beyond 1350m, quite 1500yds. But it is what i have.
If i had a longer reaching LRF i would probably have brought the 338, and played between 1500 and 2000-something.

The rifle in question, here with a 6.5mm barrel

308 barrel under the "custom mirage shield"

Anyway, having a new 308Win (28", 1:12") barrel that shoots 175gr Scenar-Ls like a house on fire (> 850m/s, 2800fps) - why not bring the 308, and see what it can do at the longer ranges? My old 308 is 16" and it does not really work too well at 1km, even though it seems both 155 and 167 Scenars arrive paper point first at least at 1100m - the come-up is hilarious, and in wind it is like axe throwing or something... In a quiet i have shot 12" groups with both bullets at 1100m.

300m group w/new 28" barrel and 175gr Scenar L

1090m group w/old 16" barrel and 155gr Scenar


Do anyone have any experience with the 175gr Scenar L, the 185 Scenar, or the 155 Scenar at ELR?
US-made bullets are almost not an option these days, they are hard to come by, and when found, very costly, SMKs and Bergers generally cost more than twice (Bergers sometimes 1$ apiece, and i can get Lapua factory ammo for that...) that of Scenars - if they can even be found. Nosler CC we have though, maybe the 190s?
Which Scenar would people her go with for beyond 1k, and if not a Scenar, which NCC?


K

 

[davkrat]

No experience with my .308 at those ranges. Tagging in in hopes of seeing your results inthe future. Sounds like a fun trip!

 

[Sauer 150]

Hello Krister,

Nice to see a fellow Norwegian on LRH as well ;-)

I know of a "gun runner" who's getting quite a few boxes of 175 NNC's tomorrow. I'll throw a few in the mail for you. Looking to test these for myself as well.

Fueled with a solid dose of N550, H4350 even maybe Win760 should all be the in the right alley. We have used quite a bit of Alliant Power Pro MR 2000 also with heavy bullets in 308. My current favorite is 185 Berger Juggernauts. Expensive but shoots extremely well at extended range.

Every once in while I'm fairly jealous of you guys having access to LR facilities almost next door

 

[M67]

175 NNC's

I have never even heard of 175gr NCC, should be interesting. (As should the new 300gr NCC for the 338.. If it can be had)

My current favorite is 185 Berger Juggernauts. Expensive

These bullets are simply too expensive, they are like 10% less than a 300gr Scenar, and twice the already expensive Scenar L.
If I am going to pay that much to shoot, i'll rather pull out the big 338.

Running on something like 2-3 liters of empty cases per week - I actually do have to consider the cost of things, its not just beiing cheap.

To keep things ELR, and not make it into a norwegian subforum

5 shots with the 338 at 1025m/ 1130 yards (Barnard PL/ 30 "True Flite 1:9", 300gr Berger OTM 88gr N570)

Different day, different rifle, same range, 10 shots (Sauer 200STR, 6.5x55 139gr Scenar, 54.5gr N570)

Freshly painted steel @ 1025 - hit the spraycan first

View from "the office", 200STR to left, Barnard to right

Shooter and spotter, the 200STR being extremely popular here



K

 

[Canadian Bushman]

Whenever i have more distance than i have rangefinder i set up a shot i want to take and then park my truck somewhere in the middle. Then i range the distance on both sides of the truck for the overall distance. When its not a straight shot i use a compass and trig out the overall distance. If elevation is present take that into account as well. I got out to over 1k with a bushnell 800 with this method before investing in a better rangefinder.

Now i dont have any experience with the lapua bullets your shooting but ive taken the 185 berger out to a mile and they were ok but with a mv of 2600 they went subsonic a little past 1200 and groups easily opened to 1.5-2 moa if not larger and everything i shot past the trans sonic region was always low about a minute or two.

As far as a mile i was just bombing them out there and looking for splash. Pretty much anything pushed it off course and i never shot that distance a lot, because its just throwing bullets away, but i imagine elevation would be different every day you go out.

Ive also shot the berger 215 out to 1810 and they do way better through the trans sonic region than the 185, i still cant read the wind good enough to make consistent hits.

On the bright side a 4+ sec flight time gives you plenty of time to spot your hits.

 

[M67]

Back home. Not just ready to sit down and report, but a nice trip it was, and some great shooting experiences.
No need for super magnum, über calibres for > 1000m shooting it seems.

I went with the 175 Scenar L in front of 49gr N550. Longest shots were at 1270m/ 1150 yards, in baking heat - i first experienced some spotting problems, on the firt couple shots, but the it settled down and shot a fair group - with 17mrad of elevation, i wont get past 1350m on this setup it seems, i run out of elevation. Pics and video to follow.

K

 

[M67]

Inside and under aircondition - shooting has actually been rather low this summer. Incredible heat - what about 32°C air and 23°C water - at 67°North?

The warm weather comes from a large high pressure system, that put the whole country under subsidence, hence low winds (none at at night) and shooting conditions we rarely see. One side effect was an insane number of bugs in the mountains, and actually (some places) a ban on shooting for risk of forest fires.

After a few days of bathing i got up into the hills at night, and set up to shoot at 1000m. The location is such that i can just drive the car off the road and range whichever rock i want in the shallow valley. I measured a rock quite exactly 1m tall, to 1012m, so walked the 12m and sat down. 920hPa and 22°, and 10.3mrads said the computer. There was no discernible wind whatsoever, almost laboratory conditions - i hit the rock quite low, almost missed, on the first shot, didnt like that - but i shot a group on it - and as i could easily see the spots from the hits, i called it .4 low and noted that. My velocity was at this point more or less guessed.., I adjusted it to 875m/s and got the correct amout of adjustment.

Beeing me, i feel a 30cm 5 shot group at 1000m is not so bad, also given the bugs, tha made me forget the camera... I turned around measured another rock, 600m and repeated the exercise, now on a much smaller rock - but spot on.
Now arrived a "wohnmobile" with some Dutch tourists marveling about midnight sun, so i packed it in. The german travel handbooks show EVERY side road and interesting spot in an area, and this place is sure beautiful, i'll give them that.

I decided to go back to close range, and called the HH of the local gun club: yes i could use the range..

Old "Skytterlag" - ranges are all the same, Norway has an abundance of good, ranges, now mostly equipped with KME og Megalink electronic targets at 100 and 200m, although some retain their 300m ranges

Paper shooting at 200m revealed that the silencer moves the impact 0.4 down and, more irritating 0.2 right - this is indeed a flaw, and makes it less fun to use the silencer, nice as it is. Some fine tuning of zero is always good to do anyway.

I could not resist shooting at a small rock somewhat short of 500m away as i finished the session.
[ame="http://youtu.be/MX6A9LIHuns"]308Win / 175gr Scenar L trueing shots @ 480m - YouTube[/ame]
A bit right, still, but there might be some wind after all.

Another trip a couple days later only revealed a bunch of Germans, and i decided to walk to location - this took me to a nice encounter with a moose

elg i solnedgang - YouTube
I know the guy that owns the land, and he keeps his moose well Moose hunting is religion and beyond up here.

This time i set up a cardboard target at 917m, close to the magic 1000yards, and shot at it - this is blind shooting, i cannot spot bullet holes at 1k. Anyways, 5 shots revealed a 24cm 4shot group about 20cm right, but with correct elevation. The 5 shot opened the group to 60cm - low and all the way on the other side of the board.

Some driving, and some more bathing on the way - took me to my friend, forum member Yrcan. He keeps a "Range" for LR shooting, and has steel targets in all directions and ranges.
The night we arrived we went straight out and shot, but I was marked by a long hot day, and hungry - home and fire up the BBQ.

Morning after, "what do you want to shoot" he said. I decided to start at 800m, since this is, after all, a 308... He keeps tiny targets too, and is very concerned about 1. shot hits, and not so much groups. To my satisfaction:

[ame="http://youtu.be/26Uym26Hw30"]308Win / 175gr Scenar L @ 800m - YouTube[/ame]
1. shot hits are always nice

Yrcans range

Laden with experience, Yrcan is one of the very good spotters - the Meopta is also a very good scope.


Quite a few rounds went down going back and forth between 800, 945, 1090, 1180m - and heavy mirage made shooting difficult. The main thing was anyways, rifle and ammo were consistent, and we could actually see our impacts come higher as temperature rose - also we had some back wind onto the hill, that seemed to account for about 0.2mrad @ 1k.

I finally decided to try the 1230 gong, but could not hit it, and the grass swalloved bullets quite nicely - "lost in space".
A rock solid solution:
[ame="http://youtu.be/30ASqsALbIY"]308Win / 175gr Scenar L @ 1270m - YouTube[/ame]
Very impressive it might not be, but is is on the advertised 17mrad, and it is over 1400 yards.

I did some shooting at 500 and at 1010 and 1025m last weekend. Wind was 4-5, even 7-8m/s and in hilly terrain that makes for interesting shooting. Evenso, i managed to get a rather good looking 500m target, with 5 shots in 60mm.

At 600m it looked like this

upper right shot is from dialing 0.1 up - range is estimated here, using the reticle, hence the initial group is low

Walking up the hill to shoot further a had to do alone, 80m of elevation can be a lot
The 40x40 gongs proved difficult at 1025m, but i believe i had 7 hits out of 17 shots.

I then tried a group on paper at 1010m. Note "organic" gong hanger.

Target setup, it is a bit difficult since 308 bullets are all but unspottable in the grass, anyway. I got all 5 on paper, 1x1m, i was even satisfied with that, in the winds that had me dial 2.0mrad right. Group was 43cm, good elevation, save one shot (again) but sideways spread. No wind flags.

The gang out shooting,

Going back up the hill today, this time also with some 175gr NCCs, courtesy of Sauer 150 - they did well at 500m, i'll see them at 1025m and 1235m hopefully today - winds are supposed to be low, so im hoping. Anyways, westerlies are more manageable than easterlies at this range.

K