rinodods
Well-Known Member
Well just got back from another range session. A buddy and I have both built some Savage long range guns setup in 300wm with Vortex PST's. Most of the time when we get out to shoot we waste the time having fun just plinking at steel. Today we actually put a lot of effort info really nailing down our setups. We started at 100yrds checking zeros. Both rifles had been adjusted a bit using the new vertical reticle alignment tool (in the reviews section of the site) I just got to ensure we were holding perfectly above the bore. I attempted adjusting everything as best I could inside. After tweaking our 100yrd zeros back in which took a little more ammo than I'd like (we were being very picky) we tested our scope tracking. Each of use shot our zero then added about 9 MOA elevation in to put us up into the highest bull on the targets we had. Even at only 100yrds and 9 MOA we were both seeing our groups strike 1 - 1.5 MOA left of center. NOT GOOD! That would put us both with about 8" or so left at 600yrds without a click of windage added in. Each of use made an index mark on the scope and ring then rotated the tube slightly clockwise or away from the left drift. We then tweaked our zero's back into spec and went through the dialing drill again. This time as luck would have it each of us were striking dead center at both our zero and at +9 MOA. It would have been better to dial more elevation in but we saw what we needed to see. We used the alignment tool again to level the rifles then adjusted our cant indicators to match. By this time we had gone through about 40rds each and were running out of time but we just couldn't leave without sending something down range at steel. We threw everything into the truck and starting driving out into the field. We stopped at 800yrds and setup. This is about 200yrds farther then we normally go since we always seems to have such issues getting windage working right (fixed that though). I threw our data into exbal quick and dirty then my buddy took the first shot. It was a very narrow miss of the 12" steel followed by another all to the right. We did have about a 3mph wind from 9 o'clock and it turns out he had dialed the windage in the wrong direction. Third shot with the corrected windage range steel. CLANG!!. Now it was my turn. I setup dialed in and bang was about 50 yards short. lol Exbal had me set to dial 5.3 MIL elevaiton in and I had screwed it up and mistaken the .5 MIL hashes on my dial for wholes putting me 2.5 or so short. I wouldn't have even hit that thing at 600 yards. I saw my mistake checked my windage put in the correct elevation and let loose. A couple seconds later I was rewarded with CLANG!! Nearly 1/2 mile and two good hits. Both of which would likely have been on target first shot had we not been so excited and in a rush to get back home. As you can image we were both very happy. There is still a lot of work to do. The drops we got were pretty luck guess for the most part. We had some data off the crony to enter but have not had the time to really do a good range verification. Next weeks trip will be a verification day to get our drops nailed down. The week after that it's ELK targets!!!
