Tag: recreational shooting

Man, it’s nice to have reliable broadband service again! (And a solid night’s sleep!)

Let’s start off my (excessively long) 2009 Boomershoot report with a video: The Anvil Launch!

http://img.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/smallestminority/Boomershoot029.flv
As noted previously, my shooting partner and I departed Tucson on Wednesday morning about 06:30 and didn’t stop until we got North of Boise, ID Salt Lake City, UT. We left bright and early Thursday, and arrived in Orofino a little after 4:00PM – too late to join the other Gunbloggers up at the range, but we did manage to find the local Ponderosa restaurant (not the chain, an independent) for dinner at 18:00 that evening for an informal get-together. I met Ry Jones, Earl Dungey of Just the Library Keeper, Alan of Snarky Bytes, Matthew of Triggerfinger, the original South Park Pundit (now blogging at Ballistic-Deanimation. I got to see Derek of The Packing Rat, George of Rivrdog, David of Random Nuclear Strikes, and Bonnie of Squeaky Wheel Seeks Grease again, too, and (of course) Joe Huffman, our host. I know I met more bloggers than that, but my memory is faulty.

Friday we slept in, and at Joe’s invitation we moseyed on up to the range about lunch time. Gene Econ was running the first day of the long-range clinic, so we stopped over at the lunch wagon and got a burger & fries, and when everybody else broke for lunch, we headed up to the Taj Mahal where the Boomerite gets made. We met an interesting couple riding a Ural motorcycle with a sidecar (2WD!) that drew a lot of comments all weekend long.

When we first met I asked him what he did for a living. “I lie” was his reply, to which my response was “Oh! You’re a journalist!” I was right. Turns out that he’s Jack Lewis, freelance writer and frequent contributor to Motorcycle magazine, and his passenger is his wife and photographer. My shooting partner is a rider, and works for the University of Arizona doing esoteric technical stuff supporting the local observatories, so he had a lot to talk about with them about – bikes, riding and photography! Anyway, shooting partner and I spent the rest of the afternoon helping out a little, folding cardboard boxes and helping clean up, but where there was a break about three in the afternoon, we headed on down the hill.

We decided it would be a really good idea to get our rifles zeroed for the shoot on Sunday, so we went back Saturday morning, got signed in for “field fire” and set up our shooting position – #74:

That little blue half-tent was our windbreak and sunshade. Not quite big enough, but it sufficed. The temperature was in the low 40’s, and the wind was just a bit brisk, too, so we layered up and took a look at the range itself:

We were on the end of a little hillock. The treeline you see in the middle distance is the 375-yard berm. The bottom of the hill way out there in the distance?

Yes, 606 yards, by my rangefinder. The top of the hill measured 717 yards. On Saturday, steel targets were scattered all the way from the base up to the top. We sighted in on one at about 640 yards. I hit it with both the Remington 700 and the long-range pistol, so I figured I was ready for Sunday. There is something . . . rewarding about repeatedly smacking a 4″ steel target that far off in a stiff breeze.

Late in the afternoon the crew set up some Boomers at the 375 yard line for the precision rifle clinic people to shoot, and then those of us who were shooting “field fire” got a crack at them. My shooting partner got a couple, and then offered me his 7mm Magnum to take some shots. My response? “Oh hell yes!” That done, we packed up our rifles, left our shelter and bench set up, and headed back into Orofino to get ready for the evening’s banquet.

There was an excellent turnout for the dinner, lots of prizes raffled off, and Joe raised $1,085 for Soldier’s Angels plus an anonymous donor gave an additional $300 to be passed on. I didn’t win a thing, and neither did my shooting partner. Bummer. But Alan won the best prize there. (The 50% off a Nightforce scope was #2. I dropped the better part of $60 trying to win that, but wasn’t even close in that competition.)

Joe had all of the blogger/livejournalist attendees stand up and introduce themselves, and there were many. Hopefully he’ll post a complete list some time. I got in a couple of wisecracks, myself.

Sunday was the Big Day, and turnout was good. I’d estimate that there were 175 or so shooters and at least another 50-75 spectators. I saw four empty spots, which surprised me, but I guess given the economy some people just couldn’t make it. Bonnie actually had to head back home Sunday morning, so she didn’t get to shoot on the big day, plus somehow she broke her nose on Saturday (I’m still waiting to hear how that happened.)

Alan has a very good picture of what the side of the hillside looked like populated with Boomers. Firing commenced about 10:00, and there was much Sturm und Drang. With my partner spotting for me, it took me nine shots before I got my first Boomer at about 615 yards, but I rapidly got eight more – at one point three-in-a-row, which has major ego-boosting powers, let me tell you! The call of “TARGET DOWN!” is very cool, followed immediately by a distance-delayed “BOOOOM!” We switched and I spotted for him for a while. I think I was a lousy spotter, because he burned a lot of .30-06 ammo to not much effect for a while. He ended up dropping to the 375 yard berm and finally scored a hit. He concluded that the next time he comes (this was his second trip) he’ll have better equipment. At the least, better optics. I switched to the pistol and put about 40 rounds downrange, but only managed to score one 7″ boomer at about 640 yards. (Scared a few, but only just.) Still, that’s not bad for my first attempt at really looooong range handgunning.

We broke for lunch about noon, so I took my camera and walked the firing line to see what the others had brought.

Whoa.

There were a couple of “minimalists,” like this guy who brought a sniper KAR-98 Swedish Mauser M41B:

and a scoped Mosin

I have a feeling that picking out tiny little 7″ squares at 600+ yards with WWII-era sniper optics was a challenge.

Of course, David brought his long-range pistols:

Lots of people had better sun and wind protection than we did:

These guys had HEAT!

But there was some serious high-dollar hardware on site:

Lots of high-dollar optics for the spotters were in evidence.

I definitely need to upgrade to a better spotting scope/tripod. What I’ve got is fine for seeing bullet holes in paper at 100 yards, but it’s not so much for trying to see bullet “trace” on its way out to 600 yards.

But THESE guys:

I was tempted to ask if those things were self-propelled, too.

Anyway, the weather weenies were wrong (again) and the winds were lighter on Sunday than they had been on Saturday, so it seemed warmer. It didn’t rain or snow, and the shooting was excellent. All in all, it was a great trip – but one I don’t think I’ll be doing next year. Over the week I put 2990 miles on my truck, the overwhelming majority in four long days behind the wheel. I need a shooting friend who’s a member of AOPA. There’s a nice airstrip right next to Orofino. It’s got to be better than 50 hours of windshield time.

But I was grinning the whole way home . . .

If Someone Had Told Me a Year Ago . . .

that I’d be shooting at a 9″ x 11″ steel plate at 560 yards with a handgun and hitting it repeatedly, with a handload I hadn’t tested before, I’d have thought they were nuts.

But I was doing exactly that this morning.

Boomershoot, here I come!

(As an aside, my final reply to James Kelly will have to wait for a while. These things take time to write, I’m busy getting ready to exercise my “relatively meaningless, one-dimensional freedom”, and that’s eating up my available time.)

At least for the Remington 700. I’m still working on the Encore.

If you’ve been following the saga, I’ve been trying loads using both the Sierra 175 grain MatchKing bullet that the 700 5R was designed around, and the Lapua 155 grain Scenar bullet that is almost identical in length to the Sierra. I’ve gotten some good groups, but I haven’t really had a chance to sit down and work on an accuracy load until the last couple of weeks. The first thing that I determined was that I could safely push the 155’s a lot faster than the 175’s, and with ballistic coefficients of 0.508 and 0.505 respectively, faster is better – especially since I’ll be shooting at targets 700 yards away.

I’m also a subscriber to Handloader magazine, which just paid for itself. The December, 2008 issue contained an article by one Gary D. Sciunchetti, an apparent obsessive-compulsive who wanted to develop “the most accurate .308 load.”

He went overboard.

Based on his belief that the single most accurate commercial load available (defined as giving the smallest groups in the largest variety of rifles) was the 168 grain MatchKing in the Federal Gold Medal Match loading, he set out to test every possible combination of cartridge case, powder, primer, and bullet in the 165-168 grain range. Very quickly he settled on Varget as the powder of choice. Where it got interesting (for me) was when he came to primers:

There is a rule of thumb that magnum primers are good if you need them, but if you don’t need them, don’t use them. Needing them is generally viewed as using a large volume of slow-burning, deterred ball powder, or extreme cold weather shooting. The .308 Winchester does not meet this requirement, but this research was to include all primers that might be suitable.

What he discovered was that the CCI 250 Large Rifle Magnum primer provided better results with Varget than any of the other eleven primers tested – all else being held the same.

If I hadn’t read the article, I wouldn’t have even considered a magnum primer.

Anyway, my testing started out with similar magazine-length loadings of 155 Scenar and 175 grain SMKs fired at 300 yards, which I reported on back in January. That was when I decided to concentrate on the 155’s. For my next test, I loaded the bullets out just shy of the lands, which made them much too long to fit the magazine, but that’s OK for Boomershoot. I don’t mind single-loading. I loaded twenty rounds each of loads ranging from 45.5 to 47.5 grains, in half-grain increments, ten each with CCI BR2 and ten each with CCI 250 primers, and fired them over my chronograph, getting two five-shot groups at 300 yards for each load. (Use this and any web-based data at your own risk. The Hodgdon web site lists 47.0 grains as a max load for the Sierra 155, but I am seating the Scenar way out there, yielding more space in the case.)

The load that gave the best performance (FOR ME, remember!) was 46.5 grains over the CCI 250. So last week I loaded up another hundred rounds, twenty each at 46.3, 46.4, 46.5, 46.6, and 46.7 grains – ten using BR2’s and ten using 250’s.

Here’s the data for the 46.4 grain load using the BR2 primer:

Shot	Velocity
1	2903
2	2883
3	2901
4	2822
5	2837
6	2840
7	2883
8	2897
9	2897
10	2868
Avg	2876
ES	81.92
Sd	28.96

The two groups ran just over 2″ at 200 yards (I’m shooting at a different place, and 200 yards is more convenient there.) Now, here’s the same load using CCI 250 primers:

Shot	Velocity
1	2929
2	2895
3	2905
4	2914
5	2911
6	2903
7	2900
8	2910
9	2899
10	2913
Avg	2908
ES	33.64
Sd	9.74

Both groups ran just over 1″ (except for a called flyer). The magnum load picked up 30 fps, and the standard deviation dropped into the single-digits! My shooting partner brought his 7 Mag rifle to practice with. His 168 grain commercial load wasn’t significantly faster than 2900 fps! There’s quite a bark when I touch off this load, but there were no pressure signs of any kind.

This week I’ll assemble 100 rounds of this load and see what I can do with it at 200 and further out. I’ve got powder now, 500 more bullets coming, and about 800 primers left.