Interesting first day at the match -- instruction & side matches.

On the instruction portion, I learned how much I need to learn about positional shooting. Stations included tires supported by 4x4s, fence-type barricade, single 4x4 post, and a "tank trap" -- 3 posts in a tripod, adjustable for various heights. I really need to work on improvised positions.

Three side matches, all from prone.
A - Five 3-4" targets on a rack, either 230 or 260 yards, fastest time for 5 shots (one hit on each target). Best time evidently was just over 9 seconds with an AR-15. #2 time was a bolt gun in just under 10 seconds. I ordered pizza between shots, took a coffee break, and came in with 17 seconds. At least I hit all 5, which was definitely not common.

B - "loop hole" Five shots to hit four small swingers, with a front plate which allowed only a 2-ish inch window to hit the swingers behind the front plate, either 230 or 260 yards, with time limit. By the time I got there the front plate had been hit so many times is was just gray on gray in the rain. Scored only two hits, but I believe someone hit all four.

C - the mile. #1 - Five shots at a square plate, most hits wins. Zilch for me. Alpine hit 3 times, with the best being 4 hits. Alpine be da man -- with 7 SAUM.

The mile #2 - Five shots at a round plate, closest to the center wins. One guy got within 2" and won. A handful of people were 3" away. I was 4" away and likely took 7th place.

So.... 4,000 DA, factory 6.5 Creedmoor, supposedly 77 MOA elevation, with bullet at Mach .9 at the target. Wrong -- hideous wind from 1 O'clock. I have only 59 MOA elevation in my scope. I dial back to 55 MOA elevation and hold over. Not enough. I end up holding 30 MOA over (85 MOA total elevation), wind holds of 9-13 MOA. My bullet held elevation quite well, so it wasn't going totally wonky at subsonic speeds. Who'd a thunk 6.5 Creedmoor could make it to a mile. Not me.

I made the right decision not shooting the match, we're getting hammered. Would have been very challenging to get back up here tomorrow. 2 foot plus and still coming down, guessing another foot or more...fun stuff.



fritz, who were the instructors?

Shot this yesterday through one of my Dashers, 1500rds on the barrel. 5 shots/100yds. Continue to be blown away by the Dashers accuracy!

Well, we don't have that much snow, but it sure was unpleasant for the last 3-4 hours of today's match. Mid-day was nice for an hour or two. We ended the day with 33-34 degrees, raining pretty hard, pellets of snow, wind of 15-20, with gusts up to 30 on some of the ridge top positions.

I doubt anybody's really looking forward to shooting again tomorrow.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
Well, we don't have that much snow, but it sure was unpleasant for the last 3-4 hours of today's match. Mid-day was nice for an hour or two. We ended the day with 33-34 degrees, raining pretty hard, pellets of snow, wind of 15-20, with gusts up to 30 on some of the ridge top positions.

I doubt anybody's really looking forward to shooting again tomorrow.

Winds were way worse than that. We got a gust to 43 on a kestrel. The "snow pellets" were more like hail. They HURT.

Instructors were Griz and Rick reeves.

Scotty finished 3rd.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: exx1976,

Alpine -- good news -- my Terrapin LRF was in the safe, where it belongs. I pretty much figured that out on the drive home.

I didn't do well at the prize table. I walked out with a TAB belt -- not bad, considering how I stunk up the match. But I found out it's too big for me, and by its very design one size too small be OK, but one size too big and I be hosed. Oh well...

About 20" of snow at my house, which is a mere dusting compared to offgrid's home.

Glad it was safe at home. I didn't even use my Terrapin once during the match, targets appeared to be accurately ranged per the book.

I had an uneventful journey home, roads were wet or dry the entire drive home, and had a bunch of 18-Wheelers backed up on I-80 outside of Laramie for abount 10-minutes, other than that I made it home before dark, and found that most of the snow that came with this storm fell the night before I departed for the match.

As far as the match went, it taught me that I need to shoot faster, and never show up to a match with new magazines. I brought two new AICS mags to the match, and they had sharp corners on the back of the feed lips that would not allow smooth feeding. The stage where we shot off the rock wall, I switched back to AW mags, and timed out on the last position because of mag failure, spring was not pushing the rounds up... Aahhhh!!!

I now recall that I left the Terrapin in the safe, because I knew we would be given distances at the match. But we didn't have ranges to targets at the Friday morning practice, so that's where I needed the LRF. But yes, ranges to targets during the match seemed spot on.

My equipment problems lay with the equipment behind the rifle. Alternative positions weren't my finest hour -- my zeros were with the rock wall and post stations.

exx1976 -- Do you have any photos of the practice day, when your better half was shooting from the landscape timber tripod thingie (aka tank trap)? I'm seriously thinking about making one of those for barrier practice, but my memory of how it was assembled is now a bit foggy.

Not sure if she got any pictures of the tank barricades or not. I'll take a look. Or you can just Google tank barricade, there are plans for them all over. Im thinking about building one because I hate them so much. Lol

My google-fu not worthy of grasshopper, Danial-son, or pandas. I see a lot of fixed tank barricades and traps, but the nastiness of the one at the match was its ability to change heights -- from maybe 12" off the grounds to full height, which was maybe 36" high.

IIRC pretty simple design -- 3 pieces of landscape timber (maybe 42" to 48" in length), 2 bolts staggered at slightly different locations towards the end of the timbers (maybe 8" and 14" from the ends), the ability to rotate the timbers at the bolt locations. When it started raining and everyone cut out from the practice area, I forgot to measure the barricade and take a picture.

quote:

tank barricades

Shot off those at the last Fort Benning 3-Gun I attended.

You are correct sir, they suck!

RMD

My shooting station with the longest target distances has issues with target visibility and mirage once the prairie grass grows up in the summer. Unless I keep the prairie mowed to 4" or less for over 100 yards in front of the gun, I can't see my 500 to 800 yard targets. I thought about felling some trees to make a log pile to shoot from, but a table seemed a better idea. After weeks of dinking around in the basement, the table is finally assembled and on site:



"The box" is shown at its main height of 42". Placed on its side and I have a shooting platform 32" tall. Placed on end and it is 48" high. Even though the prairie is currently matted down from wind and snow, I had much better target visibility from the box yesterday. Couldn't hit crap due to the wind, but that's another matter.

Next up is mini-me version of a roof peak, to mess with sloping shooting positions. Although it's a bit heavier than I expected, it's solid and works quite well. Interestingly, I found that backwards loading of the bipod worked well from this shooting position.

For FN in MT -- the first truckload of post-herbicide yucca chopping. Two loads down and maybe a gazillion to go. Frickin' yucca.

Being from the midwest, I just dont get the whole "yucca thing". Looks like a big tuft of crabgrass to me...

Whats the big deal? Us? We got ticks and ant hills. And ferns... I hate ferns.

quote:

Originally posted by entropy:
Being from the midwest, I just dont get the whole "yucca thing". Looks like a big tuft of crabgrass to me...Whats the big deal?

They can infest fields at the rate of thousands of plants per acre. Such densities make it impossible for a standard-sized vehicle to drive through a field. There's no hope for cultivating such a field -- spraying noxious weeds, plowing, or cutting.

Their main stems are tough and woody. In eastern Colorado the stem can grow to be 5" or more in diameter, producing side stems in the 2-4" range, numbering in the dozens. Big yucca in Colorado can be 3' to 3-1/2' tall. The healthy ones aren't just a single bush, but rather a colony. Some of our big ones are 5-6 feet wide by 10 feet long. Even mid sized yucca on our ranch are big enough to hang up a full sized pickup truck if driven over. And yes, we've had to winch my uncle's truck off a yucca when he wasn't watching where he was driving.

Yucca leaves are essentially spears, around here 2-3 foot long spears are common on mature plants. Even cattle don't mess with yucca. Yucca reduces the grass yield of pastures.

Colorado yucca is tame by what I've seen in the desert southwest. Some rock climbing routes in Joshua Tree National Park are guarded by plants with spears that are over 5 feet long.

Looks good. Great photo. I just sprayed the 50 or so small ones that got by me and survived the great yucca slaughter of 2015. Grass is coming back to my sidehills and things look a lot better.

Entropy...We can send you some seeds so You could plant a few. Let a few dozen grow for a few years THEN let us know what You think.

Just got home from a 3-day precision rifle course with Rifles Only in eastern Colorado. As always, Jacob Bynum (owner of Rifles Only) knows his stuff and held a great course. As too often, my fundamentals of marksmanship need some work.

Today was the end-of-course competition. I sucked in a couple of stages, finishing 3rd overall out of 9 great shooters. Both guys that beat me used 6.5 Creed.

In the "why not" department, three of us (the top three finishers in today's comp) messed around late yesterday, stretching our own rifles to their distance limits -- at 7,000' Density Altitude. We had the required dope to 750 yards, but the other six were still messing around with shooting from slung positions and from barriers. We three pushed to IPSC 900 yards (no problems), big plate at 1000 yards (no problems), IPSC at 1100 yards (no dirt berm backstop, just open grassy field -- big problems), and IPSC at 1200 yards (no berm, big problems).

But we had a fresh dirt berm behind the 3'x3' square plate at 1385 yards, and the RO spotter could easily see our misses. First guy with 6.5 Creed found his elevation quickly, but struggled with windage. IIRC 2 hits on the greater white area and 2 hits in the 14" orange central aiming circle.

I'm shooter #2, with my 23" barrel 308, using FGMM 175. Oh yeah, my dope card only goes to 1200 yards. I dial up 50 MOA (near my scope's limit), hold another 8 MOA elevation, held 8 MOA of wind -- no call. Shot #2 -- up 2 MOA (now holding 10 MOA), maybe 6 MOA wind -- dirt hit to the low right, knowing I yanked the shot. Shot #3 -- a little less wind, dirt hit even with target center, just off the target edge. Shot #4 -- holding a little less wind, impact at 3 o'clock on edge of target, woohoo. Shots 5 and 6, holding two MOA of wind and ten MOA of elevation -- two impacts on the 14" central aiming circle. Yee-frickin-haw!

Coming home to run the numbers, JBM predicts 60.5 MOA, my impacts were at 60 MOA. Now for the big one -- JBM predicts bullet speed of Mach .94 on target. Who'd a thunk it -- SMK flying relatively true below Mach 1.

Great job, fun report.

The 175SMK is a stable bullet going transonic. It will continue on its course. It's the 168SMK that has a problem with transonic passage, which cause it to tumble more often than not.

Great shooting Fritz! I would love to see a DA of 7K around here. 2500 is the best we see in humidity land. I can imagine Nikon deals with much the same.

RMD

After the match was done on Sunday, we all played with Jacob's 300WM, shooting at 4'x4' white steel with an 18" orange aiming circle, set at 1770 yards. Evidently one of the "agency" groups that trained with Rifles Only left some Secret Squirrel 195 HPBT ammo with Jacob when they left. This ammo was hot -- the first two shooters had some serious pressure sign issues loading from the mag, so after that we just single fed and kept the action open until ready to fire.

Every student got at least one impact on steel. Wind holds for hits ranged from .7 mil to 2.5 mil. I was the last of the nine students, so both the gun and the can were getting rather toasty. My elevation dope changed just within my 10 rounds enough that I had to aim top edge of target for the first few shots, transitioning to just below center for the final two. I hit steel either 5 or 6 times, with 2 hits just barely in the orange center. Wind wasn't too bad for me -- 1.0 to 1.5 mils. However, the mirage off the barrel and suppressor (even with a heat cover on the can) was really bad -- at times almost obscuring the target.

Jacob's 300WM is a nice gun, but honestly 10 rounds were enough for me. The gun sports a fairly heavy (4-5 pounds??) single stage trigger. No real issues for me, but the guys used to two stage triggers with a really light second stage had some challenges. But what got me was both the cheek riser and the butt pad were made of fairly hard plastic/rubber. I felt like my clavicle and teeth were rattled with every shot. Stealing from offgrid's comments, I think I'm becoming a delicate flower for recoil -- a 6 Dasher would have been way more fun to shoot.

offgrid -- it looks like you had some fairly solid results at the Steel Safari match. How was it? Any new twists & turns with targets or stage setups?