great day to go to the range

[younghunter86]

With temps reaching the upper 50’s and the sun shining it was a WONDERFUL day to be outside and head to the range. A little muddy, but I can deal with that. Here is my target from shooting today, and on Saturday. Today I went back, because I hate leaving the range frustrated, and yesterday I just couldn’t get things right, but I made A LOT of progress today and so I’m happy. Just thought I’d share the results. All loads were shot with 42 gr. 4759 and Fed 209A primers. Unless noted wait time was 10 min between shots. I will show different groups by colored circles. Stole the idea from someone, but it works very well. Sometimes I couldn’t get the circles exactly where they needed to be, but I think it’s still very effective. The square is 2” if I remember correctly. These were the first shots this spring since a complete cleaning of the gun. There isn't anything impressive about it, but at least it shows improvement.

Saturday’s groups in order shot:
Red circles on left - 250gr .452 XTP blems with red crush rib, don’t know which was first shot
Red circles on right - 250gr .452 XTP blems with short black mmp
Blue circles on left - 300gr .458 remingtons with black crush rib, the top circles was the 4th shot. No wait time between shots.

Today’s group (target flipped upside down from yesterday:
Green circles on right - 300gr .458 remingtons with black crush rib, 1st shot was on the low one



This won’t be a hunting load, but it’s cheap to shoot and easy to measure. I think I’ll stick with it for awhile and mess around with the powder charge. In addition I have made a major change to my rear bag. It cost me all of $4 this morning, but it really helps. The first rest setup is from yesterday, and the second is with my new investment. I think I’ll keep it. We shoot down to the berms and I always had to stack things under the rear bag to get the gun pointed low enough. You would thing a roll of tape and a stapler would be stable. But it really wobbles. And that is one of the better combinations I've come up with, usually it's worse.





Edited for clarification purposes.

[whyohe]

the 300 seem to do pretty good! mabe saturdays resutls were from the wobbly rear rest.

[DBinNY]

Looks like you are having fun and that's what this is all about. Tweak that charge up a grain at a time and see what that does. Glad to see you developing baseline loads with economical bullets. I like those 300 gr Remingtons.

[Dave W]

The 300 Rems look pretty good. I cut the legs off an old pair of blue jeans and put sand in them to put under the rear bag. Ain't pretty but they work and last for years. Nice shooting.

[foxgrape]

Wait...maybe it is just the way you said it, but when talking about "no wait time" it sounded like the gun was loaded and you couldn't wait the full time so you shot it. If you are loading her up and then waiting, you are not giving gun time to cool and residual heat is going to work on the sabot. Again, maybe I just read it wrong...

[Harley]

Hey, DaveW, I came close to your idea; I cut off the legs of jeans and sewed beans (uncooked) in them. I've been using them for more than 10 years.

Harley

[hunter]

When I got my savage last summer, I could not get the 250 xtp's to group very well either.
I also tried the rem. 458 bullets and got similar results. The 458's ended up being my hunting load last season.
I shot with a dirty bore because that is what I wanted to do in season. I am going to try swabbing between shots and see if I can get the 250 xtp's to shot any better that way.
I like the reduced recoil and the price with the 250 gr. xtp bullets for shooting off the bench.

[mike.dawson]

Ok, how do we color the circles, would like to know?
Thanks, Mike

[edge]

I agree with those saying that the Remington's show promise

I think that with some tweaking you will find something that you might really like.

Also very important was what foxgrape hit upon:

Wait...maybe it is just the way you said it, but when talking about "no wait time" it sounded like the gun was loaded and you couldn't wait the full time so you shot it. If you are loading her up and then waiting, you are not giving gun time to cool and residual heat is going to work on the sabot. Again, maybe I just read it wrong...

edge.

[rangeball]

Mar 16, 2009 6:31:32 GMT -5 mike.dawson said:

Ok, how do we color the circles, would like to know?
Thanks, Mike

Mike, I'm guessing you could open the picture in MS paint, select the spray can tool, pick your color, color the holes in, save as a new pic name.

[younghunter86]

Mar 16, 2009 8:14:09 GMT -5 rangeball said:

Mar 16, 2009 6:31:32 GMT -5 mike.dawson said:

Ok, how do we color the circles, would like to know?
Thanks, Mike

Mike, I'm guessing you could open the picture in MS paint, select the spray can tool, pick your color, color the holes in, save as a new pic name.

I open the picture in powerpoint and then just insert some sircles, save them all as one pic and upload to photobucket. Paint would work also, I just don't like the program.

Mar 16, 2009 7:45:04 GMT -5 edge said:

I agree with those saying that the Remington's show promise

I think that with some tweaking you will find something that you might really like.

Also very important was what foxgrape hit upon:

Wait...maybe it is just the way you said it, but when talking about "no wait time" it sounded like the gun was loaded and you couldn't wait the full time so you shot it. If you are loading her up and then waiting, you are not giving gun time to cool and residual heat is going to work on the sabot. Again, maybe I just read it wrong...

edge.

The part about shooting the last shot didn't come out right. I should clarify, but will fix in initial post as well. I lay out powder, bullet, sabot and then wait 10 minutes, then load. The one without the wait, I got a text message about needing to be somewhere after I had the load components out of the range box. Too lazy to put back in so I just loaded and shot it.


The reason for starting out with the 250 gr xtp's was I just wanted a range load that was cheap and light recoiling. Looks like it might be the 300 gr Rem's. I had good luck last summer with 300 gr XTP's and so I will be trying both of these next time. I also know my gun like 4198 better than 4759 usally. But I just wanted to see if I can get a 4759 load worked up. If I was hunting tomorrow it would be a 4759/4198 duplex BCR and BO, but it just costs too much to play with at the range.

I also think a lot of it has to do with that rear bag. I felt much more comfortable yesterday, than saturday.