Doing Things Right is Fun

It’s a big day. I finally shot my Ruger Precision Rifle.

The other day, I set up a roofed platform in the pasture. Today I put my shooting mat on it and zeroed the RPR at 100 yards. The rifle is very nice. The trigger seems to be just as good as a Savage Accutrigger. The bolt is a little rough, but I assume that can be fixed.

It’s surprising how it bangs around. In comparison, the bolt on my cheap Savage 93R is like greased glass.

I don’t have a target photo to put up. It started raining after I shot about 10 rounds, and I quit after 20. I didn’t feel like stopping the cart in the rain to take a photo.

It wasn’t an impressive target anyway. I was adjusting the scope as I shot, so it’s not like I produced a nice, tight group or set of groups.

The recoil was a joke. I can’t even tell you what it feels like, because I don’t remember. When you shoot a .308, you will definitely have some memory of what you felt. It really looks like .308 is an obsolete cartridge. Bad recoil, short range, a parabolic trajectory, and terminal results that are no better than 6.5 Creedmoor. And it seems like ammo is more expensive.

Our military agrees with me. A number of outfits are abandoning the .308 and switching to Creedmoor.

And here I am with lots of .308 ammo.

I used Sellier & Bellot FMJ, which is cheap. A guy on Youtube posted a video in which he hit a small gong with it repeatedly at 656 yards, so I assume it’s good enough for zeroing a scope and getting started. If I shoot something more expensive, I should still be on the paper, so changing the zero should be quick.

I would say I’m shooting a little over 1 MOA. I don’t know if it’s fair to say anything about me, the gun, or the ammunition after 20 rounds. New guns sometimes take a little while to start shooting precisely. I don’t know if that’s the case with my gun and this ammo, but it could be.

I’m still getting accustomed to new things I learned when I took my shooting course. I need to sit down with a couple hundred rounds and get used to prone shooting. Seems like every time I go out, the rain drives me inside after a few shots. It can’t do that every day forever. Eventually, I’ll get to practice.

I am loading up on .17 HMR. Sellier & Bellot 6.5 Creedmoor is cheap, but .17 HMR is much cheaper. My goal is to keep 4000 rounds on hand. I don’t want to get caught empty-handed if Kamala Harris becomes president after Biden is forcibly deposed.

I may put a new scope on the .17 HMR rifle. My old scope is a very nice Burris Fullfield II something-14x. It has clear glass, but it won’t work well with the shooting methods I’ve learned. I was taught to use target turrets and grids. My scope has three lines below the horizontal crosshair, they don’t seem to have any relationship to any particular caliber, and it has no target turrets.

I guess it would be smart to have some versatility and develop the ability to use this type of scope, and maybe that is particularly true for a caliber that shouldn’t be used past 200 yards. Maybe I should be able to guess bullet drops within that short range. I want to use what I learned, though! I have a Kestrel I haven’t even used.

I’m looking at the Burris manual. It says they expect you to take your gun and ammo to a range and figure out the yardages the horizontal marks correspond to. Then you write the figures down and use them. I guess that makes sense. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help much with wind, and .17 HMR blows around like crazy.

I can stick a 4-14X Primary Arms scope on the Savage with an EGW 20-MOA base and some sort of rings. That ought to do the job. After that, I can take the Savage out and shoot it up to 300 yards and learn how to use a rifle. What I learn shooting .17 HMR can then be applied to other calibers.

It looks like I’ve blown maybe $2000 on the wrong scopes over about 12 years. Oh, well. It could be worse. I could be spending a hundred bucks a weekend to waste my time playing golf. My dad paid $180,000 for a fishing boat, and buying fuel meant filling tanks that held 775 gallons. My hobbies seem frugal compared to golf and fishing, which are relatively worthless pursuits.

I’ve spent quite a bit of money on equipment and ammo this year. I did the right thing. I’m buying before the start of the real insanity, and guns and ammo are very important. They can provide safety and food. To me, a thousand-dollar couch is a dreadful indulgence, but 10,000 rounds of .22 ammunition are a wise and necessary investment.

This week I plan to visit a long range gun range to see what they can do for me. That should be fantastic.

If I ever get to finish a shooting session before being drenched, I’ll write about it here. It will be a welcome change.