Do I Smell Squirrel Gravy?

My EGW scope base arrived today, so I mounted my Athlon Ares 6-24×50 on my Savage 93R in .17 HMR. Behold.

I am extremely pleased. It fits nicely.

I didn’t intend to shoot today. It was supposed to rain like crazy in the afternoon. That didn’t happen, and at about 6:40 p.m., I found myself with a shiny new scope and good weather. I did the obvious thing. I did some zeroing.

I learned that buying a 20-MOA scope for a .17 HMR rifle makes zeroing an interesting experience. I had to go through quite a number of shots and turret clicks to get close to where I wanted to be. A 20-MOA base starts you out 20 MOA below where you would be with a flat base. That’s what? Around 6 mils? My scope didn’t come with a whole lot of mils in the tank, so I was concerned that I might not be able to get a zero at 100 yards.

As it turned out, I could zero at 50 yards, so everything is fine. The sloped base didn’t hurt me up close, and it certainly can’t hurt me when I move back to the rifle’s limit.

I’ll post a target photo. The cows are probably chewing on the target right now. It’s a mess. Up toward the right, you can see me walking the bullets in with the turrets.

There are a bunch of rounds in the center of the bullseye. I would love to say those were my last few shots, after I got things dialed in. They are not. My last shots are off to the left. They cover a little more than 1 MOA.

Now that I think of it, I’m not really sure where those shots in the center came from. I was concentrating on a lot of things, so I didn’t do a great job keeping track of shots.

I don’t know how well I can do with this gun, scope, and ammo. I have not shot it in optimal conditions. I didn’t have my parallax fixed, the scope was too far back on the base, I forgot the reticle battery, and I didn’t finish adjusting the comb. I know it will zero at 100 yards, though, and that’s all I wanted. It’s more than I expected to get done today.

Now I need to run out, fire a few rounds to get everything together, and then shoot two different targets with 17-grain and 20-grain ammo. That should tell me whether I should buy the heavy rounds or the light ones. Then I can try to load up online.

With a reasonable effort and no disasters, I should be able to make my mind up by lunchtime tomorrow.

I like the scope a great deal. It replaces a Burris Fullfield II. Unlike the Athlon, the Burris was made by a real American company with a long history. The Athlon is made in China for a relatively new American company, and it’s a steal at $380. As far as I can tell, the glass on the Athlon is just as clear at 24x as the Burris’s glass is at its maximum magnification of 14. People say Athlons track well, too. We will see.

I have a dedicated bipod on the way. I hate switching bipods. The one in the picture has a bizarre mounting system, and I don’t like fiddling with it. Pretty soon, it won’t be an issue.

This is a super-comfortable rifle to shoot. The nicest thing I can say about the trigger is that I never think about it. That’s as big a compliment as there is, when you’re a trigger. The comb I attached to the plastic…I mean “polymer”…stock works perfectly. A vertical grip would be nice, but I don’t need it. I don’t have to fight to get behind this gun to shoot. It lets me have its way with it.

“Polymer” is like “action figure.” You can’t call a boy’s Star Wars dolls “dolls,” and you can’t call a man’s plastic gun “plastic.” It’s POLYMER. End of discussion.

My hope is that I’ll shoot one unimpressive target tomorrow, as a final shakedown cruise, and then I’ll do some 1-MOA shooting. That would be nice.

Savage now makes a .17 HMR bolt gun which is supposedly better than this one. The magazine is a selling point. My magazine has to be installed pretty carefully, or it falls out and vanishes. It’s not a big deal if you make sure you pound it into the rifle. Also, I have two spares. The stock on the new model is supposed to be better, but I have this one fixed so it suits me perfectly. I don’t know how a new one could be an improvement, and if it were not, I would be looking at a considerable amount of aggravation, fixing the new gun so it worked as well as the old one.

Time for a cold beverage. The 93R is operational.