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Zee
Senior MemberPosts: 24,772 Senior Member
.223 Remington @ 800 yrds. Just for fun.
Zee
Senior MemberPosts: 24,772 Senior Member
A good friend and former spotter (retired) came to visit and, after a successful hunt yesterday evening, decided to do some fun shooting today. 
Forgoing the easy Guns, I decided to pull out a little one and see what we could do.
Custom .223 Remington my Mentor built for me years ago with a Remington action, Shilen Select Match Grade .223 Rem barrel with 7” Twist, Shilen Trigger, & Leupold VXIII 6.5-20x Scope.
Sighted in for ammo I have a bunch of.
77gr Mk262 Mod1
Good ammo for the military. Not the greatest for long range. But, makes good brass. 😎
Zeroed at 100
Fired 2 rounds in the bullseye @ 300 to confirm StrelokPro was on and it was.
Good ammo for the military. Not the greatest for long range. But, makes good brass. 😎
Zeroed at 100
Fired 2 rounds in the bullseye @ 300 to confirm StrelokPro was on and it was.
Then, we shot from
600
700
800 yards
The first two were no problem. Other than a little wind, StrelokPro was spot on. At 800 yards, the vertical wheels came off. Likely having to do with the round passing through the transonic stage and getting..........cantankerous. Whatever the reason, impacts weren’t matching holds and there wasn’t an explanation other than........either we suck (possible) or the bullet went full ****. Either way.......fun times with a damn good dude.
600
700
800 yards
The first two were no problem. Other than a little wind, StrelokPro was spot on. At 800 yards, the vertical wheels came off. Likely having to do with the round passing through the transonic stage and getting..........cantankerous. Whatever the reason, impacts weren’t matching holds and there wasn’t an explanation other than........either we suck (possible) or the bullet went full ****. Either way.......fun times with a damn good dude.
May not be perfect, but don’t blow raspberries at us and expect to depart unscathed. 😎
"To Hell with efficiency, it's performance we want!" - Elmer Keith
Replies
A good .223 rifle, good glass, and good ammo can be surprisingly effective at 700 against small targets, but my experience matches yours exactly. Much past 700, undefined gremlins appear by the score.
Mike
N454casull
"If you get it and didn't work for it, someone else worked for it and didn't get it..."
Upon closer study, all of your 600 yard shots would have killed a pdog. At 700, 4 of 5 would have done the trick, except the windage was a bit off, but that's why the wind is the devil in the details. Beyond that...sometimes they walk into the path of a called "miss". It happens.
Mike
N454casull
"The Un-Tactical"
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again! -- Mark Twain
Wind's your enemy indeed.
"If you get it and didn't work for it, someone else worked for it and didn't get it..."
Long Range really isn't that difficult. Trajectories can be accurately predicted given a chrono and modern software. Really, it's a slam-dunk for the most part. Given enough horsepower, if you can see it, you can hit it.
Wind, OTOH, while not much of a factor at 300 yards or less, becomes THE major factor at longer distances and all of us constantly struggle with it.
Mike
N454casull
I don’t know if I can do it. But I’ll Damn sure try!!! I’ll accomplish or fail miserably........but it’ll be FUN!!!
"If you get it and didn't work for it, someone else worked for it and didn't get it..."
"If you get it and didn't work for it, someone else worked for it and didn't get it..."
He said, "Forget contacts if you're going to shoot competition. Wear glasses driving to the range. Take them off when you look through the scope. That's what the scope's for, ****."
He was right.
Mike
N454casull
"If you get it and didn't work for it, someone else worked for it and didn't get it..."
"If you get it and didn't work for it, someone else worked for it and didn't get it..."
I discovered long time ago that looking through a riflescope (or any other optics) while wearing prescription glasses is less than optimum. If you have bifocals it gets even worser (yep, that bad.)
Sunglasses are also contra-indicated, even non prescription ones, though it's not as bad.
Here's why bifocals are horrible things to wear while shooting. Eyeglasses are nothing more than curved glass which make the incoming light focus a little bit in front of where it would normally focus after going through your iris. The unit of measure of this correction is called a diopter and it is related to the curvature of the glass. The higher the diopter, the more curved the glass is.
In my case, I wear glasses because I am nearsighted (have been for 50+ years) and changed to bifocals about 15 years ago when my arms started getting shorter. The bifocal lens is essentially a piece of glass that swings both ways. It's curved one way on the top half (or more line 2/3 or more) and curved the other way at the bottom, or at least less curved.
When I am behind my rifle in the prone position, it is impossible for me to look through my scope using the bottom part of my glasses. Indeed I'm not even looking though the middle part of my glasses, it's more like the upper left quadrant of the right lens, where everything that comes off my face accumulates.
A riflescope's mission is to present to your eye an image where the target and the reticle are in the same plane and about 4 inches in front of you. Riflescope makers build in a diopter correction in the eyepiece that usually goes from -2 diopters to +2 diopters. A normal eyesighted person should have the diopter set at about -0.5, but 0 is fine also. If you introduce your prescription glasses into the equation, things start going wonky on you.
The trick I sometimes use to have my glasses on my nose so I can monitor the conditions is the simply wear my glasses at the tip of my nose, thus allowing me to look through the riflescope's eyepiece above my glasses. This way, my polycarb prescription glasses are my last line of defense for any possibility of blowback from the action and they are exactly where I need them to be to read or write as needed.
Also, in 100+ degree heat, glasses tend to fog, collect sweat and so on. When it's cold, they fog up almost instantly. Yeah, there's all manners of anti-fogging stuff, they're all a pain and don't last.