Trebor Snave
10-18-2011, 01:14 PM
Rookie here, bear with me. Interesting reading on this forum!
A few years ago I started shooting F-TR, using Army weapons and ammo (hey, the National Guard has shooting teams; who knew?) and I enjoyed it. I did pretty well using an old M24 and M118LR, but I much prefer to own my competition guns so I started looking around at what was available. Fortunately for me (not so much for him), an acquaintance was going through a divorce and was selling his 10FP. I'd been looking at the Savage 10FCP McMillan but the FP was in my budget... with less than 200 rounds down the tube according to the owner. Call it 200 to be on the safe side. It's a stagger feed, accutrigger model.
It came with a Ken Farrel 10 MOA base and rings so I put a Burris 3200 10X on it. I didn't care for how I could flex the forearm over to touch the barrel, so the stock came off and I ordered a Choate "Ultimate Varmint" from CombatStocks. The old bipod I had didn't really fit well on the Choate, but it worked.
What with one thing and another, I was only able to get a rough zero on the rifle before the first local match came around. I put the published data from my ammo into a ballistic calculator and got a rough come-up for 800 yards, and it worked just fine; but my scores were down from the M24. Turned out the bipod had come loose on the stock and was sliding around in the rail, so I tightened it down, shrugged and drove on.
Now, let me explain that I mostly shoot high power and F-TR is just a sidelight at those matches, so the Savage really didn't get looked at until the next match. At 1000 yards this time, my scores were much lower than my usual. Again, a side match to high power, so I didn't think much of it. This pattern continued all summer and I was starting to get a little annoyed. Finally, last month the state long range championships rolled around and the Savage and I were ready - or so I thought. I'd taken 200 rounds of M118LR, pulled the bullet and cleaned the tar off, uniformed the powder charges, and reseated the bullets to where they soft-seated into the lands. I didn't have a chance to group these, but they couldn't be any worse, right?
Day one of the shoot was beautiful, almost no wind at all, and I shot horribly. Not even worth talking about. For day two I switched back to that M24 and with my prepped ammo at 800 yards shot a 147-4x - and the three nines were me, not the rifle. Well, what do you know - I can shoot. I thought I'd forgotten how! But that pointed at the rifle being the problem, so when I got home I pulled it out for a once over and found a couple of issues that were my fault; loose action screws AND loose scope. Yeah, that's not a good combo. I re-tightened everything and headed for the range with a clean rifle to see what that had fixed.
Go ahead and laugh now, because other than the first three shots to get the rifle zeroed, I'd never shot it for groups. Just took it to the matches and shot it. Yes, I can be an idiot. Fired off a bench, from a mechanical rest, 10 rounds of LR went into 1.77" at 100 yards. My uniformed ammo was worse; 10 rounds into 2" at 100. The conclusion I've reached is that this isn't going to cut it; the X ring on an F target is 0.5 MOA at 1000 yards and my rifle won't do that at 100, so it's time to make some changes.
First, that Choate stock is going away. Nice stock, but it and I just don't fit well in prone. Not sure why. A B&C A2 is on the way to replace it. When that gets here I'm going to shoot some more groups to see if that made a difference, but I'm not thinking it will. I hope it does though, because the next change would be pretty radical.
If changing the stock doesn't help, I'm going to rebarrel it to 223. For several reasons, I don't reload 308. I do reload a LOT of 223 for shooting high power, though. This would just add to the amount. 223 at 1000 yards ought to be fun, anyway!
Well, thanks for letting me vent. I sure will enjoy trying to make this rifle work.
A few years ago I started shooting F-TR, using Army weapons and ammo (hey, the National Guard has shooting teams; who knew?) and I enjoyed it. I did pretty well using an old M24 and M118LR, but I much prefer to own my competition guns so I started looking around at what was available. Fortunately for me (not so much for him), an acquaintance was going through a divorce and was selling his 10FP. I'd been looking at the Savage 10FCP McMillan but the FP was in my budget... with less than 200 rounds down the tube according to the owner. Call it 200 to be on the safe side. It's a stagger feed, accutrigger model.
It came with a Ken Farrel 10 MOA base and rings so I put a Burris 3200 10X on it. I didn't care for how I could flex the forearm over to touch the barrel, so the stock came off and I ordered a Choate "Ultimate Varmint" from CombatStocks. The old bipod I had didn't really fit well on the Choate, but it worked.
What with one thing and another, I was only able to get a rough zero on the rifle before the first local match came around. I put the published data from my ammo into a ballistic calculator and got a rough come-up for 800 yards, and it worked just fine; but my scores were down from the M24. Turned out the bipod had come loose on the stock and was sliding around in the rail, so I tightened it down, shrugged and drove on.
Now, let me explain that I mostly shoot high power and F-TR is just a sidelight at those matches, so the Savage really didn't get looked at until the next match. At 1000 yards this time, my scores were much lower than my usual. Again, a side match to high power, so I didn't think much of it. This pattern continued all summer and I was starting to get a little annoyed. Finally, last month the state long range championships rolled around and the Savage and I were ready - or so I thought. I'd taken 200 rounds of M118LR, pulled the bullet and cleaned the tar off, uniformed the powder charges, and reseated the bullets to where they soft-seated into the lands. I didn't have a chance to group these, but they couldn't be any worse, right?
Day one of the shoot was beautiful, almost no wind at all, and I shot horribly. Not even worth talking about. For day two I switched back to that M24 and with my prepped ammo at 800 yards shot a 147-4x - and the three nines were me, not the rifle. Well, what do you know - I can shoot. I thought I'd forgotten how! But that pointed at the rifle being the problem, so when I got home I pulled it out for a once over and found a couple of issues that were my fault; loose action screws AND loose scope. Yeah, that's not a good combo. I re-tightened everything and headed for the range with a clean rifle to see what that had fixed.
Go ahead and laugh now, because other than the first three shots to get the rifle zeroed, I'd never shot it for groups. Just took it to the matches and shot it. Yes, I can be an idiot. Fired off a bench, from a mechanical rest, 10 rounds of LR went into 1.77" at 100 yards. My uniformed ammo was worse; 10 rounds into 2" at 100. The conclusion I've reached is that this isn't going to cut it; the X ring on an F target is 0.5 MOA at 1000 yards and my rifle won't do that at 100, so it's time to make some changes.
First, that Choate stock is going away. Nice stock, but it and I just don't fit well in prone. Not sure why. A B&C A2 is on the way to replace it. When that gets here I'm going to shoot some more groups to see if that made a difference, but I'm not thinking it will. I hope it does though, because the next change would be pretty radical.
If changing the stock doesn't help, I'm going to rebarrel it to 223. For several reasons, I don't reload 308. I do reload a LOT of 223 for shooting high power, though. This would just add to the amount. 223 at 1000 yards ought to be fun, anyway!
Well, thanks for letting me vent. I sure will enjoy trying to make this rifle work.