Slipped out to the local indoor gun range this morning.

First thing I noticed was all the new benchrests they had! All the old worn out crappy rests were gone and replaced by new ones. I figure they know hunting season is coming and they’ll have a lot of business from people zeroing rifles and needing rests. This was welcome, especially because that’s why I went today.

My goal was to get my Savage 11 set with a “zero” to be 1″ high at 100 yards. Looking at all the data, that should allow me to be within “minute of dead deer” from 0 to 200 yards without any problem. Zero at 100 yards would risk me being too low at 200 yards, and zero at 200 yards I think would have put me a little too high at 100 yards or less. So at least on paper, this should work for me. Thing is, I really wanted to go to a range with longer rifle ranges today but it just didn’t happen for various reasons. My hope then was if I got it 1″ high at 100 yards I could refine and ensure 200 yards at a later date.

I started using my Prvi Partizan .308 168 grain BTHP match ammo. I have tons of it and it’s far less expensive per round than my hunting load (the Federal Vital-Shok .308 165 grain Barnes TSX stuff, P308H). Use that to get me in the ballpark, then finalize it with the Prvi. I believed the rifle was set to 0 at 100 yards, so I knew I’d need to adjust a bit. Shot a few rounds, got things adjusted, and thought it was good enough to switch over to the Federal.

Loaded one round of Federal, shooting at the lower-left little target thing on the sighting-in target. Look through the spotting scope and I don’t see anything on the paper. Huh?!?!  I look around at the center of the target and counted 6 holes. But I only shot 5 Prvi on that target at the center. Is that saying my Federal was off that much? Loaded another round and shot at the center of the target. Sure enough, that one went way high and right. Wow. I know that loads can be different, but I did not expect that drastic of a difference. I only had 8 rounds of my hunting load left so I had to get things dialed in quickly. I managed to do so and think she’s there, but I’m not totally sure. It could have been the gun, it could have been the cheap scope, it could be the rounds, maybe the barrel was warm enough that it was throwing things off. I don’t know for sure.

So, I packed up and opted to head home. I’ll try again in the near future and only use the hunting load. See where that first cold-barrel shot lands and go from there.

Ultimately I really need to get going with reloading. One box (20 rounds) of the P308H is $45. Now that I’ve got a lot of good .308 brass and I’ve got a box of 50 .30 caliber Barnes TSX, man, it’ll be far cheaper to load it all myself (probably half the cost).

Anyway, it’ll be nice to get the rifle sighted in before the rush of everyone in the area cramming up the ranges trying to get sighted in. Plus we saw a bunch of hogs on the game cameras at the deer lease. Mmm… pork.