Weekend of Highpower

Complete.

The breaking in of the barrel on Saturday went well. I was getting 1MOA five-shot groups from the sandbag and bench after the first twenty rounds or so.

Sorry, no pictures as of yet. I was shooting and cleaning as much as possible after I got to the range and saw they now close down two hours earlier than before, so I didn�t get a chance to break out the camera. I know of someone else who was there and they should be sending the pics they took shortly.

I then went home and found out the bad news; I only had six inches of elevation left on my scope.

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For those to whom those words may as well be written in Aramaic: Elevation is the amount of movement in your horizontal crosshair. Moving the hoizontal up or down will raise or lower your point of aim. If you have a zero at say, 100yds, you need to compensate for your bullet dropping at longer ranges by raising your elevation so that you can hold your crosshairs on the bullseye and still hit it.

On Sunday, I attended the final 500 yard Prone Practice of the year at an area range upon the invite of Boomershoot Rifle Clinic Instructor Eugene Econ. $5 to get on the line, 80 rounds of practice, how could I go wrong?

Here is how it went wrong. I had only six inches of elevation left.

At, say 500 yards, the point of impact of a 150 grain 308 Winchester projectile will be approximately 45 inches lower than the zero at 100 yards.

I was zeroed at 100yds. You do the math.

Basically, after using up the remaining amount of elevation, I had to hold on the top of the 5-Ring to get anywhere near the X. And this was on a target measuring 4ft by 4ft.

Needless to say, I was humbled. I got a couple X�s and a few 10�s and a few more 9�s, all in all, not a bad first attempt for a guy whose experience reaching past 200 yards was low. Next time I�ll just do better.

I also do not have any pictures of this event as there just wasn�t any time. I was either supposed to be on the line shooting or downrange in the target area. Not exactly the place you want to be popping your head up to take a picture.

Mr Econ introduced me to a gentleman who probably has more years in the highpower shooting circles than I have been alive. After discussing my elevation difficulties, I purchased one of his custom one-piece scope bases for the Boomershoot rifle. It has a 25MOA slope so that even when all of my internal adjustments are exhausted I can make some external ones and stay on target. If you think that this is something you might be interested in, contact me and I�ll put you in touch with him.

I have ordered the rings for it and should get them on Friday so as to hopefully get the pieces installed and go to the range again this upcoming weekend. For another sight in session.

As for the ammo selections I mentioned on Saturday, The Hornady 150gr SST was the clear winner, followed by a tie between the Winchester 150gr Ballistic Silvertip and the Black Hills 150gr Nosler with the Hornady Light Magnum 150gr SST coming in a distant fourth. The Light Mag moves over 200 feet per second faster than a standard 308 Winchester round (over 3000fps) and I think it is just too fast for my skill level.