Range Report 4-19-10
Location: Kenai Snowshoe Gun Club Range
Guns Larue Stealth with Nightforce 2.5-10 x32 Low Velocity Reticle 
And Noveske N4 with Swarovski Z6I .
The first thing I did when I got to the range was chrono my load in my Larue. My load that I have worked up for the Larue match is 21.8 grains of Vitavory N135 over a Federal Match Primer in Lake City brass with Sierra 77 grain Match King bullets seated to 2.260.
My velocity was surprising in a bad way.
- 2499
- 2535
- 2535
- 2546
- 2538
Average 2530 Spread 47 fps.
The reason it was surprising in a bad way is my Larue has a 20 inch barrel and is usually about 200 fps faster than my Noveske with a 14.5 inch barrel. My Noveske averaged 2492 with this load. A difference of only 38 fps.
After chronographing the load I had my roommate use his I phone to look up Nightforces website for their ballistic calculator to find the ideal zero range for my gun. The range was listed as 235 yards. I then rough zerod the guns 300 yard mark on paper at 25 yards. This got me hitting just a touch high at 235 yards. I then dialed down a few clicks and had my gun zeroed. The wind was a factor today. It was blowing about 10 to 15 miles per hour at a half value. (diagonal) The two groups I shot are below. The accuracy was not bad. I know I could have done better with out the wind and having to hold off target.
I shot at the 400 yard gongs and had no problem. I also shot some groups at 400 and 500 yards. I taped the targets and neglected to take photos. Sorry about that. But it was what you would expect. 4 to 5 inches at 400 yards and 5 to 6 inches at 500 yards. The wind was a real crapper at 500 yards.
I then turned my attention to my Noveske. I am going to the Larue Match in Texas in a few weeks and I wanted to get really comfortable shooting 400 and 500 yards with it. My scope (Swarovski z6i) does not have hold over marks. So I had to find a solution for the long targets. After a few weeks of trial and error I have come up with this. I will use my 200 yard zero out to 400 yards. I can shoot dead on until about 250. At 300 I hold just off the top of the steel target. At 350 I split the line between my center dot and my heavy duplex on the reticle. At 400 yards I place the heavy duplex on the bottom third of the steel. At 500 yards I dial it in. I marked my turrent so I can dial in my 500 yard dope fast. (2.5 to 3 seconds)
Here are the pics.
Towards the second half of the day (spent 8 hours at the range) I started working practical drills with my roommate. For example we shot 1 100 yard gong and 2 200 yard gongs off hand and then we dropped to prone to shoot the 400 yard gongs. We did this several times on the timer to get the hang of shooting targets from field positions under the stress of time. Then we worked on moving from lane to lane shooting different targets using the steel beams on the range for cover.
Back up to the previous day. We worked on shotgun and shooting the rifle horizontal under a really low port. I laid a plank over two ammo cans that were turned on their sides. This game me 5 or so inches of clearance. I shot curled up on my side ejection port down. I found that hitting from this position was not too hard. This was a stage in last years match. They shot very narrow poppers for this. So I made a 8 inch target for the task.
I also used my Larue for some of the drills. I found it easy to hit with but a bit slower off hand due to the black reticle. The illumination was not visible in the sunlight at all. It was still usable but not as fast as the Swarovski for the off hand targets at 100 and 200 yards.
I also found that 3X was easier for the 100 and 200 yard off hand stages vs 6X. I would dial to 6 as I dropped down to prone. With the Nightforce on the Larue I would dial up to 10 x from 2.5 as I dropped down to prone. It was a great day except for one thing. I got stuck driving back form checking my targets on the muddy road next to the range. I had to call a tow truck. I buried my truck. This time of year its really muddy there. That cost me $185 bucks. Not fun but otherwise the day was great. Had a good time with a friend and learned my guns better. I joined this range and I plan on shooting there at least twice a month to practice long range shooting. Its 2 hours from my town but worth the drive to have a 600 yard range.
Pat