So, I’ve been sitting on my 17 for a couple weeks now, fondling it and playing dress up with slings and lights and generally acting like an Airsofter because my schedule hasn’t allowed me any range time. Today that changed, and seeing as I have to check the zero on my deer hunting rifle, and sight in a scope on my FAL, I figured I would do some accuracy testing with different loads for the SCAR. Now, I’m no professional product tester, and I don’t deal with standard deviation at my day job. So if you don’t like what you see, or how I went about my little test, then constructive criticism is welcome.
I have not been able to decide on the optic I want to put on this rifle as of yet, mostly because I’m waiting on one of my 3 top choices to show up used somewhere. Therefore, I used the MK4 3.5-10x I have for my SPR for this test. It has fine crosshairs and a target dot, making it excellent for prairie dogs and bench shooting and horrible for anything else. Every Leupold I own has fine crosshairs, but most have 3/4 MOA dots at the center. This is a 1/4 minute dot, and is extremely small. I’ll include a photo below.
For the test, I decided to run every .308 load I had on hand or could pick up locally. That means DAG surplus, 168 grain Hornady TAP, 147 grain S&B, 168 grain Federal Match, and Q3130. My process was this. 1 sighter round to check that I was on paper, followed by a ten shot grouping shot from mechanical rest and rear bag. The rifle was allowed to cool 4 minutes between groups. I started with a group of DAG, and after all the others, I shot a second group of the DAG to see if there was any change.
First, some pictures of our range. There is a slight angle from the bench down to each target, except the 300 yard plate which is relatively straight. Route of fire is directly into a valley that ends abruptly in a ridge about 50 yards from the 700 yard target. Paper at 100 and 200, plates at 100 yard increments out to 700.
400 yards. The prairie dogs are life size.
Round plates are 500 yards. First deer (life size) is 600 yards. Last deer is 700.
Loads tested. I wanted to try some .308 I loaded for a bolt rifle, Hornady 168 grain MBTHP with IIRC 40 grains of Varget in Federal match brass, however the OAL was too long to fit in the magazine of the SCAR.
Guns brought for the day: Front to back - Sako L61R in 25-06, Larue 18" SPR with the MK4 and Griffin Armament Spartan suppressor, SCAR 17, Para FAL with an IOR M2.
Setup for firing the SCAR
Here is the reticle I was talking about.
Finally, the results on target. Again, all at 100 yards, all 10 shot groups (Except the Federal Match, I only had 8 rounds left) If there was a sighter fired, I noted it on the target. I made no adjustments to windage or elevation on the scope between loadings, and all groups were fired at the center dot of the target. You should be able to get a good idea of POI shift between loads. Targets have a 1" grid. I would have taken photos with the caliper, but I forgot the caliper so I am measuring the groups here at my desk.
1st: DAG surplus. Extreme spread 2.4" POI 1.3" left
2nd: TAP. Extreme spread 1.9" POI 1" left, .5" high
3rd: S&B. Extreme spread 3.37" POI 2" high.
4th: Q3130. Extreme spread 2.83" POI 2" left 2.5" high
5th: Federal Match. Extreme spread 2.17" POI .75" left and .5" high. Remember this is 8 rounds, and if you took out the two that are far left, the group would be 1.5"
6th: DAG v2. Extreme spread 2.38" POI 1" left and 1" high Relatively unchanged from the first group
I must mention it was quite windy today. Terrible day for this kind of thing, I did my best to wait for the gusts to die before firing, but I feel like I could have squeezed some better groups out of the gun. Also, the trigger leaves a lot to be desired. It’s not bad for a battle rifle, but because of the stocks shape, it’s very difficult to bag correctly and I believe I influenced some of these groups with the trigger. It does feel like it will smooth out with use, and I intend to do this again another day, with some other loads, like the 175 grain stuff.
I might add, moving the MK4 from my SPR to the SCAR only required a 2 minute adjustment in elevation for POI to meet POA. I thought that was interesting, if not totally meaningful. So knowing that, I can pop the scope back and forth for further testing without cranking my adjustments all over the place.
Thanks for looking.
