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Range Report 6.5 Creedmoor -Savage 10 BA

Griff24

Private
Full Member
Minuteman
Dec 3, 2012
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43
Pflugerville, TX
After three months of waiting, reading, loading, and waiting some more I finally went out to shoot with the new rifle. Conditions were pretty bad. A solid 15MPH wind with several gusts to 20+ per minute. This is the first time I've loaded my own ammo so I was a little apprehensive of the results. I also wanted to pull the trigger on the first round with a string from behind some cover. Turns out the rifle didn't explode.

A close family friend went out with us and he had quite a shooting setup. We found a large open area at the deer lease and set up some pre-built targets. After anchoring them down I broke the rifle in with 40 rounds of lightly loaded ammo(40gr H4350 | 142SMK). We set up with the wind in our face as much as possible. This fixed some of the variation on the cross wind, but introduced another issue. Our buddy has a shooting bench built into the back of his Polaris Ranger. At the longer distances the wind was rocking the Ranger a little and you had to time the shots to avoid too much vertical spread. The first three rounds after scope zero were one hole.

After the break-in I ran through increased powder loads in .3 increments. The best loads were 41.5 and 41.8 gr. 42.1 has noticeably more recoil but no other pressure signs. I could tell the primers were starting to flatten out but they still had a way to go.


The winner of the day was the attached target @300 yards with 35 rounds down the barrel. Load was 41.8gr of 4350, BR2 primers, 142SMK, and new Hornady brass. The bullet was seated .015 off the lands.

Result was .33MOA with almost all of that being vertical spread. A lot of the spread was probably due to the wind rocking the Ranger. I'm pretty happy with this for the first time out. Thank you everybody on here for the knowledge I've gained. I've learned more on here than I would shooting 1000 rounds of ammo.
 

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At least tell me the group sucks or something! Here is a odd little tidbit. The scope was zeroed using the 40.0g loads. In the picture above I have 4 MOA dialed in the scope and the aim point was the horizontal thick bar directly under the upper right target. We had a chrono set up at 100 and the 40.0gr loads were running 2625fps. We were running out of daylight at the end so I didn't get a chrono of the 41.5 and 41.8 loads. I'm going to do that this weekend.

The odd thing is that JBM says I should be dropping a full MOA more than the bullet is actually dropping. In the case of the group above(41.8gr), to get the 3 MOA drop the bullet would be running at 2950fps. I know this isn't happening and I doubled check everything in JBM at least three times. Very odd.
 
Where is a picture of the rifle?

That is a good group, be proud of that one. The vertical spread could be breath control or just different velocity from not perfect powder charge. Either way, easy fix. As far as horizontal spread, you're looking at next to nothing for spread. That's an awesome horizontal spread. Means good body position and trigger pull. You done good.

I sometimes will get a drop like that and I can't explain it. Then I take a minute, relax and look at my ballistic calculator and notice I f&$@ something up. Maybe your headwind wasn't as strong as you thought or temp/humidity/baro is off. If you chrono your rounds and have the correct bc input, then it can only be the weather that's wrong. That's usually what I screw up anyway.
 
Looks good to me for conditions. If you shot prone off a bipod you will probably be rewarded with even better results. Looks like you and your rifle have lots to look forward to. Shooting off a rocking ranger is less than ideal.
 
I didn't get to chrono the load until this weekend. The 41.8gr was shooting exactly one inch higher at 100 yards than the 40.0gr load. 41.8 was pushing the 142SMK at roughly 2750FPS. I pulled temp, baro, elevation, and humidity with a kestrel 3500 and JBM is still way off. I'm showing -4.2MOA@300 yards but real data is -3.0MOA@300 yards. I'm using a NF NXS so I'm pretty sure the turrets are accurate and adjustments were perfect when setting my zero. I've got to be missing something. What charts I can find on the internet seem to line up with my real data and not JBM. Any idea what I could be doing wrong?

Either way, I should know for sure by next weekend what is correct. I'm loading up 400 rounds for prairie dog sniping late next week. :)
 
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I didn't get to chrono the load until this weekend. The 41.8gr was shooting exactly one inch higher at 100 yards than the 40.0gr load. 41.8 was pushing the 142SMK at roughly 2750FPS. I pulled temp, baro, elevation, and humidity with a kestrel 3500 and JBM is still way off. I'm showing -4.2MOA@300 yards but real data is -3.0MOA@300 yards. I'm using a NF NXS so I'm pretty sure the turrets are accurate and adjustments were perfect when setting my zero. I've got to be missing something. What charts I can find on the internet seem to line up with my real data and not JBM. Any idea what I could be doing wrong?

Either way, I should know for sure by next weekend what is correct. I'm loading up 400 rounds for prairie dog sniping late next week. :)

Good luck man. That will tell you a lot about your loads and also give you some really good trigger time to improve your shooting skills. As far as jbm... Take it as an "estimator " for your dope. It's never spot on in reality but it's a good way to get you close. You'll find your real data from pulling the trigger with accurate wind calls and distance. Again good luck !!
 
We made it out to hunt last weekend. Nine hour one way drive from Austin to Lubbock is a killer! The hunting was pretty bad due to the drought in the last couple years along with the weather. The first day we were rained out in the first hour. The second was overcast and the dogs hate that because of the hawks. The third day was good but we only hunted until noon because of the drive home. The biggest problem was the adults stayed under ground the whole trip along with the shots being 600+ yards. The young dogs are about the size of coke bottle at best. I got 10+ kills from 600-800 yards. The ballistics matched my testing and were 1 MOA off from JBM generated tables. My brother ended up having to replace his Nikon BDC with a Vortex Razer so he could get decent adjustment and was able to hit a few at 600-800 as well. I was using about 15MOA to get out to ~800 yards on the 6.5. Winds were variable form 8-15MPH so that increased the difficulty as well. We missed a lot but 90% of the missed were within a minute and were wind misses.

Overall I'm extremely pleased with the rifle. I wish I would of loaded my rounds a little hotter but didn't have time for a lot of testing. I would be extremely comfortable shooting a coyote or deer at 800 yards which I wasn't sure of before the trip.
 
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