New guy from Central WI

[boardwalk72]

Hi all, new guy from Central WI here. I've been lurking on this forum for years and finally decided to join. Mediocre marksman at best, like to shoot anything and everything from 22s to my 338 Lapua. The only competitive shooting I do is my local trap league, burn up about 1500 round a year in that. I want to expand that someday to include medium range rifle and maybe 3 gun fun shoots.

Started doing my own amature gunsmithing over the last few years which I've really been enjoying. Now my focus is rearranging my shotguns, rifles and optics into the best collection to suit me instead of just total quantity of stuff.

Glad to be here and this forum has provided me tons of reading over the last several years.

 

[flyweed]

Hi there. I am from SW Wisconsin, but have hunting property up around Mosinee. What do you think of your 338 Lapua? I am looking to get into long range target shooting (like 1 mile max distance). but am looking for advice and reviews on budget friendly long range rifles.

 

[hafejd30]

Welcome from the UP of Michigan

 

[boardwalk72]

Hi there. I am from SW Wisconsin, but have hunting property up around Mosinee. What do you think of your 338 Lapua? I am looking to get into long range target shooting (like 1 mile max distance). but am looking for advice and reviews on budget friendly long range rifles.

Love my Lapua. It's a semi build that I put together. Started with a savage precision that had a 24 inch barrel. Stripped that off after 50 rounds and slapped on a 28 inch heavy contour target barrel. I have less than 60 rounds down the tube of the new barrel for load development but my last 5 shot printed a 0.6 moa group at 300 yards. I need to tune the load a bit and then I'm taking it straight to 1k. I need to find a place to try a mile when I finish load development.

 

[flyweed]

nice. tell me more about your build. After doing a bunch of reading, I am thinking of maybe building mine rather than trying to go with a box store ready rifle. Tell me what you put together. So you started with a Savage Precision? what caliber?

Thanks for any more info

 

[boardwalk72]

It started life as a savage precision 338 Lapua. I picked it up a couple years before COVID and for the money it was a perfect platform to start with and I got a solid deal on the gun. This version has the mdt lss chassis but it only had a 24 inch barrel. I was a little disappointed with the performance out of the box so I got a custom 28 inch heavy barrel, replaced the factory picatinny base with a Murphy, changed the brake, trigger, bolt handle, bolt lift kit. In the end, I've been pretty happy with it.

You gotta get good deals to build these up at any reasonable price. You could almost ground up build one from a bare action and not have a ton more into it depending on how "high end" you go.