New to the precision rifle / target rifle game. I've been shooting for many years, but primarily in 'minute of bad guy' styles like IDPA / Carbine action shooting. This scoped rifle stuff is a completely different beast. 
My setup is a Savage 110 Tactical in 6.5 Creedmoor, Sig Tango 4 4-24x50, Harris bipod, and a Spike's Tactical muzzle break (have to support my local awesomeness shop). I was shooting Hornady Black 140gr.
Pre-range day, I boresighted using a borrowed boresight device (with the high cheekpiece on the gun, you can't see directly down the bore), ran a couple swabs through the barrel, and dry fired for a while to get used to the trigger / cheekweld / etc.
Hit the range, and started at 25 yards to make sure the gun was close to sighted - and I'm glad I did - the boresight was way off. Expended a few rounds at 25 yards getting windage set correctly, and elevation reasonably close, and then moved to the 100 yard line to do the actual zero. All went well, and the rifle was quickly zeroed using the mil reticle to measure the correction required and apply it. After, that is, I stopped applying the corrections in the wrong direction, ASSuming the adjustments worked like the RDS optics on my other guns... I then slipped the turrets and set the elevation zero stop up as per the scope manual.
All in all, a nice start to the day at the range.
I then settled down to learn some of the things that I didn't know that I didn't know. Which is rather a lot as it turns out.
Lowering the bipod legs one notch and using my closed fist to support the rear of the stock helped a lot, as did lowering the magnification on the optic. Not surprisingly, higher magnification leads to more perceived jitter in the alignment, which leads to chasing minuscule changes all over the place.
Following Ryan Cleckner's "focus on the reticle, steady pressure on the trigger" mantra seemed to help my shooting as well. I was calling my hits with reasonable accuracy when I focused on the basics and made sure I followed through the trigger pull. My final four rounds of the day:
I pulled through the trigger too fast on the last round, and called it low in my head right after it went. Bummer, because the top three were pretty nice and tight. The middle hole there is actually two rounds, near as I can tell. That, or I completely missed the whole sticker and didn't recognize the really bad shot. That's also very possible
I finished off the range session by re-torquing all the optic mounting screws with a torque wrench, and called it a day. Overall, the rifle performed well, with no issues. Me? Probably not bad for a first time out with a new setup - and a new shooting paradigm.
Lessons learned:
- Need a rear bag (ordered)
- Need to dry fire more and focus on smooth, steady trigger pulls with follow-through
- Magnification is not your friend at the upper end. Lower is better as long as you can clearly see the desired impact spot.
- There is still a ton of stuff that I do not know that I do not know.
- This target stuff is fun
My setup is a Savage 110 Tactical in 6.5 Creedmoor, Sig Tango 4 4-24x50, Harris bipod, and a Spike's Tactical muzzle break (have to support my local awesomeness shop). I was shooting Hornady Black 140gr.
Pre-range day, I boresighted using a borrowed boresight device (with the high cheekpiece on the gun, you can't see directly down the bore), ran a couple swabs through the barrel, and dry fired for a while to get used to the trigger / cheekweld / etc.
Hit the range, and started at 25 yards to make sure the gun was close to sighted - and I'm glad I did - the boresight was way off. Expended a few rounds at 25 yards getting windage set correctly, and elevation reasonably close, and then moved to the 100 yard line to do the actual zero. All went well, and the rifle was quickly zeroed using the mil reticle to measure the correction required and apply it. After, that is, I stopped applying the corrections in the wrong direction, ASSuming the adjustments worked like the RDS optics on my other guns... I then slipped the turrets and set the elevation zero stop up as per the scope manual.
All in all, a nice start to the day at the range.
I then settled down to learn some of the things that I didn't know that I didn't know. Which is rather a lot as it turns out.
Lowering the bipod legs one notch and using my closed fist to support the rear of the stock helped a lot, as did lowering the magnification on the optic. Not surprisingly, higher magnification leads to more perceived jitter in the alignment, which leads to chasing minuscule changes all over the place.
Following Ryan Cleckner's "focus on the reticle, steady pressure on the trigger" mantra seemed to help my shooting as well. I was calling my hits with reasonable accuracy when I focused on the basics and made sure I followed through the trigger pull. My final four rounds of the day:
I pulled through the trigger too fast on the last round, and called it low in my head right after it went. Bummer, because the top three were pretty nice and tight. The middle hole there is actually two rounds, near as I can tell. That, or I completely missed the whole sticker and didn't recognize the really bad shot. That's also very possible
I finished off the range session by re-torquing all the optic mounting screws with a torque wrench, and called it a day. Overall, the rifle performed well, with no issues. Me? Probably not bad for a first time out with a new setup - and a new shooting paradigm.
Lessons learned:
- Need a rear bag (ordered)
- Need to dry fire more and focus on smooth, steady trigger pulls with follow-through
- Magnification is not your friend at the upper end. Lower is better as long as you can clearly see the desired impact spot.
- There is still a ton of stuff that I do not know that I do not know.
- This target stuff is fun
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