Attended a class some weekends ago. We actually did very little shooting, as the weather was poor, and there was much classroom info to cover. In fact, I fired only 14 rounds.
The first five were flown over the chrono with no target. The second five were fired at 100 yards to check zero, and here is where things began to seem odd.
The rifle was my GAP Crusader, which shoots lights out, yet the 100 yard group ran almost one inch in diameter. Unusually poor shooting, but I just figured it was me being sloppy. The last four rounds were fired at 500 yards, in near complete darkness, on an 8" plate. All of which rang back as solid hits.
A couple weeks later, I grabbed the Crusader out of the safe, and leaned the barrel against my reloading bench. Darn if I didn't feel an odd vibration. A little examination showed the action was loose in the stock! The forward screw had backed out roughly one half turn, the aft screw a full two and one half turns.
Of course it's all torqued up now, and I added some torque paint to make it easy to detect any future movement. But it seems really odd to me that I could hit anything with the action so loose in the stock, much less at 500 yards!
I can "forgive" the action screws abandoning their posts, as previous to this event, the rifle had seen a lot of shooting at a Gunsite PR7 class, and 900 some road miles worth of vibration. But I'll sure be more careful to check the little devils in the future!
Cheers... Jim
The first five were flown over the chrono with no target. The second five were fired at 100 yards to check zero, and here is where things began to seem odd.
The rifle was my GAP Crusader, which shoots lights out, yet the 100 yard group ran almost one inch in diameter. Unusually poor shooting, but I just figured it was me being sloppy. The last four rounds were fired at 500 yards, in near complete darkness, on an 8" plate. All of which rang back as solid hits.
A couple weeks later, I grabbed the Crusader out of the safe, and leaned the barrel against my reloading bench. Darn if I didn't feel an odd vibration. A little examination showed the action was loose in the stock! The forward screw had backed out roughly one half turn, the aft screw a full two and one half turns.
Of course it's all torqued up now, and I added some torque paint to make it easy to detect any future movement. But it seems really odd to me that I could hit anything with the action so loose in the stock, much less at 500 yards!
I can "forgive" the action screws abandoning their posts, as previous to this event, the rifle had seen a lot of shooting at a Gunsite PR7 class, and 900 some road miles worth of vibration. But I'll sure be more careful to check the little devils in the future!
Cheers... Jim
