I went out to the range today, I took a borrowed 22-250 Ruger. I started at 100 yards and had no problems there. I moved to 200 then to 300 with no issues. Then I put some shots on the 400 and 600 plates and hit about 50% of the time. Went right to the 1000 yard target, held over halfway down my scope and took a few shots. I hit it with in 3 shots. Then I proceeded to shoot about 20-30 rounds at it hitting it maybe every 3-5 shots. Lots of fun, I truly enjoy long range shooting. Keep in mind the 600 yard plate looked like it was 2 or more feet in diameter and the 1000 yard target is a steel cutout of a bison so nothing I did was impressive. In fact I put a paper target at 50 yards and did some .22 LR groups with my 10/22 and got about 1.5 inch groups, aka i'm not a good shot yet. 2-3 MOA accuracy is common for me and about my average. I did do one 5 shot group where 3 shots were all touching making a ragged hole but the other 2 were like an inch away... Anyways enough rambling, my synopsis of this practice session is that i am not ready for the .300 Win Mag yet. The recoil might make me develop a flinch and I cannot afford enough ammo to get practice from it. So we can cross that one off.
Thank you for all your suggestions, most of them are suggesting me guns and calibers to buy but the thing is I can only afford a gun purchase every few years so i want to make sure then gun will make me smile. And I really have been wanting a long range rifle so I don't want to postpone it any longer. I see a ton of suggestions for a .223 bolt gun, since I have very few guns and can only afford a few of them I would rather get a .223 AR. And when i get an AR eventually I want it setup like a short door kicking rifle not a DMR type gun, so there's kind of a conundrum. A .223 bolt gun seems like a fun piece for a large collection, but I really want an all purpose type round for my precision rifle.
What I learned today is that I need a lot of practice, and since I'm so inconsistent I don't need target style bullets that are made to shave off fractions of an inch in group size when I cant even get a sub MOA group yet. So unless they make cheap bulk 6.5 ammo I think I will rule that one out.
I absolutely loved shooting the 22-250 today, the bullets shot straight as a laser and even at 1000 yards i only had to aim a little bit above the bison with my 10x scope. So reading about the .243 got me excited knowing that it is better in every way than a 22-250, with I imagine not to much recoil. And the only other caliber I can think of that fits my desire is .308. But since it was reccomend so much I will do some research on the .223 round, maybe i'm missing something about or I'm biased because I just think of it as the wimpy AR round. Anyways this thread has kind of switched to help me pick an ELR round to just a 1000 yard max round, when I get more skilled I will get a .300 Win Mag but for now here is my new criteria.
Needs to have very very cheap ammo available for it to practice, but also very good ammo for when I get better. And not be some obscure caliber only found online ore reloaded yourself.
Barrel life does not matter at all to me, here's why. I am getting a Remington 700 ADL, it is a $400 gun. The sooner I wear the cheap barrel out the better so I can get a bull barrel for it. Essentially if it wears out in 3000 rounds, chances are by then I will have either given up or learned to be accurate and wont need to put so many rounds through the new match barrel.
Must be able to reach 1000 yards, I just enjoy shooting that far and don't want something that'll make a rainbow at 500.
So all i can think of is .243, .308, and the recommended .223. Maybe I should not make it so hard and just get a .308. I've never shot a .308 or .243 how bad is the recoil? The largest rifle cartridge I have shot a 7.62x54r Mosin so I have that to compare it to.