600yd rifle

.308? 178g ELDX bullets over Varget may be your friend.

I don't know the gadgety brand names you drop, but given a decent barrel, what is needed is good ammo and practice, especially doping the wind, which I never got very good at.

Zero the rifle; zero the shooter. Practice, practice, practice.

I like Ultradyne brakes (I have several of the Pulse), but I don't think the Athena is going to be better than the VG6. I find the VG6 to be a little light for a .308 and use heavier brakes on my target AR .308s.

mrray13 said:

Yes, .308, but I don’t reload.

I’m not going to be competing, so working up specific loads isn’t high on my list as of yet. Just want to bang steel for now, put some holes in paper.

Putting a Pulse on the wife’s 16” 5.56. The Athena was actually bought for my .300 pistol, and I’m thinking hard about repurposing the PA m41 that’s on it. But might try the Athena first. The brake that’s currently on it isn’t a true vg6, it’s of similar style though. It worked okay during the shakedown, but still allowed quite a bit of movement.

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I put a Pulse on my 16" .308 bolt action chassis rifle and it hardly moves at all. Everyone who shoots it is very impressed with it, as they are expecting a big blast from the short barrel. Good luck. I find the .30 cal VG6 is great for .300 BLK, 7.62x39 and I even put it on 6.5 CR where it works much better than .308. So, I put the 6.5 VG6s from my 6.5 CRs on my Grendels. I think the VG6s work much better on AR15s than on their big brothers.

The rifle is already built, so what remains is just ammo and practice. If the rifle shoots sub-MOA at 100yrds, then get a chrony, punch some numbers, wait for a calm day, put a 10-12” target out at 600, and you’ll be done in a half hour.

The setup you have is more than capable. Buy some decent ammo though. M80 type ball ammo is known to be pretty bad as far as accuracy goes. Some are better than others but in general the 145-150 grain ball ammo is going to be a hinderance.

Buy a few boxes of this and get your muzzle velocity. Throw that info in your ballistic calculator and try not to go on a really windy day.

https://www.freedommunitions.com/federal-308-win-175gr-bthp.html

In addition to the previous two great posts I’ll suggest getting a rear bag, rather than a monopod. The stock installed rail could sport a bag rider slide for a more reliable recoil path.

Monopods are great for displaying a rifle on a table though…

mrray13 said:

Definitely going to run better ammo when the time comes to zero @ 100, and then attempt 600. 205 yards is the longest I’ve ever attempted.

Guess I need a chrono now, lol. Should I go bigger on the scope?

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The first time I hit steel at 1000 yards with an AR was with a 1-6 scope. You don't need a lot of magnification to hit 600. You do need good ballistic DOPE. A chronograph is not a need to, if you don't already have one. Pick one load, shoot it, and extrapolate from ballistic tables what your needed holds will be. Zero the rifle; zero the shooter. Its more important you are consistent in your shooting technique.

I fail to understand why guys will spend all the time and effort to get into long range and/or precision shooting, then not hand load.

You do not need an expensive set up. You do not need a dedicated room. Supposedly for years David Tubb used a Lee Loader, which fits in your pocket and costs maybe $50. Back in high school a bazillion years ago I would use one to load for my .22-250 while watching TV laying on the living room floor

Varminterror said:

The rifle is already built, so what remains is just ammo and practice. If the rifle shoots sub-MOA at 100yrds, then get a chrony, punch some numbers, wait for a calm day, put a 10-12” target out at 600, and you’ll be done in a half hour.

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It’s a Bunny’

mrray13 said:

Definitely going to run better ammo when the time comes to zero @ 100, and then attempt 600. 205 yards is the longest I’ve ever attempted.

Guess I need a chrono now, lol. Should I go bigger on the scope?

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You have more than enough magnification. If you want a different scope I would focus more on a better quality scope rather than a higher magnification scope.

A few months back a friend and I took one of his coworkers out to the long range to shoot some steel. This guy was a big time midwest hunter but had never shot past 300 yards. He shot my AI from 300 out to just under 1100 and kept the scope on 10x the entire time. The scope on my AI is a 7-35 power and I'm rarely above about 25x, with much of my shooting between 15-20x

Make it a 600yd steel ringer? Yeh, either grab any factory loaded 308 or hand load your own with pretty much any bullet & 308 powder and go shoot!

600yds is not long range shooting. But it’s good “pre” long range practice.

mrray13 said:

Guess I need a chrono now, lol.

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Get a chrony instead of the rear monopod.

Just my personal opinion, but a lot of guys get too carried away with magnification these days.

If you shoot 1/4MOA and are looking for the tiniest groups in the very center of your target, you may need magnification in the 20x-30x range.

If you run a "field rifle" at around 1MOA and want to ring steel or shoot critters at various ranges, I still tend to feel like the old 1x per 100yds rule of thumb makes for the most flexible and useful range. As a result, I tend to run in the 3-15 or 4-16 range on my longer range guns.

My buddy got his Idaho elk at 903yd with a 2.5-10 FFP a few years back.

Again, this is just my opinion and experience, and no more valid than anyone else's...

mrray13 said:

gotta ask, what do ya mean by this?

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Friendly sarcasm actually. I was referring to @Varminterror suggesting you would only need a half hour to have success at 600 yard shooting and you may indeed. Myself I had to practice a bit to get the hang of it although I did not have a quality coach either..
Some shooting ranges are extremely difficult with tough conditions being the norm while others are quite easy hardly any wind etc. ( Bunny course)

mrray13 said:

Here’s my first real attempt into LRS. It’s an Ballistic Advantage’s build, featuring a BA10 lower with the addition of a CMC Single Stage Competition trigger and a Hogue grip; a BA 20” heavy profile upper with the addition of a Aero Precision adjustable gas block, and Radion charging handle. I’ve added an inexpensive MLok bipod, added a small picatinny rail to the SRT stock for a mono pod and a Vortex Diamond Tactical 4-16x44 in a Burris AR-P.E.R.P mount.
Any thoughts on making this a truly respectable 600yd steel ringer? Am I headed the right way? View attachment 1090593

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Personally, I like a 2-stage trigger for long range, but if you're used to a single stage, it will work. I have the stock trigger in my M1A, it is a bit heavy on the pull, but breaks very clean. I have a 2-stage Geissele DMR in my AR15 LRR. Rest of the gun looks good, no reason it shouldn't hit 18x18 plates at 600 yards. With practice, you'll have a 6-8" group in the center of them.

mrray13 said:

Yes, .308, but I don’t reload.
I’m not going to be competing, so working up specific loads isn’t high on my list as of yet. Just want to bang steel for now, put some holes in paper.
The brake that’s currently on it isn’t a true vg6, it’s of similar style though. It worked okay during the shakedown, but still allowed quite a bit of movement.

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I don't know what sort of match stuff is available off the shelf, I only shoot what I load myself, but at 600 yards, a 155 or 168 grain boat-tail match bullet is what you want, like a Hornady ELD, Lapua Scenar or Sierra Match King. Best BC and velocity combinations. You'll make a lot of friends at the range with a muzzle brake, but, hey, guns are loud anyway.

mrray13 said:

Definitely going to run better ammo when the time comes to zero @ 100, and then attempt 600. 205 yards is the longest I’ve ever attempted.

Guess I need a chrono now, lol. Should I go bigger on the scope?

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Scope should be fine, that's a FFP, right? The ones I have are a 6-24x50 (Vortex Viper HS-T SFP) and a 5-24x56 (Millett SFP) and they are good to about 1000 before they run out of adjustment for elevation. I had the same mount (Burris PEPR) on my AR, it's a solid mount, but I changed it to a Warne 20MOA mount for the extra elevation adjustment it bought me. I've only taken my .308 to 800 yards, so far, but I shoot my AR Grendel past 1000 whenever I can get to a range that long. Closest one to me that I can shoot at is 3 hours each way.

Getting a good100 yard zero and consistent groups, plus a lot of practice, is key to hitting further out. A solid gun rest helps, too. For serious bench shooting, a rest is better than a bipod, but in the field, I prefer a bipod and shoot prone.

South Prairie Jim said:

Friendly sarcasm actually. I was referring to @Varminterror suggesting you would only need a half hour to have success at 600 yard shooting and you may indeed. Myself I had to practice a bit to get the hang of it although I did not have a quality coach either..
Some shooting ranges are extremely difficult with tough conditions being the norm while others are quite easy hardly any wind etc. ( Bunny course)

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Maybe I didn’t emphasize enough the importance of waiting for a calm day, but 2moa at 600yrds with a sun-MOA 100yrd rifle is pretty straight forward. He doesn’t have the gear to do what you’re doing at 600yrds, and doesn’t have the expectations you have either.

In my own history as a LR instructor/“coach,” certainly nothing special in that field myself, I’ve taken a whole bunch of newbies out to 800-1400yards on 2moa steel within a matter of the first hour or so of shooting, including establishment of their 100yrd zero. We don’t usually take those classes out that far that fast when the wind is blowing 45mph, but living in Kansas, we’re rarely ever below 10mph whenever weather is decent enough to be shooting with newbies at all. On my personal range, I use the same set of 66% IPSC’s for my 500 and 600 yard “big targets,” and full size IPSC’s and 18” and 24” rounds as my big targets for 800-1000, or 1200. Sometimes we’re even taking kids as young as 4-6yrs old out to a grand, and not slipping rounds off of the plate.

But sure, if a guy is spraying 4” groups at 100yrds, the challenge of shooting a 12” target at 600yrds is more than trivial. That rifle should shoot small enough with some factory ammo to accomplish what’s needed, however.

Rather than spending money on a rear bag, a jacket works great proned out. Spending money on high BC accurate rounds is pretty important at distance. When I switched from 168g to 178g eldx (both sub moa in my .308) my 400y group size dramatically shrank under the same environmental conditions.