My first rifle that introduced me into the world of long range shooting was an accurized AR15. Spent a rediculous amount of money setting that thing up for what I viewed would be the epitome of long range varmint death sticks. By and large it was a wild success, ofcourse when you turn a 21 year old gunnut loose with a credit card things can get a little out of hand. The rifle weighs 15 pounds, it's 48 inches long, and it can deliver 10 shots into 3/4 inch on average with fairly basic handloads(40grn Vmax with AA2015 or H322). There are few things I'd do different if I had it to all do over again, then again 6 years ago there weren't as many options as there are today and I wasn't as educated on things back then as I am now.
All told, the accurized AR15 has been a GREAT gun to learn how to shoot with and maintain high degrees of precision. Almost no recoil so that's just about a complete after thought, the round has a trajectory that forces a person to become familiar with using the elevation dials of a scope if they want to make hits at 500 and beyond, and the little 223Rem can get blown around in the wind so that's another factor to consider as one becomes a better shot.
Enter my "step up" into ranges beyond that which the 223Rem can easily reach, a Rem 700 300WinMag PSS. Oh boy, haven't shot this rifle much over the past 6 months but the 2 times that I have shot groups at 500 yards my beginning handloads aren't doing too badly. Just last weekend when I was out in the hills, I ranged my target stand for 500 yards after using the mil-dot reticle. After entering a basic adjustment into the scope's dials for an approximate to my load I was only 1MOA off at distance, within 2-3 shots I was breaking clay pigeons at the distance. After basically getting the zero, I started a group on my target, wound up with 5 shots into a group just about 8 inches in diameter. NOT BAD I say for a rifle that hasn't been throughly wrung out, it was an unknown load I threw together for general blasting and had yet to really test for accuracy.
What's more
My friend had his GPS unit with him this weekend, he set a way point on my shooting position and a waypoint on my target frame. The GPS reported back with .28 miles as the distance, doing the math that comes out to 495 yards
Even if it was actually like .275-.285 and the GPS unit was rounding to .28, I was probably still within 15 yards even after accounting for the level of accuracy in the GPS unit.
Unfortunately, my little Bushnell Elite 3200 scope only has enough elevation left in it's tube to get out to 700 yards after initial sight in 6 months ago and that is if my loads are flat enough to shoot the distance. Time to get a Nightforce 5.5-22x and 20MOA base if I want to be hitting through the crosshairs at 1000 and beyond.
What is it they say? "Only accurate rifles are interesting."
