[Jeff Higgins]

Well, not the best weekend for bench testing a new rifle, but I went to the range with it anyway. We have had rain along with gusting winds up into the 20-30 mph range, so I was trying to shoot groups between showers and the big gusts of wind.

I mounted up an old 3-9x Leupold just to have some glass on it for this work; not the best for really precise shooting, but it's all I had just laying around. I fired a couple of five shot groups at 200 yards off the bench with three different loads. All were assembled with the 60 grain V-Max bullet in once fired Federal cases and primed with CCI 400's; O.A.L. was 2.26". Each load had 25 grains of powder, the first was H4895, then Reloder 15, then H335. The H4895 load averaged 1.585" for the two five shot groups; RL15 averaged 1.995", and H335 averaged 2.220".

I'll go to the chronograph next and get some velocities for these. I really wanted to shoot over it while I was shooting the groups, but it was just too rainy and overcast to set it up. None of these loads showed any pressure signs (none are even close to "maximum" loads yet), so I do have some room to work with the charges. It's entirely likely that as I do, group sizes will shrink (or grow) and that these powders will trade places, accuracy-wise. As for now and what I learned at the bench, all three exhibit entirely useful accuracy and merit further development. Plus, as a bonus, when I removed the scope, it shot to the express sights at 100 yards.