my beater 30.06 can shoot clover leaves. i had it pro bedded, the barrel treated and trigger work done.

but only with handloads. sierra game kings, 150gr, with reloader 19 powder. the rifle is ugly.

The 2nd Sniper school I attended was put on by the Army Green Berets and open to a few selected non-military personnel. On day one, the instructor told us: By the time you leave in 8 days, you will take a cold rifle and do a head shot on a MOVING TARGET at 600 meters.....Thought I could never do it. By the end of the class, most of us were.......

Jeff,

The 175 grain MK will also make 1000 meters out of a 22” .308 W / 7.62X51 gas gun. So will a number of different bullets such as Bergers, Lapua, Hornady, plus the 190 grain MK.

There are plenty of scopes that will make 1000 meters, especially if you use a 20 MOA base.

Having said that my AR-10 (Schneider 5P 22”) is best at 800 meters and in, though I have stretched to 1100 meters when everything lined up and I was lucky.

My .300 WM is a 26” 5r barrel on a 700 action in an A-5 stock. Badger bottom metal and mounting (20 MOA). 210 Bergers make 1000 meters a whole lot easier.

S/F, FOG

Yup, there are always thing you can do to make the .308 perform better at 1,000 yards. But, as you have noticed, the bigger cases with the heavier bullets do make it a whole lot easier. Bullet weight is king at that range. Actually, ballistic coefficient is king, but that is achieved in a large part through bullet weight, so it would be more accurate (pardon the pun) to say "heavy for caliber bullets are king".

I'm not familiar with the 20 MOA base. Does that mean it is adjustable, with 20 MOA of elevation, or is it a brand of base? The base really is critical to scope use at that range. Most scopes will run out of elevation, or have the erector tube so far off center as to distort the sight picture if cranked up that far. Traditional parallel to bore mounting usually won't work. That's not something most guys would even consider until they make their first trip to a 1,000 yard range.

I guess lots of things come to light on that first trip. Most folks, most certainly including me, go home with their tail between their legs. It's a hard game to play. Harder than it looks, but I'm sure you know that. Pretty darn addicting, though...

Jeff,

The 20 MOA bases have 20 Minutes Of Angle built into them already. Badger, USO, Ferrell, plus another 10 or so I can’t remember off the top of my head manufacture them.

The problem with specifying the 168 MK is that Sierra designed them for the 300 meter international game. The military use the 175 MK in 7.62. It gets to 1000 a whole lot easier.

Don’t have enough time to keep very current on the long range rifle work, or shooting in general. Try .22lr at 200 yds or so. Roughly comparable to .308 at a 1000. .22lr being more forgiving on range estimation and less so on wind with few .22lrs being able to hold 1.5 MOA at that distance.

S/F, FOG

Interesting you would mention the .22 LR's at 200 yards. I have a .22 LR insert set-up for my .45 caliber single shot match rifles. I got it from Lee Shaver years ago, for the purpose of shooting at 200 yards to emulate the big .45's at 1,000. It's darn tough to get squared away for practice days at 1,000 yards, so most "practice" was just shooting the matches. The .22 LR insert allows me to shoot at my local range, ten minutes from home, all by myself, at 200 yards and get in some meaningful practice in doping the wind and all of that. Plus, it gets me out from under the whole chore of producing practice ammo and cleaning up the black powder mess afterwards.

We used to shoot formal 200 yard rimfire matches. That is just about one of the toughest rifle games there is to play. What the wind does to those poor little .22's at 200 yards would have to be seen to be believed by most shooters. It's an awful lot of fun, and way cheaper than unlimbering the big guns for long range. It always seemed more relaxed than the big bore matches, too. I think because it's almost laughably frustrating (after shooting centerfires at 200 yards) and no one really expects much. The slightest unoticed puff of wind, and you're screwed... I've never seen so many bewildered, laughing, grown men at a shooting range. I wish we would pick it up again.

What he failed to mention is that target is 275 feet in diameter ;)
J/k

Winchester mdl 52, Remington mdl 37, Springfield mdl 1922 MII. The best in 22LR.

Springfield Aresnal built 6 Match Target 22LRs in the 1920s. The reason they didn't build more is the fact that their standard MDl 1922 was so accurate that they didn't need to build Match Target models. Today those Mdl 1922s are underpriced for what they are. One thousand $$$ will buy a real nice one.

Jeff,

I know about the savings in time and money. Plus compared to centerfire you need better follow through, don’t know about the black powder stuff as I have little experience but suspect you need good follow through as well.

I have about 220 meters on my property so it makes it pretty easy. The wind can be tricky as you can be protected from a cross wind and still have a cross wind 40-60 meters from the target. I prefer to blame misses on unseen crosswind component than on the trigger puller .

S/F, FOG

I can shoot 600 yards and keep it on my own property, but 1000 yards is hard to come by, even to practice. I hear that the bullet doesn't go to sleep for at least 200 yards. I take that to mean that the bullet is still affected by the gun muzzle blast for at least that distance. I can believe at least 100 yards of this story. But what happens to the bullet after this point? I can't think of something radical that could happen to it. Maybe a gust of wind? But the same gust should affect the bullet at 100 yards, shouldn't it?

When a bullet "goes to sleep" it has started spinning about its longitudinal axis, just as we would expect it to from a rifled barrel. Prior to that, it is spinning about a secondary axis of revolution, or wobbling. Picture the difference between a quarterback throwing a perfect spiral and throwing a wobbly one. Bullets do the same thing. "Going to sleep" is when this secondary revolution stops; it quits wobbling. Lots of things affect when this happens; rifling twist, velocity, bullet weight and shape, atmospheric conditions, etc. Muzzle blast does not. The expanding gasses behind the bullet decellerate so rapidly when they hit the atmosphere in front of the muzzle that they have no affect whatsoever. This secondary revolution does have a dramatic affect on a bullet's ballistic coefficient, so until it "goes to sleep", we do indeed see a greater affect from any gust of wind.

Yes, the same gust of wind affects the bullet at all ranges. It's just that the affect is more pronounced at longer range. Whatever deviation from the intended line of flight that was imparted at 100 to 200 yards, before it "went to sleep", will carry on for the entire flight of the bullet. Plus, unless the wind dies right when the bullet "goes to sleep", it will continue to affect its flight. It is amazing just how much affect wind will have at long range; far more than one would expect.

I have seen guys run out of windage adjustment in their scopes or iron sights at 1,000 yards. My match rifles have 40 minutes of windage available on the rear sight. That is 400 inches, or 33 some odd feet at 1,000 yards. I have run out of adjustment on the rear at times. That's why I also have windage adjustment on the front sight. Now imagine needing that much say, left windage on one shot, then the wind dies or changes direction for the next. And that's just a side wind. Head and tail winds affect elevation, just not as much. Wind doping, both your own, and that of a good spotter, is critical at that range. Like I said, lots of guys crawl home with their tails between their legs after their first day. On gusty days, it's not unusual to see guys use up their ammo and never consistantly get on paper. And that paper is ten feet square...

Clearly, anything we can do to minimize wind drift will make it easier. This is where bullet weight and the attendant high ballistic coefficient is our friend. Any given cartridge in any given gun is constrained regarding how much energy it can produce by powder capacity and allowable pressure upon firing. It will shoot a light for caliber or a heavy for caliber bullet with about equal muzzle energy. The lighter one is simply going faster. Intuitively, we would think it would be the better choice for less wind drift. It spends less time in flight, so therefore the wind has less time to act on it, right? Not exactly...

Wind drift is a function of deceleration. Deceleration is a function of ballistic coefficient. Heavier bullets have a higher ballistic coefficient, and decelerate less. They are markedly less affected by wind. This would be a lot to go into in a typical PPOT sound byte, so if this interests you, check out the Handbook fo Shooters and Reloaders by P.O. Ackley and the Cast Bullet Handbook from Lyman. Both have excellent articles on exterior ballistics, complete with all of the equations you will want to see to help clarify what happens to a bullet in flight. Suffice to say here that heavier is always better, assuming your rifle has the twist rate and enough horsepower to stabilize it. That, and wind is the single biggest factor in long range shooting; a far bigger factor than most realize. Until you have tried it...

As a related aside, this is where every single movie or TV show or whatever completely falls appart when attempting to portray either some hero or villain sniper. These guys hit things at unthinkable ranges in unkown winds on the first shot. Once we are out past 300-400 yards, anyone who has tried it will laugh at the improbability of this. Wind drift on an average day gets to be several times the width of a man. Yes, we hear the real life stories like the current Afgan theater "record holder", the Canadian that dumped a guy at over 1,500 yards with his .338 Lapua. Guaranteed he had fired repeatedly at that range and, with the aid of a capable sppoter, "walked" his shots on target. He undoubtedly missed several targets before the other guy's luck ran out. This game is a lot harder to play than in the movies, kids...

Jeff,

The Canadians used a .50 on that shot. Scuttlebut is that they were actually trying to disable the vehicle they were standing in front of but hit the bad guy on their 1st shot.

S/F, FOG

Oh, o.k. I heard it was the .338. So he actually "missed" and became a legend...

Jeff,

That he was shooting at the vehicle is scuttlebutt. Makes sense when you look at the range, target size, etc. Kind of like Billy Dixon’s shot, others have replicated it but not on the 1st shot.

S/F, FOG

Two of the unluckiest guys in the history of long range shooting; that unfortunate Indian on his horse at Adobe Walls and that Afgan rebel standing on the wrong side of his rig.

Mike Venturino took a bunch of old buffalo guns out to some Army range (I believe in New Mexico somewhere - where is that Charles Keifner when we need him?) that was equiped with radar used to track the flight of projectiles. He got some great data while there. One of the more interesting datapoints was just how steep the bullet path was from that Big Fifty at the range that Billy nailed that guy. Essentially, that poor guy could have been just a few feet closer or further away and the bullet would have passed over his head or impacted at his feet. Just wasn't his day...

Whats really fun is using the sight ladders on an old mauser for some long range adjust-by-dust fun...