Depending on where you live and the kind of shooting situations you encounter, you are the best one to determine how far you want to sight the rifle in at. Also be aware, some of the hollow point bullets begin to fail (at least in my experience) in the tight group department the further out you send them. For instance, where I live a 100 yard shot is rare. A fifty yard shot is common. So I sight dead on at 75 yards. If one is closer, the difference of an inch high or low will make little difference after the lungs and heart are gone.
A safe way to sight in if you have a lot of long distance shots to make is.. sight in two (and some even go three)inches high at 100 yards. That will still keep you close to the kill zones at closer ranges. For instance, if it hits four inches high at 50 yard, then aim for the bottom of the kill zone and let the bullet lift do the work for you. At longer distances, say 150 yard the drop of the bullet should not be all that great, so you aim for the top of the kill zone and let the bullet drop into the middle again. Of course all of this takes a lot of practice. After you decide where you want to shoot too, then you have to test your bullet at the different distances and see where they hit and how they react.
Personally a better long distance bullet for you might be a 250 grain Barnes Expander. I have pushed them real hard in my little Knight Wolverine II and in my Black Diamond XR and they hold true. The big complaint with them are their cost. Buy them in bulk and shoot away.
The XTP's on the other hand work fine for me because of the distance I have to shoot. I shoot them with only 85 grains of Goex 3f powder out of my little Knight Wolverine and let the bullet placement do the work for me....
That's a great rifle and optics you have there... you're going to be fine. Make a set of shooting sticks and practice off them too. They will help you out a lot when you are on a field edge with no kind of rest. Just get you butt on the ground and your back to a tree or something and let the shooting sticks do the work for you....
New Setup!
