Ran out to the farm yesterday morning before our football game with a goal of completing the sight of this new to me rifle. After the results of shooting on 9/26 - I felt it would be an easy task to finish up... + I wanted to shoot brand jackets( to apease Grouse) to test blow back. But. overall it was an awful morning!!!
One positive - shooting new jackets with the Lehigh vent liner did significantly reduce the amount of crap in the breech area. It still got dirty - nothing on the scope and a light coating on the forward part of the bolt.
Since it was to be a quick trip I waled the target out to the 100 pen. Came back and loaded up a Sierra .458/300 grain bullet. These bullets in the past have been very accurate for and they are cheaper to shoot than my hunting bullet. They were terrible - I could not get two of them in the same neighborhood.
Frustrated with that decided I would try some Lehigh .458/275 grain bullets and again in the past the have been excellent shooters. A little better but again un-acceptable. I almost broke out a box of Noslers, but nixed that thought and with frustration packed up and head back to town.
Shoot! I wasted 10 new plastic disc's and shot 4 expensive bullets $1 per shot and I almost wasted another 4 Nosler at near a buck a bullet... Dang!
On the drive home I was thinking why could that gun shoot so well @ 50 and be so far off at 100? One of the thing s that I noticed... was in my other Knight 50's I can shoot a Lehigh .459/277 grain in the Orange sabot and get it down the barrel very well. Today shooting the .458's I could get them to start and go down about 1/2 way with normal pressure but after that it was a struggle... the bore really tightened up. Again since the gun was new to me I did not think much of it at first. But then I started thinking about Shawn's struggles with this gun and maybe it might be a problem with the gun.
When i got home I stripped it and cleaned the bore - to the point of completly stripping every thing out and running boiling water through it to open the pores and strip them. Re- oiled and dry patched. I then again tried to load a .458/300 grain Sierra - same thing nice smooth relatively easy push to about halfway down the bore - then tight...
At this point I thought might as well - 100 stokes of JB's - clean the barrel again - load again - just like magic it pushed all the way through with a even consistent push - happy camper...
Headed to the rock pit this morning to check it out... Mounted a target grabbed 10 clay pigeons - walked the target to 100 yards - spread the pigeons out from 75 to 116 yards.
Came back to the truck patch the barrel with a windex patch - shot two primers patched again and loaded. The bullet/sabot went right to the bottom as hoped... Sat down at my portable bench - sighted in on the target - the got this wild thought - changed to one of the 100 yard birds. Bang! no bird. Did that 9 more times - 6 shots with a Sierra and 3 shots with a Lehigh - Never did shoot the paper target it was much more fun to shoot the pigeons and I even had an onlooker watching...
Next... loaded up all my gear and came home. Not a single problem loading and not a miss - I FEEL GOOD... now if I can just find one of Spitpatches secret Magillas - I will be even a happier camper....
Speaking of which going camping/scouting this weekend...
An Awful day shooting Yesterday - A Great Day Today
