Man, I have so much good stuff to talk about - I just do not know where to start.... Well, it is good stuff to me, but 4 u-all it might be the same ole-stuff...
Anyway took the new Knight out to get some shots through the barrel. Went to the farm first, but when I got there and looked at all that wheat stubble - I really had second thoughts about shooting a ML there so I headed to the rock pit instead.
I got to the rock pit and had it all to myself but before I could get set up and get the first shot off other folks arrived and wanted to know if I would share the pit... so it ended up being a decent group of folks shooting, but about half way through my shooting - they all stopped and were watching this old guy with a 52 cal ML shooting... Then I even let them pick off clay birds of the wall... All-in-all, we all had a lot of fun.
I know I shouldn't be, after all it is Knight Extreme, but I was really impressed with the 52 cal Knight. It was brand new, in the fact that it has never been shot, the previous owner had won it at an Elk Foundation Banquet. Right out of the box it cloverleafed 3 shots - only 50 yards out but I was impressed.
The gun came with a Knight FPJ - Power Stem Breech plug, I had removed that and installed a Lehigh Gen II plug and in this particular gun it was near 99% clean. We ended up shooting 31 shots and from the breech you would be hard pressed to know it..
These are the some of the spent primers....
Shooting... what fun.
Couple of things that I wish I had done before the shoot... I did clean the bore and treat it with Montana X-Treme BC, I swapped stocks, and mounted-bore sighted a new scope... I even dry fired a couple of spent primers to check trigger pull. It was really crisp but it felt OK... but let me tell you pulling the trigger in the 'man room' and pulling the trigger off a bench - two different things... I need to adjust it lighter - probably would be OK for hunting, but for the bench it was a problem... The GOOD thing - it is a Knight and adjusting the trigger - piece of cake.... So that is on the 'to-do' list...
I did get to shoot though and it was an event... Three of us were shooting, 2 in each group. They were all shooting center fires and not really much interested in the ML, except they liked the stock. So I shoot the sight in target set at 50 yards. The first three shots thrilled me to know end. The 459/300 really did well with a 110 grains of powder - I normally shoot 120 from my Knights but I decided on 110 because I was going to shoot the .475/350's next and did not want to switch powder loads as a means of comparison.
You can see the first three shots worked out very well, gave me a lot of confidence as I adjusted the scope and decided to shoot the .475/350 gr. bullets next. I honestly think the trigger pull got me a little on this group, but another thing that might have played role is the recoil.... The recoil did not bother my shoulder any but I could not believe how far up off the front rest the gun jumped... there was a very noticeable difference between the 300's and the 350's. But still not bad for the first shots...
After this target the group has kinda started watching the smoke gun and seeing the target helped them become more interested.
I set up the chrono next about 10' off the muzzle and that caused some concern with the groupy - thinking it was to close for a ML, but we got through that conversation and I mounted a new target and moved it to 75 yards.
Decided to shoot the 300 grain bullets first because they had done so well on the sight-in target. I bumped the powder up to 120 grains as that is my normal elk hunting load in a Knight. Pulled the trigger on the fist shot it was just off the bull and collected a 1901 fps... the group of centerfire folks was umipressed but I was really liking it. Touched the second shot off and now I had the groups interest, they were watching with binoc's, When the 3rd shot touched - I had their attention.... I do not think they thought a ML could shoot that well. I was ready to move on to the 350's but they wanted one shot with the 300's to "Prove it" - so I loaded up again and worred about the shot the whole time but it went right into the group. Dang! I am good... But it really comes down to the rifle, the Knight 52 was and is a shooter...
Next up was the 350 grain bullets, and when I thought the gun jumped with 110 grains of T7 - it literally bounced with 120 grains but the group stayed acceptable. I am quite positive the trigger pull contributed to #7.
Next was the really fun part... I really like shooting breakable targets, so with everyones permision I close the range and walked down to the wall placed out a bunch of clay pigeons. The birds were approximately 100 yards down range. I think you can see them in this picture.
I then started shooting the birds... I shot one bird it was great fun... I got to shoot 5 of them and then offered to let anyone that wanted a shot @ the last two. Two of the guys picked them off without a problem - I told the them the gun was set about 2" high @ 100 so they need to hold the X-hair at the bottom of the bird and they did and the bird was no more... They ended up taking another set of birds down and shooting the hole set by themselves - I think I converted some CF guys to Knight ML's...
All-in-all It was great day, but now I need to clean the gun...
52 cal KDEx @ the Rock Pit
