Shooting a 'closeout' Big Horn @ the farm

[sabotloader]

Shorthair15 (a forum member on another forum) and I had discussed his problems with a new Big Horn. This is/was a new Big Horn assembled by Knight at the point they were going out of business. I am assuming Knights normal quality control went out the window in an effort to get as many rifles out of the warehouse as they could.

Scott was having problems getting it to group (actually even keeping it on paper @ 100 yards) and was having some difficulty getting it to load normal sabot loads. We did a lot of discussion back and forth on the gun through the PM system and the open forum.

I suggested a couple of possibilities that might be causing both problems… Scope then did some investigation and found a stock to barreled action problem. The inletting was causing the barrel to stick in the stock in different spots each time he shot.

I asked him to send to over Idaho and I would take a look at it for him versus sending it to Knight hopefully to shorten the turn-around time. I’ll be darned if it did not show up at my door Wednesday.

I was able to work a JB Bore Paste treatment in Wednesday evening on the bore. This barreled action felt like it was directly from Green Mountain without the bore honing that Knight does in their assembly. But after a couple hundred full bore stokes of JB’s and a tight patch… the bore is glass smooth.

Today I tackled the sticky barrel to stock problem… It was abnormally bad – in fact it worried me a bit as I was afraid I was going to do quite a bit of sanding in the barrel channel. I hate to sand that much on someone else’s stock and I always worry about sanding too much. But after looking closely at the problem area that Scott had pointed out… went to work on the stock… After a couple of hours of sand and fit – sand and fit….. the barreled action dropped right in place… I did not have to remove as much as I thought and I actually got a seated barrel the full length of the channel. It fit perfect – and I felt good.

Well after that I had to go shoot it… I bore sighted it here at the house and but I did not get to the farm until almost 6 pm so I was losing light quickly. I set up a 25 yard paper target got a few shots off and got the windage set correctly (I hate slide and glide sights)… and decided enough of that… Set a bird at 50 yards and I’ll be danged if I did not hit it. I was low in the bird so I ran the elevation up a tad and set 3 birds out at 60 yards… Dispatched all of those and again I was hitting in the bottom of the bird so I raised the elevation on the slide and glide an additional 2 marks and put to birds out at 100.

These two birds seemed to shoot correctly. I was using a 6 o’clock hold and holding just under the bird. Solid hits on both birds and the confidence was over flowing not to mention how good I felt about the stock inletting job. I felt so good about the shooting – I walked out to get pictures of the broken birds and to verify impact points in the ground… on the way back I thought there might be enough light left to get a couple more shots – So I stood some a couple of chips up from the 60 yard birds and figured I would take a shot at them…

I have no ideal if I hit them but I was close enough to scare them into disappearing… packed up and came home – headed to the rock pit in the morning for addition shooting…

Load… 110 grain T7-3f, Lehigh 40cal-200 grain DOA , MMP Blue 40-50 sabot the thickest sabot I have and it loaded sweat… Factory open sights…

Here are some pics if you can make any sense out of them…






More tomorrow… but Scott you have a good one…

[cayugad]

Well that is some good shooting. That rifle is a real keeper. I bet Scott will be real happy with what you accomplished. Good job there Sabotloader.

[chaded]

Hey hows shorthair been? Some of us on the other forum thought he up and died. Hasn't been around in awhile.....

[falcon]

Thats some real good shooting.

[onetohunt]

Good shooting as usual Sabot!