This didn't turn out the way i hoped it would. This past week has seen me trying to find a load and rifle that i could use for next early prairie rifle doe season. What i wanted was a long range shooter using a lot of powder. Two rifles were tried in this endeaver. 130g of BH resulted in an incomplete burn with powder all over the snow. I had high hopes for a 120g load, and tried it for 3 days, but it just wasn't what i had hoped for. Today, i tried 115g BH pushing the 270g Gold Dot, and it worked pretty good.

The top target was the aim, and the first 3 shots were from 203 yard. The fourth shot i made from 101 yard. The shots were the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th shots from a rifle-breech plug-oring, after they were clean 2 day ago.








Then 5 shots were put through the clock placed at 15 yard. They averaged out to 1941 fps. The Shooter Program calculated muzzle velocity at 2000 fps, and when i used it to calculate today's trajectory, here is what it came up with.








The temperature during the shoot was about 25, and the shooting was at about 4600 feet elevation.

When i sight the rifle in for the hunt, i will go by the following calculation.







The breech plug utilizes a home made stainless steel vent liner which started out with a 0.029" flash hole about 100 shots ago; today it has a 0.029" flash hole. The vent liner is used to replace the OEM flash hole that was destroyed by drilling it out to create powder chamber. The flame channel is 1/8". The primer seat of the breech plug i managed to ruin earlier this week. This i did by continuing to shoot, when the breech plug was near plugged up, and it resulted in a flame cut seat, that would no longer seal. In order to continue using the plug, i drilled out the primer pocket to remove the flame cut, and this requires the use of an o-ring. Pictures of the rifle, innards, and primers follow.



















There was no soot evident on the threads of the breech plug after 24 shots were taken; no grease or tape was used. The primers are about 0.002" or 0.003" longer than unfired primers. To me this indicates that the o-ring not only makes a seal, but also holds the primer so that it can't grow. The OEM head space of CVA rifles does allow the anvil to come out of the cup. One doesn't see that in this rifle-breech plug. One other thing; the o-ring could be used for more shots, but won't be.