I was looking through my target files Saturday morning trying to decide which gun to take to the range, and what loads to shoot.
When I pulled the folder with targets from the Green Mountain barreled .54 Renegade (one of the
Sinful Sisters) I was surprised to see that the lady hadn't had a date since June of 2009. Man, time flies.
I was even more surprised to see that the folder contained only 13 targets with five shots each. So that gun has been fired only 65 times. Dang, that barrel isn't even broken in yet. So it got the vote for the Saturday afternoon session.
Here's the last target that was in the file -
target #13.
Now that's a darn nice group. Note that it's with a
.535 ball, which is all that's ever been shot in the gun. But I remembered that the .535 was a little tough loading and I'd bought a .530 Lee mold to try - even cast a bunch of balls with it last year.
So the purpose of this range session was to see if I could get a good shooting load with the
.530 balls.
After carrying all of the gear out to the shooting bench, I loaded up with
95 grains of GOEX
FFFg and .018 pillow tick patches. Took five shots at 50 yards and got this.
Gotta do better than that. Searched for patches and found two. They were badly blown. So I tried five more shots with the same load, but added a 1/8" wool wad between the powder and patched ball. Here's that target.
A little better, but not acceptable.
Referring back to target #13, I saw that I was using
FFg powder back in 2009. So I loaded her up with 95 grains of FFg and took five more shots.
It's grinning time! I wonder if a wad under that load would improve it even more. Tried five more shots with a wad and got this.
Now that surprised me. Not better, but worse. So I can skip the wad.
I'd also noted that the load on target #13 was
85 grains, not the 95 grains I've been shooting. So I adjusted the powder measure to 85 grains for the next experiment -
different patch thicknesses.
First up - 85 grains of powder and
.016 patches.
THAT'S PRETTY GOOD! Real easy loading too with those thinner patches.
Next up - 85 grains of powder and
.018 patches.
GOODER AND GOODER! And still pretty easy loading. Heck, I'll take the blame for that one to the right of the others.
Finally - 85 grains of powder with
.022 patches.
Well that stinks! I sure didn't expect it. Usually you get better groups with tighter patches. They still weren't all that hard to load.
CONCLUSIONS: The barrel clearly likes FFg powder and .018 patches, and seems to favor 85 grains of powder. So that's going to be my "go to" load. And it doesn't seem to care whether it's a .530 or .535 ball.
But just for the heck of it, let's try reducing the charge to 75 grains and see what happens. Here's what happens:
Well that's pretty nice also. But not any better than the hotter load. So I'll stick with 85 grains for hunting.
At this point I looked back at target #19 and see the selected "go to" load is hitting two inches below the point of aim. The adjustment ring on the ProDiamond scope says "1 click = 1/2 MOA". So 2 clicks should move it one inch at 100 yards, and 4 clicks should move it one inch at 50 yards. I moved the elevation adjustment UP 12 clicks and took five more shots.
Yep! That'll do. (Until I get a chance to play around with it at 75 and 100 yards. Looks like another date is needed.)
