Today dawned chilly, but sunny - good weather for both drone flying and handgun shooting. I was eager to try out my new C&J Machine rest together with my new shooting bench and 221 Fireball. My two goals were one, test my completely overhauled shooting system, and two, obtain more chronograph data so I can comfortably map out my Nikon scope's BDC reticle with my handloads.
Once I set everything up, I finally got a good feel for how steady everything was. The crosshairs stayed as steady as those of any of my rifles. Because I was using a radically different rest compared to what I used before, I decided to fire five rounds and see how well the gun groups off a solid rest.
The first group was . . . highly disappointing, so much so that I didn't even take a picture. The roughly 2" group was an inch to the left and 1.5 low, not counting one flier that was even further from the bullseye.
However, I quickly realized the issue. Having never shot off a rest like this, I never learned to grip the gun properly. So, for my next few groups, I decided to try dinfferent ways to grip the Encore while simultaneously making adjustments to the scope. As I did, I made two fairly respectable groups:
0.860"
0.968"
Finally, I got the scope mostly sighted in, and more importantly, discovered what I felt was a good, repeatable grip. Essentially, I added a downward twist to my standard firm grip. With the primary bullseye becoming quite crowded with previous bullet holes, I aimed for one of the other aimpoints on the target. The results:
That, my friends, is my best handgun group to date: a three shot, 0.589" group at 100 yards. That's tighter than 99% of the groups I've ever fired, even with rifles.
While making all these shots, I had my chronograph recording. The average velocity of the 17 shots I made averaged 2513 fps with a standard deviation of 20 fps. That's a bit slower than I got from five shots last weekend, but its standard deviation is almost the same. I entered the data for my bullet, sight in, and velocity into Nikon's SpotOn program and came up with this:
With the Fireball sighted in and shooting great, with the BDC reticle mapped, and with enough rounds for another three shot group left, I decided to go back to 200 yards. After setting up a new target - well, just a paper plate with an orange sticker - I got everything moved back to 200 yards. Once set up again, I placed the bottom of the first BDC circle over the center of the orange sticker and squeezed off a round. I felt something was amiss - I hadn't gripped the gun as I had previously. With my last two rounds, I concentrated on maintaining a uniform grip.
The flier was definitely my fault, but the other two were pretty good shots. Even with the flier, these three grouped just a hair over 2". My only real beef with this group was how far left they went. I initially thought the scope may not be perfectly level, but after thinking back on it, I realized the crosswind that whipped up toward the end of the range session might have been responsible. My SpotOn program showed that even a 5 to 10 mph crosswind could have easily accounted for the leftward drift. Now I just have to wait for a windless weekend afternoon to try another few 200 yard groups.
This new setup was so much better than what I've been shooting off of that I'm seriously wondering why I hadn't upgraded sooner. Between the wooden shooting bench and C&J rest, I'm optimistic I could be shooting my Encore handgun accurately to 300 yards by next deer season.