Well, we had a great morning shooting. Sabotloader had his Renegade (.54) he recently put together. Can you believe it, he was shooting milk jug plastic in it!!!!! He didn't have his White, so he didn't shoot any of my conicals.[:@]

Matthew (my 14 y.o. son) and I shot our Ultra Mags.Believe it or not, we did some shooting at 314 yards and then even a few at 430 yards. We spent about 5 1/2 hours up there and had a great time.

As planned, I did most of my shooting with 100 gr of Triple 7 ffg and 460 gr Bullshops. I did shoot 3-4 shots using 120 gr of Triple 7 just for fun.

Will try to get some photo's uploaded and posted a little later.

Sounded like fun. I would have had some huge conicals in that .54 or some roundballs. LOL!!! Cascadedad,Its good to see the younger generation keeping this great sport alive. We need to get more of them out there.

Sounds like you had a great time. Do any groups at 100? How did your white do there? And do tell us more about the "basketball" shots at 314 and 430.Also, what were the cirmstances for the 120 grain load, open? 3-4 of that load and the wheaties you had for breakfast are used up. Hey, didn't you try to get sabotloader to shoot "your" White?

Happy Hunting, Phil

was the barrel sabotloader was shooting all stainless and pretty? If it was, it was a .50 caliber made to shoot sabots. If not he's still crazy in my book... Good thing I never read it. I might be in there too.

Lets also see a camera shot of that big black & blue bruise on your shoulder..... 120 gr.777 with 460 gr. Bullshops borders on you being a glutten for self-inflicted punnishment.

OK, here goes.

We shot a lot of paper playing around. I did shoot this one just to see what would happen when I shot multiple shots. Like the target says, this was at 80 yards. There was a stiff wind blowing from right to left all day. These were with the new 460 oversized (.5045) BullShops Dan sent me this last week. I must say, they are PERFECT. They load easy and I have no fear of them coming off the wad. Excellent job Dan, Thanks. I don't know the order of these shots, I just started shooting, one after the other. I do remember the first shot was the one directly over the bull. Matthew and Mike encouraged me to put the target and gun away and call it a day, but no way. The distance between the two circled holes, center to center is 3.75".



I was very happy with this group of 9 shots. I would have shot another to make it 10, but I wasn't counting.

Now on to the fun part. I noticed something up the draw that looked like could be a target. We never did really figure out for sure what it is, next time I will hike up and see, but it kind of looked like a large hot water tank or something. I ranged it with my rangefinder at 313 yards. Mike was jumping up and down thinking about how fun it would be to shoot at it. Don't know if you can see it in this picture.




Anyway, we shot several times getting closer and closer. Several shots by both of us were very close. Matthew had quit shooting by this time. Then I hit it. We could hear the sound of the bullet hitting the metal. It was very cool. The boom of the gun, wait a second, see the dust fly, wait another second or two and hear the sound. I shot a 350 gr bullshop next and it hit just a little high. Then I shot another 460 and I got another hit. That was cool. Mike hit it once also. I will stop and say right now, if there are any here that think you can't shoot a saboted bullet out of a .54 Renegade with great results, your crazy. I can only say that because I saw it. Mike was shooting with fiber optic sights and he was shooting very well. Here is a sequence of pictures of one of his 313 yard shots. My camera has a "sport" mode that I can just hold the shutter release down and it just starts taking pictures at about 2-3 pictures per second. I am not sure if it will show up on these posted pictures, but in the 3rd and 4th pictures you can see the dust kicking up.






There was also a spot up and to the right that was an open spot between some sage brush. It ranged at 430 yards. Mike made an adjustment in how he was holding his sight and hit the middle of the clearing on his first shot. He had a smile on his face and did about a 45 second dance before settling back down. I told him to prove it, so he did. His next shot was probably several feet away, up and to the right, but still excellent we thought. 430 yards w/ open sights.

After all this fun is when I bumped the powder up to 120 gr. I shot a few up the draw and then put two on paper. One was about an inch directly to the left of the bull. The second was about 2 inches directly to the right of the bull. I must say, by this time I was feeling the recoil. I guess I shot 25-30 shots today and by the end the accumulation is what I think I was feeling. I really didn't think the recoil with the 460's and 120 gr powder or the 620's and 100 gr powder was severe. It was a push, but definitely managable.

Phil,sabotloader was having a great time shooting his Renegade. He really dida nice job putting it together. Maybe when he has a chance, he can post the specifics on where he got everything, it is a good story.

Cayugad, no it was a blued .54 cal. It was his first time shooting it and he said it really isn't made for shooting sabots. He said some (no names mentioned here) think he is crazy, but I must say, he know how to make that plastic, er. polymer, work for him.

Anyway, sorry for being so long winded. I really hope these pictures tell the story.

cascadedad

It was a great day and it was a lot of fun.

The wind, it was present, blowing left to right. It was not gale force I will admit but it was something else. I really gave up trying to tune the Renegade - got it close and said the heck with it and just started shooting. That particular barrel stock combination had never been shot by myself before and I am not sur the barrel had even ever been shot. The whole thing came from e-bay, picking up parts and pieces over a period of time. The barrel is of the older variety - now clean out and a 1/48 twist.

For me it was really fun shooting that 314 yard target. I was shooting 80 grains of T7-3f, a Traditions 45/54 orange sabot and a 300 grain Speer .451 jacketed soft point. My first shot I was probably 15 feet over the top... the bullet did not drop near as far as I thought it might, it did also amaze me how quick it got there and what a thump in the desert sand that it made. My next shot I believe I was low left. The third or fourth shot I believe I did score a hit anyway Matthew who was looking through the spotting scope said it did and that he heard it also. Hitting near the center of the open area that was further up the ridge was just blind luck - but it is amazing to shoot a ML that far and be in the area with the particular sights that I was using.

Shooting open sights is really a chore for me, way to much time shooting scopes. It is really difficult for me to get the same sight picture each time trying to line up 3 objects. I am sure if I would spend more time shooting open sights - it would all get better. The peep sight that cascadedad was using is a decided advantage, even to fiber optics on this particular day.

I have tried to point out the target on two of the pics... Still do not know if you can tell anything... the "puff" is just below the arrow head...

Thanks for the improvement on the photos. Do you see the orange spot on the zoomed in photo of you shooting? I am sure that is your sabot. Originally, I thought it was probably the bullet in the sabot, but after thinking about it, it probably came off already. The bullet is probably half way up to the target.

Thanks again for helping Matthew out with his trigger pull. We will continue to work on it.

Hope the wedding went well. I know how fun they are. At least you had some time to think about the shooting!

Great shooting guys! Who had the shooting bench and what kind was it?

That was SL's. Not sure what kind it was, I think he has had if for awhile though. He was talking about picking up a new (different) one. This one folded up nicely, but was pretty heavy. Probably good for stability, but also heavy for handling.