3/27/10 - New 100 Yard Zero - Mixed Bag

After shooting through the chrony, I tried to reset my zero with the hand-loads on the .308.  Amazingly, I had to bring the scope up 20 clicks at 100 yards to get back to zero!  That is 20 clicks higher than the 168 gr. Black Hills 308 Match ammo.  It was very gusty at times, (about 3 p.m.) and my results were not very consistent.  I wonder if shooting the bullets so close to the ground was effecting the shots adversely.  From where I was shooting, the bullets were getting, possibly closer than 4 inches to the ground, about 20 yards in front of me.  It was making a ton of dust along the ground, which I haven't really had happening before.  I kept on shooting more than I normally would have to try to figure out if if was the wind, or interference from the ground, or just that my hand-loads are not very consistent.  I think I will be loading them hotter next time to try to get rid of some of the space inside the casings.  If you shake the bullets that I loaded last week (both the .308s and the .243s), there is more space in there than there is in the Winchester Super-X factory ammo.  I will need to compare with the Black Hills Match ammo on both the muzzle velocity and the amount of "empty space" in the casings.  As you can see, these groupings are not very good.  Some shots are okay, but overall, they are like 2 MOA groups for the most part.  I am not impressed.