8/2/2011 - I Now Have Witnesses of 1K

Tonight I tested out the new scope that Dad bought.  It is the Vortex Viper PST (Precision Shooting Tactical) 4-16X50.  I needed to sight it in.  The pic below shows the last 6 six shots I took while sighting in.  I used some of my older reloads that were 168 gr bullets with IMR 4064 powder. All these shots were taken at 100 yards. After sighting the target down the bore with the bolt removed, I produced the very tight group of 3 shot just under the number 7 on the tape.  Then I moved the scope 2 clicks (this scope uses 1/10 MIL clicks) to the left and produced the 3 bulls-eye shots.  I was pretty impressed with the gun, scope, and hand-loads at that point.  After all, as you can see, they are .5 MOA groups.  I used a quarter to cover them up, but I could have also used a nickel.

There we 2 guys and 2 girls that pulled up to shoot about the same time I was setting up.  I'm sure they were confused as to why I had the four-wheeler there to go check my target when I was only shooting at 100 yards.  It became more apparent, I'm sure, when picked up the target and drove it another 900 yards away!  Before leaving the house, the ballistics calculator at vortex.com suggested that I would need to use 89 clicks (1/10 MIL clicks) up from Zero to reach 1000 yards given the conditions which were approximately 85 degrees, 25.25 pressure, and 8 percent humidity, while using my newest, hottest loads that produce about 2750 fps. I went for 90 clicks to start.  From what I could tell after making 4 shots, it appeared to be very close laterally, but a bit high.  I then removed 2 clicks from the scope (so it was now set to 88 clicks) and shot 4 more shots fairly quickly since it was getting dark.  By this time, I had garnered the attention of the other people shooting.  They came over and asked how far I was shooting and asked a bunch of other questions.  They said that from what they could tell they thought that my first few shots looked high, and then the later shots didn't show much of a spray.  By this time, it was getting quite dark, and I went over to retrieve the target.  When I got back to the truck, they were very interested in seeing if I was able to make any hits.  As you can see from the picture, only 1 of the first 4 shots landed in the paper.  After making the adjustment in the scope, all of the remaining 4 shots found pay-dirt in some form or another.  It was awesome to finally have someone out of the range to witness some decent shots.  Funny thing is that if I had listened to the computer and used 89 clicks, this would have been spot on!