3/24/2012 - It's Been Too Long

After shooting last August, I ran out of hand-loads so I was out of commission for a little while.  I got so busy with work and life (finishing my basement took a lot of my time), that it took at long time to get back out to the rang.  I'm back after a 7.5 month hiatus.  A couple of weeks ago, I built a bench that I can use for reloading.  I'll have to post some pictures of it later.   Last night, I estimated what I thought the temperature and the station pressure would be for this morning.  The ballistics calculator suggested 92 clicks on Dad's Vortex PST scope with 1/10th mil clicks to get to 1000 yards.  This time, I took my little weather station so I could get an accurate reading on the station pressure and temperature. at about 7:30 a.m. it was 52 degrees and 24.75 station pressure.  This meant that the air was significantly less dense that what I had foretasted, so I shouldn't need as much elevation in the scope. I decided to use 90 clicks.  All told, I shot 8 shots.  It did appear that one of the shots was high, but on the other shots, I couldn't see anything.  I wondered if that was just because I was making direct hits directly behind the target.  That made sense in my mind since the ground isn't really dusty yet, so you wouldn't expect to see too much of a spray of dirt.  As you can see from the pictures, only 1 of the 8 shots made it to the cardboard.  The other shots all seemed to pulverize a rock that was just above the target.  You could see 4-5 distinct spots on that rock where I had hit it.  That meant that it was a good grouping, but for 52 degrees and 24.75 pressure, I should have used 88 clicks on the Vortex Viper PST Scope.  Gun: Savage 10FP, 308 cal.  Hand-loads of Sierra 175 gr BTHP, Lapua brass, 45 grains of Hogden Varget powder, CCI 200 primers.