Long Range Considerations

JD, you should leave the discussion of long range work to those that do it.

When you start interjecting your abstract theorys, you come off sounding silly.

"In other words, WITHOUT being shot at, starving, dehydrated, exhausted, depressed, with an IDEAL firing set up, .5 MOA rifle, and without any target movement, mirage, super cold or hot weather, rain, snow, fog, etc, he STILL couldn't count on a first round hit on a 10" circle at 600 yd, like a head on prone man offers as a target?"

I'm not sure where you come up with this, even with his first attemps to zero a new load his 600 yard groups, doping a switching wind every shot held inside 7". Concerning conditions he was shooting though heavy mirage on a 96 deg day. You over play the effct of conditions, we shoot in them all the time, actually every time, since there aren't too many 500 to 1000 yard indoor ranges.
We shot today 94 degrees, slightly more wind, a 12 to 18 mph 3/4 value wind on the 8" X18" gong at 500, 600 and 700 yards and his corrected data had him first round hits at 500 and 600, he took two shots to get his first hit at 700, the gong is tough at 700. I'm happy when I get a first round on it. So no, 600 yard hits are not a problem, besides we are talking about a 14 year old boy. Nobody wants to present me a 600 yard head shot in any conditions I can see well enough to shoot in.

Once we get past the point of load development and have a good data card most all or shooting is on gongs. We have a 8"X18" for the short end and a 18" X 24" for long range. It's just easier that using radios and someone forward to call back the hits on paper.

"Why not use a sideways torso, 8" x 24", hmm? It's JUST as likely that a man will be sideways to you as facing you, after all, when you HAVE to fire at him. If you don't HAVE to fire, why reveal your presence, hmm? Why RISK a miss at long range, if he's unaware of you? You can obviously get closer, since he's stupid enough to be holding STILl, exposed to your fire, in open country in daylight. Like you are going to have a sandbagged bench and computer, etc, when it's for real, right? Like you DARE have nothing but a bolt action?"

Not sure where to start with the rest of this sillyness, some of it concerns bonehead tactics, based on what?. The rest makes some assumptions that don't really have any bearing.

There isn't a shooting bench anywhere on my place, we shoot most of the long range stuff prone, my boys rifle has a Harris bi-pod. My rifles don't, I shoot off my Becker Patrol Pack that carries my long range kit. My boy is starting to understand why the pack is more versitile and it won't be long before he goes that route himself. I'm not dogmatic about such things and let them figure stuff like that out for themselves.

The use of a computer is really only used in load development and data card buliding and printing, so it's used only in the beginning and only for conveinence and fun. I could load my 175's to 2700 fps and simply use all my USMC data for the M118LR load or pull it from the Sierra manual. I also feed the Sierra data into an Excel spread sheet program I put together and them print these nifty little cards. My daughter taught me how to do that.

Concerning the ballistic effects of Sierra match bullets, no they don't "expand", they fragment and the effects are well documented.

And no, we don't have just bolt guns, you should know that by now and I don't really buy into the idea's that drive your personal choices and tactics. The bolt guns are really special purpose weapons, just like a 11" AR is. There are much better choices for general purpose rifle work than shorty AR's or bolt guns. If it comes to the defence of my family, I would much rather have my family shooting well outside the ballistic advantage of the average thug.

You can keep belly aching about long range shooting and we will just keep right on doing it LOL.

Teuf,

Coming up with a good LR .308 load is pretty straight forward Mag

Magnum88C said:

Heck, if that's the first load he developed, then he did right good with it. Give him a pat on the back.

Click to expand...

You just have to stick to the basics, Varget, RE15, 4895 and 4064 are the tried an true powders proved over and over again by NRA High Power, NRA Long Range and Palma shooters for 40 years. 4064 and 4895 are pretty long excrutions and don't feed though a Dillon powder measure all that well, but my Harrels and Redding Bench Rest tools dump good charges. Varget will go OK though a Dillon if you tune it up some which should get done anyway. RE15 is smaller than Varget and feeds good though the Dillon, if I threw all my charges thats what I would use, it's alos the powder used in the Lake City M118LR load, which sports a 175 grain SMK. The M118LR is the best mass produced military sniper round developed to date for .308 bolt guns and is widly copied by all the "custom" amunition producers.

In the last few years "recreational" snipers have re-discovered these loads and all the "Sniper" forums bounce the old bolt action match rifle loads around like they have re-invented the wheel. The other day I read a post by a guy that was "experimenting" with 190 grain Sierra Match Kings, what a hoot, that was a standard 600 yard line load for 30 years when folks ran .308 bolt guns in the NRA Match Rifle class.

I would run it myself in my bolt guns, if I didin't have a couple "retired" M1A, double lugged, McMillian stocked, Kreiger barreled rifles that are now Leupold scoped. The 190's are too heavy for the gas guns and take slow burning powders to get the velocity up to where they have an advantage over the 175's. When I shot on the USMC team we used 190's over heavy charges of 4350 and may the shooting gods forgive me! We beat the hell out of those rifles with that load, but we didn't have the 175 Sierra's and the 173 grain Lake City matach bullets just wouldn't cut it in the competative world of of military team shooting. When we started that the AMTU jumped on the band wagon too and the results of that are why M14 match rifles got the rep of not holding together. Young AR shooters like to throw that around when expounding the virtues of AR's for service rifles, but they really don't know where it came from.

Myself, I have more or less "standardized" on the SMK 175's for all my .308's. A big part of long range success is repeatability. You have to stick with a load and then learn it's characteristics under a wide range of conditions to be successful. Thats far more important that contant experimentation, since everytime you change loads you have to go back though the data development stage. I have spent a fair amount of time with that, experimenting with premium VLD's ect. I'm not sure it really makes you a better long range shooter in the long run.

The bottom line is that no matter what load you use, it will require sight adjustments. Some loads may require more than others, but they will all need to be doped. The best long range shooter will be the one that understands the downrange performance of his load , not the guy with the highest bc bullet. Repeatability is the name of the game, you have to trust your load and it has to be forgiving enough for it's acuracy to survive high volume reloading tecniques and variances of powders, primers, bullets and barral wear.

I have found that the high BC VLD's bullets are rather twitchy, with little powder changes, seating dept or different primers causing big changes. The Sierra Match Kings are very forgiving and shoot good in everyones rifle. The jacket material and bullet ogive (sp?) are designed to interface with many chamber cuts and survive the violent jump from magazine to rifling in service rifles while maintaining concentricity. You can never go wrong with Sierra Match Kings.

Teuf,

Reloading

Most civies that shoot LR will be reloading, my days of dumping box after box of free M118LR into a SAW box mag pouch from fresh cans are over. If I want ammo in quanity it means reloading.

The good news is reloading for the .308 is a pretty straight forward and well understood and good quality ammo can mass produced pretty easily.

Since the best bullets and powders for the .308 are so forgiving, all thats left is to dump the same amount of powder in cases that are the same and stick a bullet straight into the case.

There is really no point in trying to re-invent the wheel with this endever, nor do you have to get anal like bench rest shooters do.

There are several good cases that have stood the test of time. Lake City has always made a good 7.62 case, they are hard and thick to stand up too the rough treatment of M14s. Anytime you can get them in bulk, do it, sort them by head stamp date and you will find them to be very consistent. Because they are thicker you will also find that you need to reduce charges. Don't skip this unless you carry around a rubber mallet to get your action open. The problem has always been getting this brass, unless you are around military shooters a supply can take some hustling. Hang around High Power shooters they always seem to have plenty. Lake City is my prefered brass for M1A's for it's durability.

IMI (Isreali Military Industries) sells new brass marked IMI Match .308 that shares many of the same charataristics as LC brass and it's commercially avaliable. I have used the Jew brass and it's not bad at all, reasonalbly priced and readily avaliable. A good choice for M1A shooters, that can't scape up LC match.

Winchester brass is a good choice for reasonably priced bolt gun cases they are consistent and readly avalible. Win brass is what black Hills loads thier premium M118LR load eqivilent on even though it carries thier head stamp. The nice thing about win brass is that it is a high capacity case that allows max charges for bolt guns. No trick to get 2800 fps with no pressure with 175's in win brass and it's a good choice when running 190's.

Standard Rem brass sucks, but they have some special runs that are highly sought after. Such as brass for Palma shooters that have small rifle primer pockets and very thin case wall of high tensile alloy for very max charges. Probually no one here will care as this brass is very tough to get, we used it for our 190 grain 600 line loads in the USMC trying to keep our rifles together. It's very expensive.

Fed Gold Metal Match factory loads are the standard that all others are judged by in factory ammo. As a coponent though the brass requires some special consideratiion. Part of why this ammo works so well in almost every rifle it's put in is that it's loaded straight and the brass is soft and expands evenly to fill about any chamber. The brass alloy is very consistent so it fills evenly and the bullets are Sierra's so they are forgiving.
Handloading this brass only works well if the rounds have been fired in a good chamber.
This brass has a bad rep amounst some LR shooters as being too soft, because after a couple loadings the primer pocket will seem loose with some brands of primers.
You have to stick with Fed Gold Metal Match primers if you are going to run this brass and size it very minimaly. it will last many reloadings if you don't set back the shoulder any more than .002 or so, it won't stand alot of heavy resizing.
I use this brass quite a bit because I got a ton of "once fired" coaching LE snipers for our SD.
It's a major bad choice for M1A's and you will get case head seps in a couple loadings, the M1A will literally pull it apart, it's very sad LOL. When the AR10's and SR's hit the market they got a bad rap shooting GMM because they where still tuning the gas system timing on these rifles and had case head seps on the first firing. Whoops.

Saved the best for last, if you want the best readily avalible .308 brass you buy Lapua. It has characteristics like Win but much more uniform. Simply the best and priced that way. If you are starting out save your money and buy Win, you won't be able to tell the difference till you get pretty damm good.

For case prep, I don't get too fancy. I set back the shoulder of gas gun brass .005 and bolt guns .002. I use Forester sizing dies with a tuned expander ball in my Dillion press. I don't like to spend time messing with case mics every time I size bolt or gas gun brass so I have two sizing dies in two tool heads.
You can get good results from other sizing dies, but absolutly need to own a concentricity gauge to check that your die is straight. The best is Sinclairs, OK is RCBS's.

For seating dies I use Foresters "Bench Rest" dies they have a sliding case guide that makes sure bullets are stuck in the case straight. Redding later bought rights from them and thier dies are good too but more expensive for the same thing since they pay royalties. Seating straight is important don't skimp on your seating die buy either Redding or Foresters.

I use a Sinclair primer seat unifoming tool that cuts them all the same, RCBS makes a good one too. For trimming I use a simple tool that fits into a cordless drill and trims to length by indexing on the case datum. I also have a Dillon sizing and trimming unit and a Gracey. They all work, but the simple Sinclair tool is fastest and cheapest. Once sized and trimmed, I uniform and debure the flash holes with a simple Lyman tool, primer pockets are punched and they have a burr inside.

The name of the game for good LR ammo is concentricity and your set up needs to be checked at every stage to make sure your ammo ain't crooked. Once checked it will stay that way and really only needs to be checked if you change something.

Teuf,

Field support

A couple weeks ago, after a morning of shooting prairie dogs, my boy got up from the prone with the Win and the Harris bi-pod fell off the front of the rifle. I looked over and the sling was still attactched to it and he was looking back at me with a "I don't know what happened" look.

What had happened was the front sling swivel stud had stripped out the threads in the aluminum bedding block that runs though the fore end of the H-S Precision stock. Probually from his traversing back and forth. Not a big deal to fix, I just bought another sling swivel stud that was longer and had a nut on the end. I drilled the stripped hole out a bit counter sank the nut in the barrel channel and it was fixed.

It would have really sucked had he slung the rifle, the swivel pulled out and he dumped that rifle on it's scope. Bad scene indeed.

It did show me once again why jarheads shoot off thier packs, bi-pods just don't allow the fexability using the pack does. Having the pack in front of you is also like having your "office" handy. You arange yourself with the outside pockets facing back and you can just reach in and get what ever you need weather you are spotting or shooting. Such as your "butt sock" to support the heel of the stock for a tighter hold or your data book ect.

Then there is the issue of quickly traversing left to right quickly, it's pretty hard on the lightly constructed Harris and I've seen folks bend the legs getting excited. The Parker/Hale is tougher of course but it's pretty damm heavy for a .308 rifle.

Hard to beat shooting off the pack.

Teuf,

Mike

Lapua brass is the way to go for long range loads. I'm kind of surprised to hear about your experiences with IMI brass, but I was loading 175's at M1A port preasures. I've never tried it with 190's and slow powders.

I have never used the Lee dies, I have been using Foresters forever it seems and probually will till I wear them out, if thats possiable.

I'm not a big fan of neck sizing for "field" rifles, I'm not so sure that if your loading rounds that are concentric it even helps all that much, but I'm not a bench rest shooter either. Loading ammo for High Power has a different set of considerations, the National Match Course has 4 srings of rapid fire with stripper clip reloads for bolt gun shooters and I want my bolt handle to run with two fingers. I go the same route with scoped tac rifles. The key though, is setting up the sizing die correctly, setting it to just set back the shoulder .002.

I have never used the K&M tool. I have been using the same Lyman tool for years. Like I said though i'm not sure how good uniforming the flash hole does, but it can't hurt. Some of the worst brass for having burrs in the case are Fed Gold Metal Match, go figure. I know though that some brass has pretty small flass holes, Hertinberer brass from thier nata spec ball ammo in excellent, but it has small flash holes and you cut quite a bit of metal getting them uniform with the Lyman tool.

The issue of match ammo fragging comes from several sources. It's been found that, in situations that you are restricted to full metal jackets that match ammo frags at velocities consideraly lower than any ball ammo. Probually a function of jacket material and thickness.

As far as field shooting of a pack goes, I use a "Becker Patol Pack" from Eagle, it's about med ALICE size but far more refined. The med ALICE works good too though, the pockets on the front of it craddle the rifle perfect. The packs don't need to be "customized" but it helps to load the pockets that suppot the rifle with something soft that you won't need when shooting, like socks or somthing.

As far as general purpose rifles go, I really like my scout scoped M1A, it's just an outstanding 500 yard battle rifle IMO.


Teuf,

Oh the hell, A thread revived from the dead LOL

DarkWolf,

Desinated marksman or more defined by thier role than anything else, IMO there is much more to it than being a better shooter. It's in the manner they are deployed and the rifles they deploy with that set them apart. Snipers are usually operating from a BN level, attached to various units in that BN as is needed, usually for some manner of recon.

Desinated Marksman are an organic part of a rifle squad and support that sqauds missions in the same way that squads SAW or grenadier would. A good desinated marksman uses the same skills as a sniper he just employs them in a manner that befits his role. Largly the desinated marksmans tactics are the same as a sniper, the difference being the ranges are usually quite a bit closer so he can maintain his position in the squads assult.

A sniper works hard to maintain his ballistic advantage since they are prone to being fixed by fire and assulted. The desinated marksman has the support of his squad and generaly works at shorter ranges. Because of the shorter ranges rapid fire is desirable thus you see all the M14's floating around with various optics.

The jews were some of the first to feed a desinated marksman into thier squads and called them an "assault sniper" or something like that, I don't exactly remember.

I think for the most part, most SHTF "sniping" would fall under the role of the desinated marksman, and the desinated would be supporting a group defence effort.

As far as match bullets go, my experience suggest they don't "upset" as much as they fragment into pieces on game.

Teuf,