Tried to think of a catchy title for this thread something like 338 Norma versus 22 Rimfire for Long Range or 22 Rimfire humbles a 338 Norma at Rayners Range today or some other catchy title but not sure what I'll do. This is mainly a thread about our day out and some things to pass along to others. The day started out with my Son and I heading out to Rayners Range so he could check some midrange settings on his 338 Norma for an upcoming ELR event. We took along our 22 rimfires since Tom also has a really nice 22 steel plate course with racks from 25 yards out to 250 yards. Similiar to mine but has more distance.
We stopped off at Toms 100 yard sight-in range so he could check his 100 yard zero, first cold bore shot a bullets width right of center and the second elongating the hole more towards center. Good nuff' he said and up the road we went to his lower half of the range which has targets from 235 yards out to 550 yards for his first half of his CF matches. He wanted to get a check at 500 and there was a rack at 487 which was close enough. There were 4 others at this stage so he got ready as the others were shooting. His first shot was 1" below center with the second splatters touching. He swung over and called the bolt on the 4"x6" plate and caught the right side of the bolt. Good Nuff" again.
You can't go up on the hill to shoot the 1000 yard plates since it's in the same series of racks being used at this location and you'd be shooting over top of their heads so we had to wait. While waiting he got out his Old Faithful Izhmash 22 LR toggle gun with a new 7-35 Arken on it. He'd previously got a good zero at our range but hadn't tried it out any farther. One of the other shooters asked what it was and Chris said a 22. Ahhh, what case you using since he had a 22 BR he was playing with. This is a 22 rimfire, what you going to shoot at here?
Chris dialed in the setting for 487 yards which I'll edit in later due to him being at work right now. He's using Strelok Pro and used his Kestrel for wind and came up with 2 Mil coming in from the right. They all were kinda watching and I kidded Chris "if you get a first round hit I'll buy lunch at the Zanesville Chinese buffet". I got down behind the Kowa spotting scope, he got ready and shot. I was looking for a trace since the 338 had a beautiful trace all the way to the target. I was just opening up my mouth to say I didn't see anything and we heard the distant distinct "DING". I could not believe it, I didn't see the impact due to it being a red target and didn't show the little hit. He shot again and it went just under it so his hit had to be low. He made a slight adjustment and ran 4 more hits. Then he angled over on the little 4x6 inch 30 point plate and again got a hit. His second shot at it did miss about an 1 1/2" off the left which is amazing.
OK, not many will believe it which I really don't care, there were 4 others there watching that couldn't believe it but we've shot that far at Rayners with our 22s quite a few times before, one of my videos is on Youtube hitting the 500 yard 16" target 8 out of 10 times a few years ago. He went on to check his 1000 yard setting and all went well as expected. We had a great lunch at the Buffet but was $30.00 poorer due to a poor wager.
Later that day I went over to meet up with a buddy that had just finished up a set of Long Gong targets (8", 6" and 4") set at 300 yards at a buddies range close by to home. I had my Remington 40X in a McCrees chassis with an Arken SH-4. I call this gun Old Faithful due to it's always been my best go long range gun. The wind at Rayners was pretty steady but here at Hoo Doo Valley it swirls, switches and just do Hoo Doo things that are crazy. Really tough range but offers a real challenge.
I set up the Garmin Chronograph to see how this same batch of Lapua Super Long Range Chris used at Rayners would do and have some data to share. I think I shot 11 shots to see how his targets would move when hit to make keeping score easy. They worked perfect, might get a center hit, then 3 inches off the right, then 6 inches off the left but elevation was really really great. EXT SPRD was 18.7 fps and STD DEV was 4.8 fps. Thats why it shoots so well. A buddy that was there wanted to try the two different versions of Wolf Target. We always thought the Old Wolf shot better than the new stuff so this should show up on the Garmin.
He shot the New stuff first and fired 10 shots, Wasn't very impressive with verticle hits on the 300 yard target.The EXT SPRD was 41.2 FPS and STD DEV was 11.6 fps. He then fired 9 shots of the Old Wolf with EXT SPRD 25.2 fps and STD DEV was 8.1 fps. It did had a bit better verticle spread on the 300 yard target. I know, I keep saying it's AMMO AMMO AMMO and don't care what equipment you bring but this does show there is a big difference especially at distance.
Lapua SLR
New Wolf by Eley
Old Wolf
So, which gun did better today at Rayners? The 338 Norma shooting nice tight groups out to 1000 and even out past 2000 yards or the lowly little 22 rimfire struggling and clawing it's way to get him hits at 487 yards? Both are winners to us but just does go to show you the little bugger can surprise when Mother Nature blesses us with a very consistent condition, nearly any slight change in wind, temperture, humidity, lighting or if someone sitting beside you on another bench looks at you weird groups or hits are a thing of the past and leaves you thinking bad things to say or blame it on.
Know this is long but thought it might be entertaining and maybe even contain a bit of info someone can find useful. Until we started playing with Lapua SLR or RWS R50 we had no idea there was another level of accuracy above what our old Wolf, SK Bia. other similiar ammo was giving us all these years. You may still get a round out of the good ones but it may be enough to catch an edge hit instead of dropping down under a small target. None of this may pertain to 50 yard Benchrest but seeing it happen at longer distances is a real eye opener to those not used to using Top Shelf ammo. You also gotta remember this was shot with a factory barreled Izhmash and an Arken scope. Not a high dollar setup and is the same gun that won the Iron Element ELR 22 rimfire match last year with 6/7 hits at 400 yards on a 12" plate with over 20 moa of wind dialed in. Makes ya wonder where to put the money when getting into longrange rimfire shooting?
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