For the last year or so I have been working on my brother-in-law to get him into the long distance game. He started out with an AR and a stock Mosin.
When I hit a cold-bore shot at 950 yards on steel with my .308 in front of him about six months ago, he was hooked.I told him even with a limited budget we could get his gun shooting almost as well at that distance and under.
He got his bolt-bent on the Nagant, got a scope mount and a cheap Bushnell 3200 with turrets. I helped him sight it in and ran some dope for the 147 grain East-bloc surplus ammo he had bought. After rezeroing at an elevation where my parents live, I hit the 710 yard gong three times in a row with it and then we moved to 1015 yards.
At that elevation, the bullets were going subsonic around 980 yds, so they were tumbling BAD but he did hit the gong twice out of about 10 shots with it!
I think with some handloaded, higher BC bullets this thing would do 1000 all day long. Maybe even with some 180 grain surplus stuff. It might be a fun project to load up some SMK's if I can find brass for the 7.62X54R and see how many times in a row we could hit at 1000. Pretty impressive for a $350 rifle/optic combo! And...40 year old surplus. Every time we take the thing to the range, guys stop and stare, especially when we start hitting plates at 600 yards! It's very funny to watch the wise-ass grins dry up!
When I hit a cold-bore shot at 950 yards on steel with my .308 in front of him about six months ago, he was hooked.I told him even with a limited budget we could get his gun shooting almost as well at that distance and under.
He got his bolt-bent on the Nagant, got a scope mount and a cheap Bushnell 3200 with turrets. I helped him sight it in and ran some dope for the 147 grain East-bloc surplus ammo he had bought. After rezeroing at an elevation where my parents live, I hit the 710 yard gong three times in a row with it and then we moved to 1015 yards.
At that elevation, the bullets were going subsonic around 980 yds, so they were tumbling BAD but he did hit the gong twice out of about 10 shots with it!
I think with some handloaded, higher BC bullets this thing would do 1000 all day long. Maybe even with some 180 grain surplus stuff. It might be a fun project to load up some SMK's if I can find brass for the 7.62X54R and see how many times in a row we could hit at 1000. Pretty impressive for a $350 rifle/optic combo! And...40 year old surplus. Every time we take the thing to the range, guys stop and stare, especially when we start hitting plates at 600 yards! It's very funny to watch the wise-ass grins dry up!
