Re: Rifle choice for F T/R
The current national champion won shooting a trued Savage action in a PR&T stock with a Brux barrel. An out of the box Savage will shoot better than you for longer than your barrel will last. I would not bother with a custom action at this point. Maybe in a couple of yrs you may want to build one. It won't make you shoot any better, but they are nice to own.
I run a NF 12-42, I think about 90% of F class guys do. Take a look at reticles, but one of the most popular is the NP-2DD, but if like me you get addicted to that reticle you can't get it from another manufacturer. The other option for a scope would be to get a Sightron 10-50 with a fine cross hair. I nearly switched from a Nightforce 8-32 to that scope but decided I didn't want to change reticles. You want 1/8 MOA clicks.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Stuff you didn't ask about in your first post</span>
A Chrono is <span style="text-decoration: underline">almost</span> mandatory for loading. Shooting F class we tend to load pretty hot and a chrono provides a lot of useful information for load development. You are going to spend untold hours plugging numbers into JBM and figuring out what is worth how much at what range and what wind.
Reloading: get a full length body die, a bushing bump die, and a Lee Collet sizer. The cheap $28 Lee is a great tool. It makes for consistent neck tension and straight necks w/o messing with turning necks. Maybe someday I'll mess with neck turning but I don't see it on my horizon.
Bipod: pick one, there are several good ones, I use a Sinclair v.3 all of them are expensive, figure about $300 for a good pod.
Rear Bag: I think it's more important than the bipod, not which one but one that is stable, and that the rifle tracks straight back in. If you are fighting with your rear bag you are dropping points. I use an Edgewood, there are a lot out there, you want a heavy one.
Bullets: There are a lot of guys going to 200gr class bullets. Starting out I'd recommend you stay with the 175/185 class bullets for now. They are more forgiving of your form and from everything I'm reading the guys with lots of experience can still have a bad day with the heavies. Bergers are the standard that everyone uses in competition, but at 46¢ to 50¢ each they only buy you about 1 inch of windage per MPH of full value wind and about 1MOA of vertical at 1000 yards. I'd suggest you start out using Hornady 178 HPBTs. They work great, you can usually find them and they cost less than 30¢ each. (and they shoot better than 175 SMKS) When your scores are in the high 180s to low 190s, then you can start worrying about the 2 points a match that the Bergers might have saved you, until then, save your money there is a lot of other stuff you'll want along the way. In my current barrel I can load the 178s and the 185s with the exact same load.
<span style="font-style: italic">One more thing on bullets, once you figure out which bullet you want to shoot in competition buy 1000 of them. You're going to use them. I put about 1700 through my new barrel this yr, and by the end of the summer everyone runs out of the popular target bullets. It really bites two weeks before the state championship and 6 weeks before the nationals to discover that you don't have enough bullets and you can't find any anywhere - DOH! </span>
Spotting scope: get a good one, with a stable stand. This is a wind reading game, and reading mirage is a huge part of it. The wind drift on 308s is huge. <span style="font-weight: bold">One MPH of full value wind will cost you a point!</span> Think about that and then look at the winners scores. There is no golden bullet, no super rifle that will shoot through it. You have to learn to see it in the flags and the mirage.
Search this forum for an equipment list. There is a bunch of stuff you'll want, <span style="font-weight: bold">Empty Chamber Indicators</span>, shooting mat (forget it and your shooting on the mats from your truck - how do I know that?), chair, water, sun screen, etc...
