Rossi Rifleman

I took a couple of hours today to make the long, 7.3 mile, trip to the old man amusement park to sit on a nice park bench and punch holes in some paper. It was 95°, clear and fairly calm, but I was sitting under a nice shed roof out of the sun.

Today, I was kinda interested in a side by side comparison of a couple of different .44 mag loads for the .44 mag R-92, at both 50 and 100 yards. Ordinarily, over the last 7-8 years I've never found a decent cast bullet and jacketed bullet match ... apparently until now.

The different loads are:

Cast
GT Bullet LSWC HP G/C 240 gr, A-2400 19.0 gr, Win LPP, Starline Brass, COAL 1.665

Jacketed
Hornady XTP 240 gr, AA#9 19.5 gr, Win LPP, Starline Brass, COAL 1.60

It wasn't the most ideal conditions for accurate shooting, but it was ok for the intent of determining basic POA/POI. Unlike most of the various cast bullet/jacketed bullet comparisons I've tinkered with in the past, this was quite a surprise. The cast hollow point GT bullet had almost the identical POA/POI as the HNDY XTP jacketed bullet at 50 yards. I was still interested in seeing the XTP at 100 yards so stacked 2 of my 8.5X11" targets and took a ranging shot to guesstimate the hold over. Looked like approximately 5 inches so I marked a hold over POA to safely stay on the target. Oddly enough, the horizontal spread was twice the vertical spread, which from my limited experience that's just opposite ... but not really important to what I was looking for. More interested in the different bullet/load compatibility. I did find out that I finally had a cast load and a jacketed load that shot almost identical POA/POI at 50 yards, and determined (from today and several other similar "tests") that I could leave the scope alone and just do a 5 inch holdover with the XTP's at 100 yds. Oh, and those were all three only 5 shot groups.

Before I finished packing up to get back to the office, I had to try the cast GT bullet at 100 yds, but had already taken the targets down .... but the 8" steel gong was just hanging around at 110 yards begging to be rung. So I held a couple of inches over the top .... ding and swing. Looks like now I'll have to finish that 100 yard comparison with the GT bullet.

At least I went to the amusement park and had a little play time


jd

Looking for some fun this weekend.

Nice report. I usually make the mistake of trying to accomplish too much on a range trip and end up doing a mediocre job on multiple tasks rather than a good job on one as you have done. Where do you do your shooting?

I shoot mostly, once or twice weekly, at a members only range about 10 minutes from my driveway. We have over a dozen different range layouts of pistol, rifle and shotgun. I think we currently have around 3000 members, of which maybe 10% could be considered regular attenders.

Since some unpleasant events of 2016, I've had to limit myself to shooting long guns off the bench/bag and handguns standing and slightly leaning against the bench for balance. Usually in a 2 hour trip, especially shooting the lever guns, I can completely fill the time up shooting no more than 20-30 rounds. That shooting is done (50 and 100 yds) only five rounds per target, after which the barrel gets the bore snake and I walk down and score the target wile the gun cools a bit. Handguns usually get the same type treatment, only spending time chasing down my brass from the "bottom feeders" often makes things a bit slower. But, when on the range, I'm not getting in a hurry ... that's MY time

jd

Got out myself on Wednesday stopped at my local state range with the Savage 6.5 Creedmoor. Still playing with loads want something for varmints at medium to long range and steel at long range. I'm pretty certain at this point that it wont be the same load. Had one of those days I have a box of Hornady commercial loaded with 140 grn ELD Match. According to the label 1.9 high at 100 will be on at 200 and since I'm hoping to make the drive to the 200 yard range next week I wanted to verify the scope. First shot was right at 2" high, second shot was touching, patting self on back and pulled 3rd shot low and left, packed up and went home. The ten round test string with Sierra 120grn Match Kings went well with an ES of 21 and a SD of 6.3. So I'm going to do some more laying with that and hope Sierra gets more of them on the shelf.

Any range day is good, make smoke,

Ohio3Wheels wrote:ES of 21 and a SD of 6.3