Badger has two very different days...
Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 4:46 pm
On Saturday we took a pawful of non-shooting friends shooting.
On Saturday afternoon we went to dust a few clays at Cockett Farm. ( http://www.cockettfarm.com ) The sun shone gloriously and we undertook a round of 50 sporting clays. We provided a soupçon of tuition and an o/u break barrel, a fine English Damascus barrelled side by side and a fantabulous French Darne butterfly action, all in 12 bore. Everyone had a great time, each shooter finding a particular gun that suited them and all managed to break a respectable number of clays. Most shot best with the s/s but all loved the weirdness of the Darne, and one total newcomer did frighteningly well with the o/u - ie we were scared he was going to dust more clays than us, and that would never do !
On Saturday evening we went to one of our clubs which was holding a guest night on an indoor 25 metre range. This allowed the group to experience the difference between shotguns and rifle shooting: plenty of Desmonds were fired from some blacktical semi-automatics for the pure fun of it, followed by a little more serious shooting using centrefire rifles with reduced power loads and cast bullets. Everyone enjoyed it enormously and we feel we may have made a few converts to the two sports.
Sunday, however, was not such a good day. Flushed with success from our recent foray into pawloading for our .303" Lee Enfields and P14, we had loaded 250 rounds of 7.62x51 with similar reduced power loads (circa 18 gns of powdah behind a 165 gn cast bullet) for use at 250 mards in our DTA. Unfortunately, we forgot to allow for the fact that the cast bullet has a round nose and so doesn't sit so far forward in the chamber as a standard military spitzer profile. We couldn't close the bolt on the rounds... "Oh fiddlesticks !" said we, "but never mind, we also have some reduced power loads made up for our Finnish M28/76. We can crack on with them..."
That didn't go well either. The rounds chambered and all went bang, but not very accurately. A load very similar to the one that worked so well in out P14 and Lees was nowhere near as good in the M28/76. Back to the drawing board for that one we thinks. All was not lost however: we had our Swiss K31 with us and that is a fiendishly reliable tack driver. Except today, it wasn't. We have run out of GP11 and so had bought some PPU 7.5x55 FMJBT rounds with a view to saving the brass and starting to pawload for that calibre too. Normally we find PPU to be reasonably accurate but today, in the K31, it too performed poorly. Whereas at 250 mards with GP11 we find our K31 / Meopta 6x42 combination easily capable of 1 MOA, with the PPU we struggled to do better than a 17" group !!!! To rule out shooter error we had several oomanses shoot the K31 and they too struggled to achieve a respectable group. The scope is sound, the mounts are firm, the rifle all in order in every way we can see. We thinks pawloading for it is going to be an interesting exercise, and hopefully not one in futility....
On Saturday afternoon we went to dust a few clays at Cockett Farm. ( http://www.cockettfarm.com ) The sun shone gloriously and we undertook a round of 50 sporting clays. We provided a soupçon of tuition and an o/u break barrel, a fine English Damascus barrelled side by side and a fantabulous French Darne butterfly action, all in 12 bore. Everyone had a great time, each shooter finding a particular gun that suited them and all managed to break a respectable number of clays. Most shot best with the s/s but all loved the weirdness of the Darne, and one total newcomer did frighteningly well with the o/u - ie we were scared he was going to dust more clays than us, and that would never do !
On Saturday evening we went to one of our clubs which was holding a guest night on an indoor 25 metre range. This allowed the group to experience the difference between shotguns and rifle shooting: plenty of Desmonds were fired from some blacktical semi-automatics for the pure fun of it, followed by a little more serious shooting using centrefire rifles with reduced power loads and cast bullets. Everyone enjoyed it enormously and we feel we may have made a few converts to the two sports.
Sunday, however, was not such a good day. Flushed with success from our recent foray into pawloading for our .303" Lee Enfields and P14, we had loaded 250 rounds of 7.62x51 with similar reduced power loads (circa 18 gns of powdah behind a 165 gn cast bullet) for use at 250 mards in our DTA. Unfortunately, we forgot to allow for the fact that the cast bullet has a round nose and so doesn't sit so far forward in the chamber as a standard military spitzer profile. We couldn't close the bolt on the rounds... "Oh fiddlesticks !" said we, "but never mind, we also have some reduced power loads made up for our Finnish M28/76. We can crack on with them..."
That didn't go well either. The rounds chambered and all went bang, but not very accurately. A load very similar to the one that worked so well in out P14 and Lees was nowhere near as good in the M28/76. Back to the drawing board for that one we thinks. All was not lost however: we had our Swiss K31 with us and that is a fiendishly reliable tack driver. Except today, it wasn't. We have run out of GP11 and so had bought some PPU 7.5x55 FMJBT rounds with a view to saving the brass and starting to pawload for that calibre too. Normally we find PPU to be reasonably accurate but today, in the K31, it too performed poorly. Whereas at 250 mards with GP11 we find our K31 / Meopta 6x42 combination easily capable of 1 MOA, with the PPU we struggled to do better than a 17" group !!!! To rule out shooter error we had several oomanses shoot the K31 and they too struggled to achieve a respectable group. The scope is sound, the mounts are firm, the rifle all in order in every way we can see. We thinks pawloading for it is going to be an interesting exercise, and hopefully not one in futility....
