Cut Shooting Costs and Improve Accuracy: Consider Reloading

With the current state of our country and the employment situation for many leaving a lot be desired, cost can be a huge deterrent to the hobby of shooting. Not only must one consider the price of the firearm, there are ancillary costs including ammunition, targets, fuel to get to the range, range fees, etc. Of these costs, ammunition can be the largest factor. My .308 runs between $18-$50/box of ammunition. Match grade ammunition made to tighter tolerances utilizing high end projectiles, brass, and primers can really break the bank.

Oddly enough, one way to reduce costs can also improve your shooting accuracy. Most ammunition can be reloaded. Like any other man-task there is a small startup cost involved to acquire the equipment; a press complete with die set specific to caliber, tools for mounting the various dies in the press, a powder scale and hopper, a good set of calipers for measuring to exacting tolerances, a case trimmer, and a brass tumbler. It is a good idea to have a reloading manual from a trusted source such as Sierra. A reloading manual will outline the minimum and maximum requirements for your reloads so that you have a start and end point for working up the perfect bullet combination for your specific firearm and caliber.

Once you have all these items in place, you can start saving money at the range. As I mentioned before, Gold Medal Match Grade Ammunition for my rifle runs over $40 per box or approximately $2/per shot. Every time I pull the trigger on factory ammo, I'm sending $2 down range. To make matters worse, even the best factory ammunition has produced at best half inch groups from my rifle. Thanks to reloading, I have been able to reduce the cost of pulling the trigger to around ¢.39/per shot reducing the price of entire box to about $10 (20 rounds). Accuracy improves because you reload the brass that is fired from YOUR rifle. The brass is form fitted to your chamber when you fire a round and in most cases only has to be "neck" sized after being cleaned in the brass tumbler. Think of a tailored suit, a reloaded round from your rifle has been tailored for that gun. With reloaded ammunition, the best recorded group to date was .375" shot by my wife at 100 yards.

In addition to saving money and improving accuracy, reloading is a great activity, done indoors, that can be shared by the whole family. The exacting tolerances, precision workmanship, and time invested in creating every individual bullet is a great bonding experience between shooter and sport and really give you an appreciation for the entire process of sending a round to its intended target. If you're struggling with costs, consider reloading your ammunition. If you shoot once a week, the investment in reloading equipment will pay for itself in less than a year.

Trying Out Wordpress

Fearless readers and followers, in an effort to curb any confusion, I have created a mirror of this site on Wordpress. As it turns out a company I would very much like to go back to work for requires designers to be able to create pages in Wordpress. To accommodate that request and make sure that I am not technically inept, I have redone this site in Wordpress. You can view the mirror site at http://couchsniper.wordpress.com.

I don't know that I will completely transfer over unless my readership demands it. So by all means, feel free to have a look at the wordpress version and leave your comments as to which format you like better. I have a few better options with Wordpress than we have with the blogger format, but I hate to abandon all my effort here. So let me know what YOU think. Afterall, I'm not writing this for my health.

Unbelievable Shot, Hitting at 1,000 Yards

I've wanted to try my hand at making a 1,000 yard shot since I bought my rifle. Truly, hitting at 1,000 yards was what originally motivated me to buy the rifle I bought. I read forum after forum taking in every bit of information I could about what would be a good, accurate, affordable platform to start building a budget long range rig. I settled on a Remington 700 SPS Varmint in .308. It has a 26" heavy barrel and the trusted Remington 700 action that has been utilized by the armed services on their sniper platform for decades.

Throwing a piece of lead more than half a mile down range is an incredibly difficult task. In my case, I would be trying to put 168 grain Sierra Match King boat tail hollow point (BTHP) on target. What we find when we look at a ballistics chart is that a 168 gr. Sierra BTHP will fall over 262 inches at 1,000 yards. That's over 20 feet of bullet drop. A 10 mile an hour wind will cause the bullet to drift over 75 inches and a 20 mile an hour wind will move the bullet over 155 inches or more than 10 feet! These are HUGE changes on bullet travel when you consider that a 10 mph wind at 100 yards only has a half inch effect on bullet travel, a 20 mph just over 1 inch. From 1" to 10' is a MASSIVE shift. Compounding this effect, it's impossible to tell what the wind is actually doing more than half a mile away.

At close ranges, it's easy to see a target without optics. Even a half-size man target at 100 yards is still viewable without a telescopic sight. In fact, you can still see a man size target at over 600 yards. However, at 1,000 yards you can't see the target unless you use optics. I learned this on Monday as I had an opportunity to join some incredible marksmen at an un-named range. A local prankster had placed a target at 1,000 yards and only a handful of people even know it exists. We had searched for it on previous outings and never located it. This particular trip, one of the guys I was with had brought along a particularly high-end spotting scope and managed to locate the 1,000 yard target in a few minutes. A couple minutes later, lead was flying down range and we were all absorbed in attempting to get a shot on steel.

I am proud to report that I placed five shots on that target on Monday out of an attempted 24 shots. Many of our misses were near misses falling barely shy of the goal. On of the most amazing things about shooting at 1,000 yards is that a shooter has more than enough time to take the shot, recover from the recoil, place the cross hairs back on target and watch as the bullet impacts. It made it much easier to see exactly where shots were falling and adjust the dope for the follow up shot. I was blown away by how long it actually takes a bullet, traveling over 2800 feet per second, to reach the target at 1,000 yards.

All of the guys I was shooting with were shooting rifles chambered for .308 or 7.62 NATO rounds. We all put shots on target at 1,000 yards. We also shot some closer ranges between 200 and 650 yards. After going for 1,000, 200 yards is hardly even a challenge. To compare what we were doing with the top shot challenge from last week, a .50 caliber BMG at 1,000 yards will drop comparably, but is less effected by wind. In no uncertain terms, we were shooting at a smaller target, with a smaller bullet which suffers more from wind effect. Eat your heart out Top Shot. The pictures on this post were taken through my scope. The small orange target is the target sight picture at 1,000 yards. The small white target is at 650 yards.

Arrogance Will Cost You More than the Respect of Your Peers

By now I am sure you have all figured out that I am a fan of the History Channel's, Top Shot. As much as I enjoy the show's shooting challenges and commitment to marksmanship, the producers seem to feel that a truly good show must include all of other non-sense that comes with the "reality television" mentality.

Each week we have become more and more focused on BS high school social drama and less focused on what matters, hot lead moving down range. This week could have been one of the coolest challenges ever, a .50 caliber BMG 1,000 yard shot. Instead of getting into the thick of just exactly what the Barrett .50 M82A1 weapons system is all about, we focused on George acting like an arrogant prick.

In my limited shooting career, I can tell you that I have spent many first days, on the range shooting with strangers. Some of them I could out shoot, some of them I wanted desperately to learn everything I could from them in the hope that I might get invited back out again. Regardless, here's a tip. Be respectful of everyone you shoot with. If you know more than they do, share your wisdom with them. You might just bring another shooter into this amazing brotherhood/sisterhood of firearms enthusiasts. If they know more than you do, don't be afraid to ask questions, but be respectful.

Watching George and his arrogance has not only tainted my view of snipers as a whole, but it has tainted my view of the Air Force. The buy-in of the other service members with George's attitude problem has tainted my view of the Marines as well. Some of the primary characteristics of these branches of the armed services are honor and integrity. What I've watched on Top Shot this week is neither honor, nor integrity. Regardless of his fame or skill, George is not a human being I would allow on the range with me. In fact, I think I'll make some home-made George targets for my next outing.