The weather was lousy on 10-5-25 up there. Sometime I’m going to have to look up the “official” temperature changes. It must’ve dropped 20 degrees from 11am or 12 noon to about 4pm. The wind was terrible, but it settled down as it cooled and the steady drizzle came.
The deer stands were in good shape, surprisingly, given the nasty storms they’d had and all the mammoth trees that had gotten blown down. Didn’t have to do much trimming down the trails and shooting lanes either, very little growth, but they got very little rain too. Typically those poplar saplings pop up and make a thick jungle over the course of a summer.
After looking things over and doing a little cutting, Dad wanted to go hunt grouse, and I wanted to sight in a new Weatherby Vanguard Outfitter chambered in .243 Win. and a Swarovski Z3 3-10x 42mm. I’m glad the Old Man was with. I couldn’t figure where those bullets were going. Between the two of us, we finally figured out it was shooting high, two whole feet high at 100 yards. I don’t know how it got that high. The scope was mounted on a regular 0 MOA 1913 rail. That took forever and way more rounds than it should’ve. How’d that elevation turret get cranked up so high? The windage was only about 3 inches to the left at 100 yards, easy enough to figure out and correct, once we dropped the scope two whole feet.
It took thirty one rounds. We used a mix of old ammo I didn’t plan to hunt with to get it on paper. The rifle was pretty stiff at first, the magazine follower when loading, the bolt when cycling. It’s Cerokoted, which smoothed out after about fifteen rounds. I don’t like Cerokote for that reason, it goes on steel, not into it, and it wears over time. But, few companies make stainless steel rifles, and I like the Weatherby stock, it fits me better than any other bolt rifle stock that I’ve tried. And they don’t make a stainless Vanguard, nor any Vanguard for that matter, Howa does that for them. Extraction and ejection was fine. Trigger fine. The forearm’s got a hint of play to it, but overall for a sub thousand dollar rifle, it seems above par.
I didn’t decide on a hunting load. The weather was beginning to turn. Dad liked the rifle so much I nearly had to fight him to get it back, he easily shot half the rounds, perhaps more. He hasn’t been that excited over a gun since the last time he shot his 1911.
One of the old partial boxes of ammo we shot up was Federal Power Shok 80grain Soft Point. There was a price tag on it… $11.99. They don’t make ’em like that no more.
The last group I shot was from the bench at 100 yards and a rest, and it was a (5) shot, with the first (4) being 1 1/8″ with the fifth a flier, about 1 1/2″ from those first (4). The barrel was hot. I wasn’t flinching.
And another thing, it seems a .243’s the biggest rifle/cartridge I can shoot. I haven’t shot a “real” rifle since last fall. Towards the end of shooting it, my brain became rattled. Felt like my head got hit. It’s got a 22″ barrel, so it’s not short. I’m wondering if it has to do with the binocular vision disorder. The muzzle’s threaded, but I refuse to give my left nut and first born to the ATF for permission to buy a suppressor. AR15’s don’t bother me, I can easily shoot 500 rounds of M855 in a day and not be bothered. But a .243 packs a whole lot more powder than Lake City M855. So for the foreseeable future, I’ll limit myself to nothing bigger than the .243, and 20 rounds.
After I shot the Ruger Mark 4 Standard 6″. That was no issue. My tightest groups were when shooting left handed, (two hand hold), which surprised me, from about eighteen paces, I got some ten shot strings about 3″ or 4″, which is great for me. I shot about 460 rounds of CCI Mini Mag Target 40gr CPRN, before it got too dirty and had light strikes. No jams though. That seems to be the limit for this gun, 500 to 700 rounds. Though this was dirtier ammo than the CCI Standard Target 40gr CPHP, I’ve shot in it.
I never saw a grouse. Dad did, while he went off to hunt while I worked on shooting groups with the Ruger. He got a shot off but missed. Oh well. No way to tell about the deer, the leaves had just fallen, so that limited sign. But we did see two bear trails carved out under thick brush and raspberry patches. The bear are thick up there. Only a fool would traipse around in those woods without a gun, for despite the fact that bear hibernate, there’s always coyotes and wolves…
Equip, train, pray and never disarm.
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