Got out and shot…finally!

[u/EcstaticStock499]

Had a lot of load development I hadn’t been able to actually get out and test. Today was the day!

In addition to 22lr fun, I ended up shooting exactly 100 rounds of centerfire. 30 rounds of 450 Ackley (like a 458 Lott but bigger by a tad), 32 rounds of 300 rum, 11 rounds of 350 rem mag, and 27 rounds of 257 STW.

The browning x bolt max long range in 300 rum 1:8 twist with the vortex 5-25x56 strike eagle is just so awesome. With 212 bore riders I had no trouble making a first round hit at 500 yards (the goose shaped steel, note the close up of the copper splash on it) after verifying where it was hitting at 300.

The 450 humbled me, it’s not bad from standing (though very stout), but this was my first time shooting it the elephant gun from a bench…500 grain bullets with a full case of 748 powder rattle your teeth and pulverize your shoulder off the bench. Twas fun because I’m a masochist and a recoil junkie, but I have a bruise starting and weird ball/lump under the skin on that shoulder now.

Note the expanded bullet I dug out of the dirt bank…that’s a mushroom, it almost looks like a tooth with roots haha. 280 grains retained after slamming into sand, lost 220. Ought to be fine for moose 🤣

The 257 stw was disappointing today…I discovered both my ultra light and ultra heavy loads were keyholing. They should be stable, I guess maybe the RPMs at north of 4400 fps get a bit squirrelly for the 75 grain hammer and the hornady eldm 134 grain isn’t meant to handle this kind of velocity either. It is an 8 twist.

I’ll try some more basic 100 grain bullets next.

[u/Elbro_16]

So jealous of a range with steel

[u/EcstaticStock499 → u/Elbro_16]

We’ve got a really good thing going where I live. Torch River Pistol and RIfle Range. Steel out to five hundred and in the process of expanding to 1000 yards! Range membership fee with key access for a whopping 50 bucks a year. Range card holders get 10 percent off all sporting goods at the local COOP home center (lake country co-op outdoors, they have a website too, I actually work there but not for much longer)…so if a person spends more than 500 bucks a year on guns or ammo or fishing supplies the membership more than pays for itself even if ya don’t get out to shoot as much as you’d like.

For this and many other reasons I don’t ever plan to leave northeast Saskatchewan, it’s painfully boring at times, the bugs are absolutely mental (we’re on the boreal fringe, end of farmable land and everything north of us is forest), it’s freaking cold half the year and gets way hotter than many people think during the other half…but dang it I love it here.

[u/Webster117 → u/EcstaticStock499]

Shhh. Don’t be giving away our range secrets lol