Seven Hours on the range.

There's a sign when you drive into the Panola County Gun club that says " Welcome to Highpower Heaven." It's true, but heaven is hotter and eternity shorter than one might think..

We had a practice today for Camp Perry. Started early to avoid heat and wind. 7:00am which means a 5:30 AM kickout from Tyler, 72 miles away. The Koreans gave me everything backwards on my coffee and cinnamon roll order..sweet and low instead of sugar, twists instead of rolls. Salt instead of creamer instead of half and half. It's a difficult life in the details.

Just a few of us showed but important to get squared away before Camp Perry. I went into the pits with a couple of new folks while the line shot Infantry Trophy practice. I came out to watch Justin Utley shoot a 10x clean with his newly repaired AR at 300. His Starbucks barista girlfriend Kim came along and was pulling targets with me early, going for her Perfect Girlfriend merit badge. (I think she qualifies) Rick shot the Garand, Springfield 1903 and K31 at 200. I shot 15 rounds of K31 prone to check my zeros.

By 12:00 everyone was gone except me and a couple of guys. I re-checked my Infantry Trophy zero at 600 yards and then set up a ransom rest for an AR on the bench. It was the first time I had the rest to myself. Wind conditions were calm so I went to work shooting five shot groups with the rifle clamped in the rest so I could see group sizes. Some surprises, but I found a load that grouped inside the X ring at 600. Very satisfying. The rest clamps onto the AR float tube. You remove the handguards and clamp it in. Put on the 600 yard zero, tink the rest around with wood shims and clamps until you have a sight picture and go to town. Our rest was designed by Dr. Mike McVie, who also worked on the urine-to-drinking water processor just installed on the international space station. Yeah, it's rocket science.

By myself on the range, not so scientific. I would shoot five rounds out of the ransom rest, drive to the berm 600 yards away, check and paste up a target and then head back to the firing line. The best group was from 23.3 grains of Varget under a 80 grain bare Sierra Matchking....or a 77 Sierra Matchking on top of 25 grains of Varget, loaded magazine length. The 77s were actually a little tighter group.

Nothing from the Ramshot TAC. It was all over the target face at 25 grains and 25.5 under a Sierra Matchking 80.

I'm going to load around this data and check once more next week.

Laying out to shoot Infantry Trophy I looked over and noticed a biggish Black Widow under the tabletop of the 600 yard concrete bench. I killed the one on the other side but this one escaped into a crack. They looked like little copies of the Alien Queen. No Ripley.

Don't use my loads of course. You'll die and your equipment will be destroyed.

Update: Alan, who actually researches the internet instead of using a dig-in-the-dirt-with-a pointy-stick approach as I do finds that 2550 fps is the sweet spot for Sierra 80s. That speed is about what 23.3 gives you, depending on barrel. My gut reaction is that more speed is a good thing- the faster they go and the less time in the air the less wind drift you get. I have dreams where I see flags at Perry standing out from the poles as the wind comes off the lake but a tight group is the basis of good scores.