Post by jrbhunter on Nov 4, 2014 8:49:26 GMT -5
Picked up a new rifle last month, got a great price since it was left handed and collecting dust in a small town in Kansas. With 9 Ruger rifles to my name, only one other is a bolt action and it's never been scoped or fired, so this Hawkeye is new territory for me. Found a Vortex online, a brand I have no experience with, and slapped them together last week. The jury is still out on this new rig, but it's coming along....
Assembled & tightened up:
Time to warm it up:
Testing various loads:
I always approach a new rifle with an open mind, you never know what it's going to like or dislike in ammunition so I keep 10-12 loads around. It was windy so I spent some time burning powder before getting analytical. This PPU stuff is cheap so I use it to get new scopes on paper, dirty the barrel and warm things up. My wind meter was hovering around 12mph with gusts up to 18, but I decided to run the gauntlet with 7 different 22-250 loads.
On this "cherry popping" ordeal, I just ran 3-shot groups of 7 loads. After the 3 shots, I'd either put that ammo away in my storage box or leave it on the bench based on how it grouped. After shooting 7 different loads, 3 were "still on the table". I came back to those 3 and fired one cold shot back into their respective groups (resulting in 4 shot groups).
So here's a look at one of these rough sheets from the new rifle. 1/2" dots, 100 yards off a bag.
I left my rifle, bag & 3 rounds of Winchester White Box out and spent about an hour putting everything else away. From a cold gun, those three rounds printed a 0.391 group in the wind. I used to be surprised when the cheap stuff performs better than the top-of-the-line stuff, but it's pretty common anymore.
Since shooting this new rifle last Wednesday I've been fortunate enough to bring in another 600 rounds of this ammo. All my rifles happen to like it, it's cheap, and it hammers coyotes. I'll get back out and stretch this new Ruger's legs a little when the weather is fit.
