Well, I spent most of the day at the range today working through the Summer Rifle Match. Just to give you some background on my high-power experience, next Sunday I will shoot my club’s Garand match. This will be the first formal high-power match I will ever have shot. So far the only shooting sports I even have a classification for are NRA and IHMSA Air Pistol Silhouette, IHMSA Smallbore and IHMSA Field Pistol. My high-power shooting has been entirely the occasional fun afternoon at the range.
The rifle I used was an AR-15, an Armalite M15A4, with open sights. It’s a production gun with no modifications other than me adding the bird cage flash suppressor and bayonet lug after the AWB expired. Doesn’t add much to the rifle shooting wise, but it felt good leaving that piece of garbage law behind.
Ammunition was hand loaded. 55 grain Hornady FMJBT w/ cannelure powered by 21 grains of IMR-4198 with a CCI 400 small rifle primers, all held together with unfired Lake City NATO spec brass.
Result:
- Standing Slow – 91 0X
- Sitting Rapid – 91 0X
- Prone Rapid – 94 1X
- Prone Slow – 95 0X
Total 371 out 400, but it seems I can’t find the X ring very often. Some observations which I may or may not be crazy about. For one, I could swear that hand loaded ammunition ejects brass is a more consistent pattern than factory ammunition. My brass was usually in a nice arrangement on the ground. I often have to hunt down factory ammo because it gets ejected wildly. Two, I could swear my point of impact was lowering with the use of the sling, but I find it hard to believe the sling could bend the barrel down enough to matter.