Range Day

200m Zeroing and fun with primers.

I am heading away this weekend – so it was time to confirm my zero.

Zero’s can, and do change. A good knock while cleaning or taking the rifle out of the safe¹ can alter your zero. In my case, I had transferred the scope over to the 700 build, swapped it back, but just wasn’t 100% certain it was on. In addition, I wanted to play with differing OCL² for my hunting load, and thought it would be a good opportunity to get down to the range for a shoot.

OCL Play

First of all – this is a hunting rifle – it’s currently shooting at close to 1 moa – myself probably being the limiting factor. I want a load that is reliable in varied situations and will simply put down whatever it is that I shoot.

However, I am always one to tweak things – so I figured I might as well see if I could further tweak my load by playing around a bit with OCL. The magazine length limits me to 2.89 inches – so ended up building 3 loads – 2.80, the SAAMI standard, 2.86 and 2.89 overall lengths. This is still short from pushing the projectile into the lands³ – but I won’t single load this rifle, so it doesn’t really matter.

Short version – the 2.86 OCL seems very minutely smaller – but it could as much be my shooting as the OCL itself – so it’s not something I am going to panic about. I am sure as I shoot more, these things will become more and more relevant.

OnTarget TDS and Zeroing

I use some software called OnTarget TDS to record my shooting. I have covered it before on the site.

What is basically let me do on the weekend, was zero my rifle based on a ‘group’ of 20 shots, not 3 or even 5. To me, it makes sense to not be constantly tweaking the turrets – rather, put down the entire box of ammo, and adjust as an average overall. Otherwise, you could simply be adjusting for your own shooting on the day, not getting a true ‘average’ zero. End of the day though, each to their own.

Regardless, I am now a lot more comfortable with the zero on the X-Bolt – and looking forward to getting out this weekend for a hunt!

1. for dry fire practice – you do dry fire practice don’t you? ↩

2. overall cartridge length ↩

3. like .308, 7mm08 rifles are generally made with a pile of free bore in them ↩