Welcome to Season 3 of Gun & Run!

It has been a while; and it has been great to have a break; but after three months off, it's time to saddle up and get training and shooting again.

I have already talked about the importance of taking a break in Training Cycle 4 - Rest and Recovery but taking a little time away from shooting (although this is largely enforced by the winter weather we get here in Waitakere) gives me time to get out on the roads and get fit for the start of the shooting and trail running seasons. It also gives me the opportunity to post a little less for a while, and refresh the creative juices a little. I try hard to write thoughtful and interesting pieces on shooting, but I need inspiration to do this and not a little cognitive space. A busy schedule of work and travel for shooting last year wrung me out a little, but what a season it was.

The 2016/2017 season is looking like it's going to be a big one: I've got work trips to North America on the cards, as well as at least one trip (probably two) to the UK planned, as well as at least one (possibly as many as three) trips over the ditch to New Zealand's West Island* in the coming 18 months.

The handloading bench is going to get a lot of use in the next couple of months. The hammer is purely for emergency use.

Having taken three months off sport-specific training and live fire, I'm going to have to get off my backside and prepare for the coming season ahead. In no particular order, I have to:

• Give my rifle a thorough check over and clean;
• Load a shitload of ammunition for training and competition;
• Dig out the SCATT and do some training;
• Sort through my kit to see if I need to replace anything;
• Think about what aspects of my position and technique I'm going to need to work on; and
• Get out on the range and do some live fire.

 All of this renewed and reinvigorated interest in shooting, competing and qualifying for the most exclusive club shoot in the world is going to stimulate me to do a bit more writing too, I hope. I've already had a few ideas and started to mull over them while running. Future topics are likely to include: Wind reading, electronic targets, handloading, rule making and its consequences, volume versus quality in training, performance enhancing drugs in shooting (and sport in general), and possibly a book review or two.

I'm looking forward to it. I hope you are too.

* Also known to some people as "Australia".

Pragmatic Load Development

A Kiwi shooting friend recently asked me if I'd write a blog post on my load development process. I replied by Facebook message that I would be delighted to; although I did warn him that it might not necessarily be quite what he was expecting. Here's to you CG.

My Method
I find out the starting load for the powder I want to use, load 5 rounds each for loads starting from the starting load to the maximum load listed in the reloading manuals in 0.5 grain increments. I shoot them in sequence, checking for pressure signs* to determine the actual max load in my rifle.

Back off about 1 grain to allow a general safety margin and some headroom for temperature variation.  That's your long range load for 900x and 1000x. Back off 1 more grain. That's your short range load for 300x to 600x.

You're done.

If possible check the loads at any short range and 1000x before you use them in anger, and chrono them if you can, but in my experience it's rare that you will get a load that just won't perform acceptably at the very least if you're shooting a 30" barrel.

Rationale
1) 308 Winchester / 7.62 x 51** is a pretty easy calibre to load for, and when using a good quality bullet, case, primer and powder your loads aren't going to differ that much in accuracy in the normal range of loads listed in your average reloading manual. That variation in accuracy is probably going to be much smaller than you are able to detect, given that the best group that a "top 25 in the world" international shot will be able to hold consistently is about 1 moa at 1000 yards***.

2) Provided that you're getting over 2925 fps then you're probably going to be supersonic at 1000 yards with most sensible bullets, and the additional velocity you're going to get from using a double-base powder isn't going to make that much of a difference to the wind-bucking characteristics of the round. Using double-base powders will give you a velocity boost, but at the cost of a seriously reduced barrel life.

3) It probably costs you something like GBP1.50 - 3.00 or NZD2.50 - 5.00 every time you pull the trigger when you account for barrel life, ammunition cost, target hire, fuel and accommodation. Would you prefer to spend that money finding the perfect load, or getting some focussed range time in?

In summary, the time, cost  and effort of working out the perfect load for your rifle just isn't worth it for the vast majority of TR shooters because the difference between the accuracy of the rifle/ammunition combination and the accuracy of the shooter is too great (although it is probably worth it for our F-TR and F-Open shooting cousins.)

Example Short/Long Range Loads
VihtaVuori N140 - 45.0/46.0 grains
VihtaVuori N150 - 47.0/48.0 grains
TR 140 - 45.5/46.5 grains
Varget / ADI AR2208 - 45.0/46 grains

Case: Neck sized RWS brass
Primer: Federal 210 Match or Remington 9 1/2
Bullet: 30 Calibre Sierra MatchKing #2156 (40 thou jump)

NB - These loads have been proved to be safe in my rifle, but they may not be your rifle so please work up your loads responsibly. If you fail to do so, you might get lucky and not have a problem, but then again you may end up amputating various portions of your left hand when your barrel lets go and/or potentially blinding yourself with the gas and brass fragment blowback. If you're lucky. That's not to mention the damage you could do to your fellow shooters and innocent bystanders. It could also trigger nuclear conflict between previously friendly nations. So there. Don't be daft.

* Pressure signs include, but are not limited to: Excessive muzzle blast, cratered primers, flattened primers, sooty marks from as leaks around primers, loose primers, blown primers, and possibly most importantly case head expansion. This list is not exhaustive.

** Yes. I know that these aren't quite the same thing, strictly speaking.

** I know this to be a fact because I spent quite a few hours in the summer of 2008 measuring, recording into Excel and then analysing the details of all ~1500 shots fired by the winning GB Palma Team in the 2007 Palma Match. The shooter with the smallest statistical group held 0.96 minutes of arc with a confidence interval of 95%, the shooter with the biggest was about 1.60 minutes.