So on my way out the door this morning, heading off to work, I thought to myself that today might be a good day to do some shooting on my lunch break. I headed to the safe and grabbed the RRA LAR-8 Varmint, some ammo and headed out the door.
All morning I excitedly awaited the noon hour, until finally, after what seemed like an eternity, it came. I locked my computer down and headed out the door. Then I had to endure some road construction as I drove to a nearby spot of public land that has a nice area for me to shoot without any danger of stray bullets hitting anyone.
My main purpose this afternoon was to make sure that the rifle was all zeroed in with its new scope (actually a scope that use to be on my bolt gun, but now the bolt gun has the new scope and this one gets the 'hand-me-down') a Nightforce 5.5-22x50 with NP-R1 reticle. A few weeks ago I had taken the same rifle out to test it and zero in the rifle. That session was rushed, as I didn't have much time. So when I fire the first shot, I was pleasantly surprised to see the shot was practically perfect elevation wise, but was about 1" to the left. The wind was blowing slightly, with gusts up to 7 mph, so it could have been the breeze that sent the shot left, but, I'm thinking it more to do with me still needing to adjust the scope.
Since I wanted to see what kind of groups this rifle would do, I didn't adjust anything and continued to shoot at my same POA. To my surprise I couldn't make out where the second shot went. So I shot the third shot. This time I could tell that my original shot had opened up slightly, so I concluded that my second must have went into the same hole as the first.
I paused, thinking, 'wow, this is a great 3 shot group, should I shoot anymore or quit while I'm ahead'. I then decided that I would go on. Nervously, I shot the 4th shot. Went into the same hole. On the 5th shot it was all I could do to concentrate, because I was so excited about this grouping and I didn't want to screw it up. I was very pleased to see that the 5th shot was right there with the rest of them! After this shot, the thought came to me that I should really test this thing out and see what a 10 shot group would do. I was on a roll and thought that I could do this!
The 6th shot went off, pretty much surprising me, but it shot true! The 7th was just about the same. Then the 8th. I could see that this group was small. Not bench rest small, mind you, but small none the less. On the 9th shot I started getting really nervous and that shot opened the group up just a tiny bit. I could tell through my scope at the top of the group. On the 10th and final shot, the group opened up slightly more, this time on the bottom, but it was still a great group from what I could see through the scope.
With much anticipation, I started to walk down to retrieve my target. I was very pleased to see this:
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Group is just over 1/2". The 1st clean, cold bore shot, is part of the same group.
Now to test this thing out to further distances and ultimately 1000 yards.
