I've recently been having a little fun with a rifle that I haven't shot in years and I thought I'd share.
This is a Kimber Montana in .308 Win that I bought new around 2013. It was my main hunting rifle for 5 or so years, then I got sucked into Tikka World and I hadn't shot it since. All this gun ever did was AK blacktail and goat hunts.
This spring I decided to pull it out and shoot it a bit, with no real plan other than that. Since I had last shot it, I had the barrel cut to 16.5" by Kampfeld, bedded the action, free floated the barrel, and replaced the bolt handle with a Ti one from that guy on 24CF. This rifle used to wear a Leupold 2.5-8x36 but I had since sold that, so to rescope it I decided to try a SWFA UL. I've always had a leather buttpad (with an extra slice of cutting board inside it) on this rifle to extend the LOP (14 3/8").
This is how it looked after a quick dusting off and w/ the new scope installed.
Kimber Montana .308 Win (16.5" bbl)
SWFA UL 2.5-10x32mm (556 BDC reticle) in Talley LW rings
US OG suppressor w/ LS Wild cover
6 lbs 6 oz
I decided it would be fun to take this rifle on the first deer hunt of the season. I have lots of factory Hornady Black 168 A-MAX ammo, so that's what I tried first. This is a 300-yard max rifle for me, so the 2500 fps and 1.5-2 MOA groups I got out of the A-MAX was good enough.
The SWFA UL is a variable 2-10x, but I locked the magnification ring at 5.5x with tape, making it a fixed power scope. I did so for the following reasons:
1) It's SFP with a BDC reticle; 5.5x magnification is what lined the 300-yard subtension in the reticle up with the trajectory of this rifle (when combined with a 2" high zero at 100 yards).
2) The imagine quality on this scope really deteriorates in the higher magnification range, so why bother.
3) Simplicity.
After zeroing (2" high at 100 yards), I decided to see how well my napkin-math 300-yard subtension worked. I set up a 10" plate at 300 yards and went 5/5. Shots were pretty well centered elevation-wise, so I called that a win and moved on. At this point, I probably only had 20ish rounds through the gun on this "reboot," but I'm zeroed and ready to hunt.
This is a Kimber Montana in .308 Win that I bought new around 2013. It was my main hunting rifle for 5 or so years, then I got sucked into Tikka World and I hadn't shot it since. All this gun ever did was AK blacktail and goat hunts.
This spring I decided to pull it out and shoot it a bit, with no real plan other than that. Since I had last shot it, I had the barrel cut to 16.5" by Kampfeld, bedded the action, free floated the barrel, and replaced the bolt handle with a Ti one from that guy on 24CF. This rifle used to wear a Leupold 2.5-8x36 but I had since sold that, so to rescope it I decided to try a SWFA UL. I've always had a leather buttpad (with an extra slice of cutting board inside it) on this rifle to extend the LOP (14 3/8").
This is how it looked after a quick dusting off and w/ the new scope installed.
Kimber Montana .308 Win (16.5" bbl)
SWFA UL 2.5-10x32mm (556 BDC reticle) in Talley LW rings
US OG suppressor w/ LS Wild cover
6 lbs 6 oz
I decided it would be fun to take this rifle on the first deer hunt of the season. I have lots of factory Hornady Black 168 A-MAX ammo, so that's what I tried first. This is a 300-yard max rifle for me, so the 2500 fps and 1.5-2 MOA groups I got out of the A-MAX was good enough.
The SWFA UL is a variable 2-10x, but I locked the magnification ring at 5.5x with tape, making it a fixed power scope. I did so for the following reasons:
1) It's SFP with a BDC reticle; 5.5x magnification is what lined the 300-yard subtension in the reticle up with the trajectory of this rifle (when combined with a 2" high zero at 100 yards).
2) The imagine quality on this scope really deteriorates in the higher magnification range, so why bother.
3) Simplicity.
After zeroing (2" high at 100 yards), I decided to see how well my napkin-math 300-yard subtension worked. I set up a 10" plate at 300 yards and went 5/5. Shots were pretty well centered elevation-wise, so I called that a win and moved on. At this point, I probably only had 20ish rounds through the gun on this "reboot," but I'm zeroed and ready to hunt.
