A fairly unique week house sitting....

[Tiff]

I spent last week looking after a friends hill farm, while they were away at various country shows and shooting events. The farm is beautifully remote with over a mile to the nearest neighbour and subsequently they like to have someone around to look after the place in their absence. Rather conveniently 35 paces from the front door is a 100-650 yard steel gong setup (not sure how that got there...) and by walking a couple of hundred feet up the tor, varminting/zeroing options to the far horizon are possible. It was going to be a tough week!

My primary objective for the week was to shoot as many varying distances as possible, to validate my drop data in advance of a hunting trip I hope to take this autumn. With no real constraints on when I could shoot, the 80+ rounds I took up inevitably didn't last the whole week, although did provide some very useful feedback. I was able to tune my Applied Ballistics Kestrel 4500nv well enough to provide consistent data; enabling first round hits out to around the mile mark on MOA (often much smaller) sized targets. Further out (transonic/subsonic region) I encountered a certain vertical element to the first round fired (up to +/- 2 MOA), depending on if the bore was cold or not; so need to test through the chrono a tad more to check how temperature sensitive RL33 is with the higher ambient air temperatures of summer.

Daily routine itself consisted of starting at 5.00am and normally walking straight up the tor to settle in amongst the rocky outcrops, offering a good vantage point with 'varmints' and targets/fruit out to beyond 1,500 yards. I'd then spend the day working around the farm on targetry, with the occasional reading/sunbathing (it really was tough...), bait a few more areas and find a suitable position to settle down amongst the heather for the evening shooting session. The exception to this was when shooting beyond 1,500 yards, as I needed to first place a target on a tor up the valley. On average it took 2 hours to walk the target out, place it on the ground and walk back to the shooting position, then spend 2 hours retrieving it afterwards - A little different to the air rifle shooting where most of us start!

Anyway enough writing, here are a few short HD videos of the shooting:

642 yards @ a 12" steel gong first round hit
http://youtu.be/SWb0zSPFxhU

642 yards @ a 8" steel gong first round hit
http://youtu.be/v7Dg-UMpARE

642 yards @ a 6" coconut first round hit
http://youtu.be/2CgYGV3a39Q

652 yards @ a 9" Watermelon cold bore hit & 2nd round hit - sorry about the picture quality, it was nearly 10pm!
http://youtu.be/4nlneg_9XhA

1037 yards @ a steel IPSC target hit & 2nd round hit on a 6" coconut - good bullet trace on the way in.
http://youtu.be/fmpK-HDhWXc

1358 yards @ a 10" yellow target area/rock - takes a while for the bullet to arrive and the sound of the impact to return.
http://youtu.be/zYxVyExfhrM

2132 yards @ a 9" tall watermelon. The 2nd round hit the bottom inch of the watermelon and with the video at HD quality on a full screen view the splash behind is just visible. Also note how long it takes the bullet to arrive....
http://youtu.be/Ukgnctt9h_0

Hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading,

Tiff

[Christel]

Tiff, thanks for the write up, you are one lucky man :shakeshout:

[User702]

It's a hard life for some people!

Good write-up and good shooting.

[DW58]

I can think of worse ways of spending a week.

[M99]

Tiff.

What hd cam are you using? I am still waiting on my phoneskope stuff from the US for the GoPro, so I can put the GoPro on the spotting scope and rifle scope.

Mike

[Tiff]

Hi Mike,
I spent a fair while researching and for the money I settled on the Panasonic HC-V550 HD - it has 90x enhanced optical zoom at full HD and will run at 150x with very little loss of definition. Obviously the picture quality falls apart without a steady rest, but a little tripod fixes this.

For me it offers a very good solution to the problem of shooting without a spotter. If I don't see a splash, I simply playback the footage, make the relevant adjustments and carry on shooting. In total this takes less than 90 seconds to do; quickly paying for itself at £3+ a shot.

[M99]

Cheers, that was my thinking with the Gopro and spotting scope, be intersting to see how it pans out.

Mike

[snayperskaya]

Good shooting Tex , what rifle/calibre were you using?.

[Tiff]

Good shooting Tex , what rifle/calibre were you using?.

Thanks, it's a great feeling when a plan comes together and the kit starts working for you.

Rifle wise, I was using a TRG 42 in .338LM with a custom heavy profile 33.5" Pac-Nor Super Match fluted barrel & TRG Brake; running the Berger VLD Elite Hunter @ circa. 2,900 fps (96.5gr RL33 in Lapua brass, 10 thou off the lands). For rangefinding I use a Vectronix PLRF15C with an Opticron 2.bowl adapter (provides 15x mag) and input it into the Applied Ballistics Kestrel 4500nv previous mentioned.

I'll try and get some pictures up tomorrow of the setup in use.

[20series]

Tiff, you are one lucky git... :goodjob:

Alan