His was a 1993 vintage Armscorp M14 Standard in another USGI synthetic stock done in a dez camo. It was painted with the Aervoe brand paint which is very easy to use, and durable.
I ran 40 rds of Black Hills Match 168gr through my M25 and did surprisingly well, considering the wind.
The fun part though was breaking out the M1A with standard sights and old German MEN 147gr ball and doing almost as well as the scoped M25 with match ammo. Fired a couple hundred rounds through the iron sighted M1A from the hill and got almost a 50% hit ratio. Much better than expected. I had never fired that rifle in the desert camo stock until today, but the sights were perfect.. Swapped stocks out last night. It's a keeper.
We shot from the hilltop for several hours (all prone from bipods or bags), then packed up and drove down the hill. From there we did spot and stalk on the plates with the M14's at estimated distances. That went very well and we walked up on the plates and then back again to the base of the hill. Great practice shooting at estimated distances. Burned through another 140 rds doing that but limited each stop to 3 rds. Lots of fun.
We stayed out til the sun was setting, so ended up with about 8 hours of trigger time. Going back out on Dec 17th and will have the Barrett along that day.
One thing is for sure though. A human sized target at 800 yards is toast with any of these rifles, and head shots at 460 are not a problem. We will be getting a full size steel torso plate soon. That will be interesting.
My M25 used varying Mils of elevation at 800. When the wind was still in the morning I found that my previous 800 yard DOPE was too much. In the past it was 7.1 Mils of elevation (from a hot, still day). Yesterday was 6.75 Mils (with no wind) out of the gate. Once the wind started howling and swirling I ended up needing up to 7.5 Mils, but that would be subject to the wind readings. We set up flags to see the wind patterns easier. Watching the bushes sway in the wind works great for the hardcore pros, but I find flags to be the crutch that works. Ha.
Swirling wind creates updrafts and downdrafts, so the elevation variances can be fairly extreme.
I found the DOPE for the 460yd target to be far less critical. 2.5Mils was working no matter the wind conditions. Partly that can be attributed to the 168gr bullets. They are perfect out to about 600, but between 800-850 they go subsonic and really start panting. 175's reach out to 900 better, but my local range only goes to 600 so I have piles of 168gr to use up.
Windage adjustments were fickle, as well. The rare shot was a hit by holding on the left edge of the plate, but once the howling began, it was 2.5-4mils of windage.
My partner's M25 has always played by it's own rules and he always needs more elevation than my rifle does. His M25 (used to be mine) has a Krieger SS medium weight barrel, and mine has a Criterion Chrome Lined medium weight. Other than that they are the same. He needed an extra half Mil of elevation over what I was using.
I'm going to load up some of the 175's for our next trip and see how they fare.
And spending the day with one of my oldest friends (30+ years) doing some dedicated rifle work is priceless.
Continued...
Latest Desert Trip, Part 1
Sir; you are very fortunate having a site that allows for such long range fun
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