Ol green has pretty well taken on a life of her own, that is for sure. Its funny, it took a while for me to warm up to her. To be honest, its not that accurate of a rifle on paper. 3/4 to 1 moa most of the time at 100 yards. I was not very happy with her when I started the original load development.
Since then however, she has never missed a big game animal I pointed it at and currently I believe she is up to 18 head of big game taken with 12 of those over 500 yards, 8 over 600 yards, and 5 over 800 yards with the longest being a bit over 900 yards.
I get a kick out of guys telling me all the time that if their rifle does not shoot under 1/2 moa then its useless for long range hunting. If your rifle is consistant day in and day out and you have a good accurate drop chart, it will get the job done quite nicely for big game hunting out to 1000 yards.
You DO NOT need 1/4 moa groups to have a hell of a long range rifle, you need a consistant rifle, consistant load and good drop chart. THOUSANDS of "good" load are passed up on every year by guys looking for greener grass, no problem with that but Ol Green is a perfect example of a legit 3/4 to 1 moa rifle that has time and time and time again proven that to kill big game at long range, you simply DO NOT need a 1/4 moa rifle.
Now, it your shooting or hunting WELL past 1000 yards such as 1500 or a mile, obviously the most accurate rifle you can get is the best but the VAST majority of us, even the serious long range hunters RARELY kill game past 1000 yards unless we INTENTIONALLY set up for such a shot. Its pretty easy to get within 1000 yards of big game, that is why most of our long range kills happen in the 500 to 900 yard range. For that a well made, consistant, high performance rifle with good drop chart, good ammo and good shooter can do amazing things.
Its to the point now with Ol Green that if I do miss, I know 100% why, ME!!! My confidence with this old rifle (round count anyway) is so high that I feel that I can make pretty much any shot out to 900 yards easily. That is not something I have found to common with a rifle that weighs 9 lbs with Leupold Mk 4, Harris bipod, sling and full magazine ready to hunt with.
It has been mentioned that she has a worn out barrel. In all honesty, she does have a worn out barrel. I started shooting this rifle with a load using the 200 gr ULD RBBT Wildcat bullet loaded to 3200 fps. It was simply amazing at long range with that combo. At around 500 rounds, the 200 gr ULD RBBT started to loose accuracy which largely was due to the fact I had been pretty hard on this barrel with ballistic and load development.
Most would have said its time for a new barrel, I did not, I simply switched to the 175 gr SMK loaded to just shy of 3400 fps which shot extemely well and used that load for a couple seasons but it just did not open up as well on game asI would have liked so I switched to the 160 gr Accubond and just told myself that I would limit myself to 600 yards. That was until I actually tested this load at long range. I will admit that at 100 yards, the 160 gr Accubond load holds tighter groups then the 200 gr load did, between 1/2 and 3/4 moa consistantly.
So, if you have a rifle that will not shoot the thin jacketed match bullets anymore, try the Accubonds and see what happens, may get you another 4-5 or more seasons out of your rifle!!!
Ol Green has killed more long range big game with the Accubond then any other bullet used in this rifle.