bailey1474
<strong>SPONSOR</strong>
Well, Lerch and I finally got out to have some fun w/the AMs. We left about 5 AM as we had do drive about 90 miles.
We arrived at my buddies house as the sun was starting to crest the horizon. We went inside to get a key so we could drive right up to our vantage point. Once inside he proceeded to tell us that they had moved all but 3 of the steers that were on the dog town. I proceeded to assure him that we would not shoot his cattle.
He then told us that one of the steers was a chronic that had been ill for weeks. Both he and his dad are vets and they had done all that they could for the steer. They didn't know if it would make it through the night but if it did, it needed to be put down. He knew about our AMs and though it would be a great opportunity to test the terminal performance of this round w/these bullets!!!
Anyway, we drove out to dog town and proceeded to get setup. The place where we setup is overlooking a pond w/the town on the other side of it, so we are actually shooting over the water. Once setup, we noticed a black steer standing in one of the coves about 450 yds away. One look through the Swaro rangefinder and there was no doubt that this was the chronic.
It looked like a skeleton standing there, foaming @ the mouth. There would be no problem locating the shoulder blade. I wanted to put the poor thing down then but my buddy had told us to wait till he got out there, so we commenced to firing @ some PDs.
I had left my palm pilot w/Exbal on my desk @ work so I had to print out some drops from the biggameinfo site. I used 3200 fps and a BC of .740. Using these drops we quickly learned that they were off. We were hitting about 3 clicks high!!!! It looks as though the BC may be higher!!!
The action was a bit slow as it was kinda cloudy but the wind was negligble. Once we learned our drops, misses were rare. We managed to kill 15-20 btwn 350 and 500 yds and 3 @ 710 and 730 yds!!! It was almost too easy. The only issue we had was that the jackets on the 169.5s are a bit heavy to expand much on a PD. Most just zipped right through them but some did expand quite well. Some of the shots that we though were misses turned out to be hits after watching the video.
This brings us to the real test. My buddy pulled up and confirmed that the sad looking animal standing in the pond was indeed the chronic. With his permission I then ranged the beast, checked the wind, dialed my scope, and sent a WildCat on its 450 yd journey into the 500 lb steer's shoulder!!
The bullet struck the back edge of the shoulder blade (the wind just doesn't affect this **** bullet, I'd over adjusted) and the sickly beast collapsed!!! It's back legs went first and then the front. The high shoulder shot had worked to perfection. While I would have loved to try and recover a bullet or just get a look @ an exit wound, digging around inside of diseased bovine was not on my list of things to do that day. Despite the unknowns, I think this is still enough evidence to say that this combo is going be one helluva big game rifle!!!
Thanks Kirby and Richard, I can't wait to fire some full tilt loads out of this baby!!!! Any whitetail within 1000 yds is going to be in some serious, serious trouble!!!!
Pics will follow tomorrow /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif.
I also didn't know where to post this as it could have gone in either of three forums.
Have a good night everyone,
B.J.
We arrived at my buddies house as the sun was starting to crest the horizon. We went inside to get a key so we could drive right up to our vantage point. Once inside he proceeded to tell us that they had moved all but 3 of the steers that were on the dog town. I proceeded to assure him that we would not shoot his cattle.
He then told us that one of the steers was a chronic that had been ill for weeks. Both he and his dad are vets and they had done all that they could for the steer. They didn't know if it would make it through the night but if it did, it needed to be put down. He knew about our AMs and though it would be a great opportunity to test the terminal performance of this round w/these bullets!!!
Anyway, we drove out to dog town and proceeded to get setup. The place where we setup is overlooking a pond w/the town on the other side of it, so we are actually shooting over the water. Once setup, we noticed a black steer standing in one of the coves about 450 yds away. One look through the Swaro rangefinder and there was no doubt that this was the chronic.
It looked like a skeleton standing there, foaming @ the mouth. There would be no problem locating the shoulder blade. I wanted to put the poor thing down then but my buddy had told us to wait till he got out there, so we commenced to firing @ some PDs.
I had left my palm pilot w/Exbal on my desk @ work so I had to print out some drops from the biggameinfo site. I used 3200 fps and a BC of .740. Using these drops we quickly learned that they were off. We were hitting about 3 clicks high!!!! It looks as though the BC may be higher!!!
The action was a bit slow as it was kinda cloudy but the wind was negligble. Once we learned our drops, misses were rare. We managed to kill 15-20 btwn 350 and 500 yds and 3 @ 710 and 730 yds!!! It was almost too easy. The only issue we had was that the jackets on the 169.5s are a bit heavy to expand much on a PD. Most just zipped right through them but some did expand quite well. Some of the shots that we though were misses turned out to be hits after watching the video.
This brings us to the real test. My buddy pulled up and confirmed that the sad looking animal standing in the pond was indeed the chronic. With his permission I then ranged the beast, checked the wind, dialed my scope, and sent a WildCat on its 450 yd journey into the 500 lb steer's shoulder!!
The bullet struck the back edge of the shoulder blade (the wind just doesn't affect this **** bullet, I'd over adjusted) and the sickly beast collapsed!!! It's back legs went first and then the front. The high shoulder shot had worked to perfection. While I would have loved to try and recover a bullet or just get a look @ an exit wound, digging around inside of diseased bovine was not on my list of things to do that day. Despite the unknowns, I think this is still enough evidence to say that this combo is going be one helluva big game rifle!!!
Thanks Kirby and Richard, I can't wait to fire some full tilt loads out of this baby!!!! Any whitetail within 1000 yds is going to be in some serious, serious trouble!!!!
Pics will follow tomorrow /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif.
I also didn't know where to post this as it could have gone in either of three forums.
Have a good night everyone,
B.J.
