The struggles of a 1000 yard benchrest shooter.

Well I have been shooting really well with my 6mm Dashers and my 300wsm's but my Dashers have shot the smallest groups this year. Well I finally finished up my first 1000 Vapor trail bullets and started on the New lot I received last Xmas. They are still hand made but things always change by a little. These new bullets are a little shorter and there a little smaller and diameter and they do check out overall a little better but boy they didn't shoot for shit with my proven loads I used all year in my light gun.

The Heavy gun load is fairly close it will take some minor tweaks but my light gun shot big at 1k the other evening. It definitely looked like the bullet was going to fast and that it needed to be slowed down for the group to come together so I loaded up a bunch of 5 shot loads starting at 31.2 and going up to 32.0 I new 32.2gr of H4895 was not going to do it. This morning I tested all these at 365 yards conditions were good out of all the loads tested 31.4 grs clearly shot smaller than the others a very nice 3/4 inch 5 shot cluster. I believe it would shoot smaller than that but the benches at my local range are not the best they vibrate and you can't apply any body pressure to the bench so  I believe 31.4grs will be my new load. My next test will be to load up a batch at 31.4 and try several different seating depths to see what might shoot the best. And then take the best of that test and try it at 1,000 yards and see how well it does.

I forgot to mention that I am into a totally new lot of H4895 was also compounded the problem. Normally H4895 is pretty close lot to lot but these are 3 years apart and things do change.