Yeah, when I first got interested enough to hire someone to teach me long range shooting, he was a retired MARSOC marine and former scout sniper. He asked me how far out there I wanted to get that day, and I told him that I’d be ecstatic if I could hit at 1,000 yards, but I’d be pretty happy with 800 yards. I also told him that I wasn’t sure if my rifle would be good for 1,000 yards, and he laughed and told me that he had kills at 1,300 yards in Afghanistan with a rifle much like mine.Rafe wrote: ↑Mon Jun 26, 2023 10:16 am I wondered if you'd see that.I really do like the idea of the .277 Fury and the .277 Annoyed...but somehow I feel it might be a tough sell to the SIG marketing department.
Yeah; I don't see how the Fury could be anything but a barrel-burner. The extractor is also working on steel instead of a softer metal, so it'll be interesting to see what the real-world application looks like over time in terms of frequency of extractor replacement. But I kinda bet the Army spec didn't care too much about those factors.
And to be clear, I personally consider 800 yards to be a get-in-the-car-and-drive-there distance. I didn't really misspeak, but I messed up the context when I wrote, "I need something that can reach out effectively a few hundred yards (but not long range distances), and my preference for that was a well-established NATO caliber..."
It certainly isn't that the .308 can't shoot long distances, it's just that I don't shoot long distances and don't need the kinds of cartridge/rifle technologies that do a better job of getting me out over a half-mile. I have huge respect for those who can knock down an 8-inch steel plate from a mile away, but it is, alas, a small-arms skillset I will never have.
Besides. Somebody in a position of authority once told me if I were worried about those kinds of distances that I'd need an F-16.
Anywho… I worked my way out to 800 yards, and then I was too spent to continue for that day. (I fired about 150 rounds from the prone of 175 grain SMKs with a MV of 2713 fps/2860 ft-lbs, and by the end of the day I was pretty bruised and beat up…see picture below…) But I was pretty pumped. I had been busting 4.3" clay pigeons (aim small, miss small) on the 800 yard berm and I was pretty pleased with myself. I had it in my mind that I would go back in a week or two and try to get out to 1,000 yards, but I never did. It wasn’t a deliberate decision not to do it. It was more like the realization that 800 yards is just shy of a half mile away—a pretty long poke—and if I needed to shoot something/someone further away than that, then I probably didn’t really need to shoot it.
Anyway, a 6.5 Creedmoor is pretty tempting, in no small part because it wouldn’t beat me up like heavy .308s do. Alternatively, I could just put a better buttpad on my rifle stock, or buy a chassis for my rifle and customize it to fit me better. But the allure of .308-like power in a milder shooting cartridge, with longer range and better terminal ballistics is pretty strong.
What to do? What to do?
