Range Report chronoghraphed Wolf Gold 6.5 Grendel 120 Grain MPT

[Texas Sheepdawg]

Some ballistic data

[fastpat]

Change your zero to 300 yards, it provides better drop numbers suitable for the 6.5G.

[Texas Sheepdawg]

Change your zero to 300 yards, it provides better drop numbers suitable for the 6.5G.

Will Do! Thanx for the suggestion. I have since received my order from Alexander Arms so now I have a whole case of the Wolf 120 Grain MPTs to hold me over until I can work up a few pet loads with my Hornady Brass.

[JASmith]

Change your zero to 300 yards, it provides better drop numbers suitable for the 6.5G.

It looks like we could have an interesting and fun debate on the question "What is the ideal zero for the 6.5 Grendel?"

A 300 yard zero for that bullet and muzzle velocity makes the trajectory more than 6 inches above the line of sight between about 150 to 200 yards. This would put it outside the canonical 10" dinner plate folks like to simulate a deer's vital zone with.

This can work if one remembers to aim a tad low at the intermediate ranges or the size of the target is more like the silhouette target.

Hence there's more than one answer that works -- but one should know what their shooting style will be and whether having to remember offsets between 75 and 225 yards for small targets is good for that style.

Cheers!

[Texas Sheepdawg]

I plan to have my rifle zeroed at about 150 or 200 yards.

[stokesrj]

Yes, a debate about zero's would hopefully help. I've guided a few hunters who really didn't understand how this all worked and I've had to follow up and recover a few animals because of it. Or, maybe it was just poor shooting blamed on lack of understanding zero's. It's really hard to sort out the truth sometimes under real field conditions and the fog of adrenalin.

My thinking on this subject has changed over the years as my hunting style has changed, the terrain has changed, the technology available to me has changed, and my understanding has changed. I began my hunting career in Florida, and I never shot a deer standing still until I had killed more than 20. My ideal deer gun was a savage 99 .250 Savage with receiver sights sighted in for 50 yards. That worked really well then and there. Eventually I did kill a deer standing still with this rifle at 210 yards, I thought of that as a long shot back then. And I didn't even realize that my Savage 99 when sighted in at 50 yards was also sighted in at 200 yards.

Now I understand that short range is 200 and 300 yards, mid range is 400, 500, and 600 yards, long range is 700, 800, 900, and 1,000 yards as defined by the NRA High Power Rifle rules but I had no clue back then.

When I first started hunting out west I followed the conventional wisdom of sighting in at 100 yards so that my bullets struck 1.8" high which according to the ballistics tables available then would put me dead on at 200 yards. I killed a lot of game this way, holding dead on if I thought they were 250 or less and over if I thought they were further. But I found that neither I nor my very skilled hunting buddies were very good at judging range once we were over the 300 yard mark. My solution to that problem was to flatten my trajectory so I built a 6.5 STW that fired 140 grain high bc bullets at 3450 fps.

At first I sighted this rifle in at 200 yards but eventually figured out I could sight it in at 300 yards and still not rise above the line of sight so much as to miss the vital organs of a deer, so I moved to that solution. It worked real well out to about 375 yards but once I was beyond 400 yards it again became a guessing game. This was before there were laser range finders, and even when they became available they were highly unreliable at longer range.

I can remember many times watching a coues deer buck across a canyon with several of my buddies laying there with spotting scopes discussing the range, our estimates were often different by 200 yards. On several occasions I've seen the actual shot taken be off by a whole body height of the deer, we were that far off.

Today there are very good solutions to the above problems, laser range finders are very good, if weather cooperates, scopes have better tracking and better custom turret solutions, and better thought out range estimation by reticle measurement. Today I wouldn't build my 6.5 STW and put up with it's fire breathing, barrel burning bad manors I would stick with a more mild mannered caliber like the 6.5 Creedmoor. Here is a little video to let you see what I'm talking about. Notice it is still sighted in so that the scope turret 0=200 yards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2COAcHZRlI

This is a long winded round about way of saying that a 200 yard zero combined with a little knowledge and some range estimation tools is a pretty good place to be.
Bob

[txgunner00]

Good info. Nice video.

[LRRPF52]

Awesome video stokes.

One reason I still prefer the 100yd zero is changing altitude. I zero at 5400ft ASL, and can have the same POI with a drop or increase in altitude, then dial accordingly based on what my ballistics calculation is telling me for the altitude I'm shooting at. Things change a lot when we jump or drop every 1000ft ASL. I've been doing a lot of shooting at 6200-6600ft ASL, and my trajectory is super-flat at that altitude, density, and pressure, since the air is so much thinner. If I used a 200yd zero, I would be way off jumping down to sea level, or up to 8000ft. Just something to think about.

[JASmith]

...My thinking on this subject has changed over the years as my hunting style has changed, the terrain has changed, the technology available to me has changed, and my understanding has changed...

My understanding has evolved with time also.

I think also that LRRPF52's comment about the 100 yd zero is focused on honest-to-goodness users of turreted scopes. These folks routinely dial in for the range and wind conditions and the good ones are indeed very deadly.

My own thinking today has the 200 yard zero as king for most shooters. This will keep the bullet within a few inches above line of sight even for nominally slower cartridges like your 250 Savage or the 30-30 while keeping the range where holdover is needed out to beyond 250 yards for most cartridges. This covers most hunters' experience in shooting.

Getting to 300-350 yards requires holdover for almost all cartridges when the 200 yard zero is used. Placing the crosshair on the spine for shots longer than 250 yards will keep the bullet impact vertically in the vital zone out to about 300-325 yards for most cartridges on calm-wind days. Further, these rules of thumb are largely independent of altitude and are still good when shooting up or down modest slopes.

More rigorous study and practice is required before making ethical shots at longer ranges, stronger winds or steeper slopes.