This afternoon after work I stopped by the range on my way home, since it was about 85F and almost windless. I've been working at sighting in my .243 for a while, but weather and crowds have been making that tedious. I had the entire place to myself, as I prefer it, so I set up at 50 yards, dialed it in, moved to 100 yards, adjusted things, then moved the target to 200 yards.
The good news is that I managed to hit a 12" target at that range most of the time, and the pattern I see is fairly evenly distributed around the center. That indicates to me that I have the scope set about right, and any error is just me. I figure, at this point, a bit less coffee by day and scotch by night will probably settle down my point of aim and reduce the size of that group. But I'm also thinking that I should get a better scope if I want to play at longer ranges. The Bushnell 9x I have on the thing is barely enough to let me see the target at that range, and the crosshairs seem to cover about the entire bull.
The bad news is that I had a couple of hang fire rounds in this batch, and I don't know why. These were all the same loads, using a 100 gr Speer jacketed soft point, with 43 gr of Power Pro 4000MR and standard large rifle primers from S&B. About 8 rounds, midway through a baggie of 80 rounds or so, failed to fire on the first try. Each time, I recocked the hammer and fired again, a 5 of them fired on the second try; three did not. I ejected the three that would not fire after a decent wait time, and found the primers were barely dented. From this I decided that I must have sized the cases so that the shoulder was pushed back too far, allowing the firing pin to drive the case further into the chamber than it's supposed to go and failing to detonate the primer.
When I got home, I ran the three failed rounds through my shiny, new case gage, expecting to see the cases fail the test. They didn't. Now I'm stumped. I've previously suspected that this load is too hot, despite the fact that the Hornady book and the Alliant website say otherwise, but if the gun had been damaged by this loading, the failure would have continued the rest of the afternoon. It didn't, and every round after the 8 bad ones fired perfectly. I figure I need to change something in my loading specs, but I haven't any idea what to change.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
The good news is that I managed to hit a 12" target at that range most of the time, and the pattern I see is fairly evenly distributed around the center. That indicates to me that I have the scope set about right, and any error is just me. I figure, at this point, a bit less coffee by day and scotch by night will probably settle down my point of aim and reduce the size of that group. But I'm also thinking that I should get a better scope if I want to play at longer ranges. The Bushnell 9x I have on the thing is barely enough to let me see the target at that range, and the crosshairs seem to cover about the entire bull.
The bad news is that I had a couple of hang fire rounds in this batch, and I don't know why. These were all the same loads, using a 100 gr Speer jacketed soft point, with 43 gr of Power Pro 4000MR and standard large rifle primers from S&B. About 8 rounds, midway through a baggie of 80 rounds or so, failed to fire on the first try. Each time, I recocked the hammer and fired again, a 5 of them fired on the second try; three did not. I ejected the three that would not fire after a decent wait time, and found the primers were barely dented. From this I decided that I must have sized the cases so that the shoulder was pushed back too far, allowing the firing pin to drive the case further into the chamber than it's supposed to go and failing to detonate the primer.
When I got home, I ran the three failed rounds through my shiny, new case gage, expecting to see the cases fail the test. They didn't. Now I'm stumped. I've previously suspected that this load is too hot, despite the fact that the Hornady book and the Alliant website say otherwise, but if the gun had been damaged by this loading, the failure would have continued the rest of the afternoon. It didn't, and every round after the 8 bad ones fired perfectly. I figure I need to change something in my loading specs, but I haven't any idea what to change.
Any thoughts or suggestions?