Adventures in sighting a new rifle

[Lilly001]

I've mounted bunches of scopes and I've sighted many rifles. Most are straight forward. Some give me new challenges.
Today was a challenge, with an easy (obvious?) solution.
I bought a Remington model 7 predator in .243. I mounted a Leupold VXR scope on it.
So far so good.
I bore sighted it and went to my home range to sight in.
Per my habit I shot it at 25 yds to confirm the bore sight. Good to go.
Then came 50 yds. The groups were bigger than normal, but not real bad.
Then at 100 yds I could only get pie plate groups. 5-6".
I checked mounts, I re tourqed action screws. I knew the scope was good because it came off a rifle in use.
I cleaned the bore real good.
Turns out that after 40 rounds I ran out of the ammo I was useing. (Seller and ballot)
Went to corelocks and groups suddenly shrunk to 1- 1 1/2".
Sometimes you just need to relearn things.

 

[lonewolf247]

Seems like when you think you have it all figured out, you see something that just doesn't seem possible. I had a similar thing happen this year myself.

I copied and pasted this from another post I made:

" I took my .270 out this year to sight it back in, this is one of my backup rifles. Loaned it to a friend last year, and he slipped in a deep mud hole, and the rifle went completely under water.

When I got back home, I removed the stock, and did a major cleaning on it. I tried to torque the action screws back like they were. I counted the number of turns when I removed it.

When I went to sight it in, it was hitting all over the place. I had a bunch of power points on hand, which was not the ammo I originally had used, but the other ammo box only had a few rounds left, was hoping I could make the switch.

At this point, I wasn't sure what the problem was. The only other ammo I had with me, was a box of hornady ammo about 20 years old. I loaded a few of them in, and what do you know, it magically started grouping like nothing was wrong?"

Here is a second strange thing I encountered this year:

My main rifle is a browning bar. It's probably close to 20 years old. It's been consistently capable of shooting a 1" group, if I do my part. The only ammo I've ever used in it, was Remington Core Lokts 165 grain. It's been so consistent, I haven't even made a scope change, gosh in probably 12-15 years.

I go out to check my zero the other day before taking it hunting, and I shot a 3-shot group, of about 3" at 100 yards? Didn't know what to think, and couldn't make any adjustments on the scope, as it wasn't grouping, plus I basically shot a perfect triangle around the bull's-eye.

I had a brand new box of 150 grain ballistic tips I caught on clearance, with me, so I loaded 3 of them up, and all grouped within an inch! Sorta baffled me? All I can figure, is maybe the bore needs cleaning. It's strange the ballistic tips grouped but the core lokts won't, especially having hunted with them 20 years with good success. The only other thing just crossed my mind, as I'm typing this is, I had bought 10 boxes of core lokts, when I bought the rifle 20 years ago, and I just bought new core lokts last year. Maybe the new don't shoot like the old?

Anyhow, I cleaned the bore, but haven't made it back to the range to evaluate things, after the cleaning. Looks like I will be using ballistic tips this year. On a side note, my son's Browning Bar rifle shot the lights out with the new core lokts!

All I can say is, strange things happen with rifles, scopes, mounts, and ammo. Also, you never stop learning.

 

[tbrown913]

Similar experience. I've swapped scopes, bumped rifles, etc enough that I am pretty decent at mounting a scope. A friends rifle wasnt shooting straight so I gave it a go. Took scope off, rings off, and mounted everything back. Bore sighted, and started at 25 yards. Hit 1 inch high. Went to 50 yards and hit 6" right. Fired once more at 50 without touching anything and shot 4" high. I told him to buy new ammo and if that doesnt work a new scope.

 

[treemanjohn]

Is it a new gun or new to you? If not has it ever shot right?