About 8 or 9 years ago I bought an Encore in 30-06. Nothing fancy, just a real nice heavy barreled stainless 30-06. I took my first two deer with this rifle and it has a special place in the gun cabinet because of that. However as time went by and I started getting into different types of shooting the encore spent more and more time in the back of the safe as I was using the other rifles for long range shooting or for some semi auto fun.
I recently had done some rearranging with my rifle inventory and ended up with a spare burris fullfield II 3-9x with ballistic plex and I got to thinking about putting it on the Encore. Well, I did and yesterday was my first trip to the range with my new setup. I have a good supply of handloaded 30-06 ammo for my long range rig and I figure that I’d like both guns to run off the same 168gr match ammo. It took me about 10 rounds to get zeroed in at 100 yards, but after that I was set.
Now, with a scope that has a ballistic reticle I didn’t have the highest expectations. I usually expect those dash marks to be a good approximate hold over point but I certainly don’t expect them to ever line up perfectly at each distance right on the mark each time. Much to my elated surprise every dash mark lined up perfectly out to 500 yards!
With ammo I had handloaded for another rifle, a general “close enough” type ballistic reticle and a completely factory rifle I was hitting the smaller plates (less than 12” at 500 yards without any complications. No dialing the scope, or tuning the ammo. Just taking my time and squeezing the trigger. That scope just moved my old rifle up to the front of the safe! I genuinely hope every hunter out there has a gun he likes much as I like my revitalized encore!
