Drove up to our hunting area to do some shooting and a little salmon/steelhead fishing today, 7mm-08 Lite, 35 Whelen Improved, 405 Win and 22" 45-70 Handi made the trip with us, my best friend has never shot a 45-70 and he didn't bring a rifle, so he had it all to himself, first rounds in the 45-70 were 405gr Rem factory which run just over 1200fps in the 22" barrel, he also shot the 325gr LE ammo(thanks Pete!!
) at 100yds and 200yds, dead on at 100yds it shot into about 2" with a WGRS peep sight and his old eye, two 224yd rounds went into 6" about 30" low, velocity averaged 1938fps.
Didn't get much shooting done with the 405Win, just one shot which was 2" high and an inch left at 100yds, the next shot knocked the forend stud off again!
It sheared the two 6-48 screws off that I had added after silver soldering it back on, guess the next step is to use bigger screws.
Did chrono the one round at 2438fps.
The Whelen Impr got sighted in with a full case of
BL-C2 RL15 under a 250gr Hornady RN, velocity was right at 2575fps, 2½" high at 100yds put it dead on at 224yds. This will likely be my elk gun this year, thought about using the 7mm-08 because it's lighter, but after weighing both, the 7mm-08 weighs 6lbs-14oz and the Whelen only weighs 4oz more at 7lbs-2oz, so it gets the nod.
The 7mm-08 shot the same 140gr TTSX/Big Game load I last shot time, just under an inch group for two shots at 100yds from my portable table which isn't as stable as the bench at the range, it's sighted in ~2" high at 100yds and right on at 224yds, I'll hunt deer with this one.
Didn't catch any fish, although we didn't spend much time at it, on the way up the river, someone was already in the hole we always catch fish in, there was a drift boat in the other honey hole, so we went straight up to shoot. On the was back there was another boat in the upper hole, but the lower hole was empty of fisherman.....and fish too!
Weather was great tho, 65º and partly sunny, light wind.
Tim
