Zeroing the 6.5x47

Chris-NZ · March 22, 2010

Woke up to a beautiful windless day Sunday morning so drove down to see my farmer mate Paddy. The farm he manages has some great shooting spots and plenty of options for long range testing. Once he knew I was coming, he invited along a younger guy Andy who is a keen deershooter ( and duck shooter and fisherman...)

We loaded some targets on a quad and set them up on a plateau across a creek. Ended up at 392 yds to give the lads some challenge. I'd brought along my portable bench and BR gear, nowhere near as stable as the concrete bench at our my main range but a lot better than nothing. With perfect light and no significant mirage, the full 32X on the scope was useable. Cranked on the latest elevation for 400yds, wind was non-existent so fired the fouler. Very close so let another one go and it landed less than half an inch from the first. This was a fluke I thought so fully corrected which was half a min of wind and up a quarter on elevation. Fired three shots and here is what I got:

Swapped to a bipod and two shots were roughly 1/2" centred under the previous group so reassuring as I'd never tried that. So I'd found out the elevation zero was pretty much spot-on and the wind zero needed about a quarter correction.

Let the lads have a quick go with the 47 and they managed some reasonable hits.

Andy then had a go with his 595 .270 with a mildot 6.5-30 Burris on it. He proclaimed the thing was "very accurate" and he certainly had the deer to prove it. His target was "clean" after 4 shots with shots seeming high so I asked what hold-off he was using. Turns out he had no idea of actual trajectory and thought the mildots were 3/4/500.. yd holdoffs! Having no details what his zero was, I suggested he try the first dot as an experiment and he clipped the A3 size target twice in the next 4 shots but not even close to the bull. Paddy had a go with his Wby .243 and managed a few hits but nothing really close. It was now obvious these guys clearly don't shoot much past 250yds but they're never short of venison.

I'm going to give Andy some training on longer range shooting when we get a chance.

Chris-NZ

DL. · March 22, 2010

Looks like you've had great results with your rifle.

With regards to Burris, a look at their website at the info on the ballistic ret shows...

"The Ballistic Mil-Dot reticle combines a standard Mil-Dot with a special Burris design on the lower vertical crosshair that automatically compensates for bullet drop.

The scale of reference can be used for better ammunitions on the market. In the scope box there are 30 calibration labels to match your load. Use is fast & accurate.

It is available on numerous rifle scopes of the Black Diamond, Signature & Fullfield II series."

It would be all too easy for someone to fall into the trap of taking the hold over points (which are 2ndFP) as being calibrated to their own round.

I've got one, and haven't made use of the ret.