results are a long life expectancy, according to the manu- facturer. From my point of view, I think that if this system proves out over time, the guys at Northern Competition need to be thinking about building high quality bolt action rifl es as well as tricked out ARs. Back on the range after pushing away from the hand-
loading bench, I was now chambering a home-rolled 22-250 Remington, using a once-fi red Winchester case, Federal LR primer, 25 grains of Reloder 7, and a Sierra MatchKing 64-grain bullet. With an OAL of 2.429", the cartridge fi t like it had been designed just for that rifl e. The day I selected to shoot was dead calm when I left home, but turned to a sustained 18 mph full value cross wind, with gusts to 28 mph, by the time I got set up on the bench. I was shooting at a test range owned by my friend Greg Iverson of Piedmont, South Dakota. Greg had allowed several of us to set up steel plates
The 22-250 LR was turned loose over several months on the steel target range at the Iverson outfi t near Piedmont, South Dakota. Six hundred yards was a snap with the heavy rifl e and 22-250 rounds.
That means these barrels will withstand the stresses of ultra high velocity loads that in the past have tended to burn out other types of treatments, including chrome plated barrels. When the 220 Swift, the 243 necked to 22 wildcats, and other fast stepping monster cases are chambered in this barrel, the
out to 600 yards, and the boys at Badger Ordnance (not the same company as Badger Barrels) had come along and added hardened steel man silhouettes every 50 yards out to the 600-yard point downrange. This was the real deal for a test site! Working with the steel targets, I pasted a four-inch Shoot-N-C sticker dead center on the 100-yard plate. Now sandbagging the rifl e because of the nasty crosswinds that wanted to blow the barrel off its mount, I set the cross hairs of the Hawke scope 2 inches to the right, into the direct crosswind. Squeezing the Rock River two-stage trigger, the rifl e cracked and the left side of the bull opened up with the splat of the disintegrated bullet. With the same hold and the consistent crosswind, round two went into the same hole, followed by round three about ½ " off the fi rst two impacts. The Cheetah had turned into a shooter! I was planning to take the rifl e to Red Shirt Table, a
favorite coyote and turkey hunting grounds the next week- end, so even with the nasty wind conditions I wanted to at least try for a long poke with this rifl e that was designed just for that kind of work. Sighting on the 300-yard steel target, I set my cross hair on the right edge of the steel square, then set my elevation two m.o.a. In this case, based on the SR 6 reticle, it was one mark up. The crack of the rifl e was immediately followed by the slap of the bullet against steel and a fresh ring of fragmented bullet almost dead center on the white steel surface. THE 600 YARD PUSH
The next day the sun came out, the winds died away
almost completely, and I was back on the steel target range with the AR-10 for additional group shooting and extended range shooting. The ammunition remained the same: 65-grain handload used the previous day. With three rounds downrange into the 200-yard steel plate, I could see that nothing had changed in the accuracy department. The rifl e functioned effortlessly and put everything into a sub-m.o.a. group. Now fi ring at 300 yards, the steel plate took a bullet close to dead center. As I was about to reload the magazine and move to 400 or 500 yards, a truck rolled up. It was the crew from Badger Ordnance with several custom rifl es that required zero checks just prior to pronghorn and deer season in western South Dakota. The boys asked if they could join me, and at that the fun began. With some preliminary zeroing work at 100 yards
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