22 LR shooting long distance

For reference, I took a look at NRA national records, none go beyond 100 yards. Those, though, are impressive.
NRA smallbore prone: 40 shots at the 100 yard A-25 target. The X-ring is one inch. The ten ring is two inches. The record is co-held by three men. It is 400-39X. Metallic sights.
The record for this course of fire in “any sight” matches is 400-40X. It has been shot ten times by four different men.
I wonder what the results would be if the distance were doubled.
 
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For reference, I took a look at NRA national records, none go beyond 100 yards. Those, though, are impressive.
NRA smallbore prone: 40 shots at the 100 yard A-25 target. The X-ring is one inch. The ten ring is two inches. The record is co-held by three men. It is 400-39X. Metallic sights.
The record for this course of fire in “any sight” matches is 400-40X. It has been shot ten times by four different men.
I wonder what the results would be if the distance were doubled.
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I'm hardly an expert at 22lr--but I do like to dabble in experiments--I think you can push the distances out to 300 yds where conventional ballistics of conventional 22lr ammo can be relatively consistent--provided you are an absolute expert on reading air movements (which I'm not)--or shoot in absolute calm. I've noticed "the edge of the cliff" where bullet drop really increases dramatically with ammo in the 1100 to 1275 fps velocity range occurs around 175 yds +/- (in my CZ's 28" barrel). 200 yds IMO is certainly within reasonable range of conventional 22lr.
 
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Fedex came by this afternoon with the order of RWS R100 and although it was overcast and getting dark I had to take a few test shots. I had just cleaned the bore and fouled the bore with some Norma and Aguila prior to shooting the RWS. I'm also relegated to hand-feeding--the plastic floorplate on the CZ magazine snapped when I was removing it to get out a jammed CUrX load.

I expected the RWS to shoot well and was not disappointed, but at a per shot price equal to or exceeding 9mm and 5.56 I called it a day.

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Interesting report I found on the Sniper's Hide concerning 22lr bullet testing. Some of the stuff is a bit dense for my simple mind--but there are a few useful conclusions in lay language as well.

Like that 169 yard target. Good shooting.
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Thanks--I'm going back out and shoot at 200 yds as soon as the winds calm a bit, this is premium priced stuff and I'm reluctant to throw it down range. I saw this article on accurate shooter; I figure with just this preliminary result shooting my ho-hum CZ off bags on the hood of my pick-up--that can't be that hard to beat.:D:D
 
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As if the price of R 100 isn't enough--here's a new one out by RWS that as far as I can tell hasn't made it into the US yet; but I'm going to keep looking until it does.
 
I took the rifle out for a try-out of a large batch of different ammo that came in--including some Ely high velocity. I was shooting at 200 yds and soon realized the combination of swirling winds and different ammos resulted in quite a bit of waste when rezeroing for each new ammo--I should have stuck to just a few. I tried R-100 again, after 4 shots I had a group at .610 MOA--at which point my self-defeatism devil popped up on my shoulder and said "you're going to choke"--and sure enough I did. :rolleyes::o
 
That's excellent. I don't think I can do that with anything I have. My best group at 150yr is more than 2x of that in moa. Just enough for cracking clay ducks.

The ammo costs 50 cents a round. It'd better make some difference.

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
That didn't take very long with the R-100!!

I received my first boxes of R-100 three days ago, and my CZ 457 jaguar to no surprise took a liking to it. I read about the Aussie record in accurate shooter--and after just a few shots at distance I could just tell intuitively that the R-100 could do at least as well in my rifle.

I wasn't planning on shooting today, our forecast was drizzle and fog all day with the threat of pop-up thunderstorms. The winds however were forecasted to be pretty light, 7 to 9 mph out of the east. That's pretty significant if it were a crosswind, but I took a gamble that one of the places I shoot is more or less a tunnel through trees and the wind direction would basically be a light tail--in addition being overcast and misty--I figured that would produce a pretty level, non-turbulent wind. I can't say for sure, but I think that's what actually happened.

I shot a total of 5-- 5 shot groups at 200 yds--the first 4 I would generally get 3 shots touching or very close, but invariably would pull at least one shot. It started getting darker and I thought I'd give one last go; and here it is:

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At first I only saw 4 holes, but couldn't find a fifth impact anywhere near the target--while I've been known to spaz under pressure--I didn't think I'd do it that badly. Then I thought about the possibility of two bullets going almost through the same hole, something hard to discern with the 22lr. Fortunately, the target is mounted on several layers of paper and thick cardboard, and the reverse side shows where the top two bullets overlapped each other.

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Except for reseating the action in a KRG stock and putting a brake on to help tame the wild felt recoil of 22lr :D--my CZ jaguar is completely stock.

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Surely this is not the first time you've shot two bullets through the same hole.... and here I thought you were a real rifleman...
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Not a real one--I just play pretend one on the internet. Seriously, if I can do this--surely somebody out there with one of those psychedelic ultra-modern (ultra-expensive) race rigs and actually has good technique could easily produce a ragged hole at this distance.:D

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I also bought a few box of CCI's stinger which scoots along at 1,600 fps+ and has no issues chambering in my CZ's non-match chamber. It's case appears to be made of steel and is also slightly longer than a "normal" 22lr case. Unfortunately it's apparently mated to a bullet that isn't optimized for target shooting--at least it doesn't group minute of solar system in my rifle. But once someone figures out an optimal bullet design--I think this could be a path to the future of long range performance 22lr shooting. It's hard for me to imagine the likes of Ely and RWS (who appear to be the best bullet designers in 22lr as far as I can tell) aren't taking a close look at CCI's ammo.
 

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Since I was still giddy with yesterday's results today--I decided to get "greedy" and try again--except this time I wanted to push it out further to 300 yds. Unfortunately, construction gear was in the way, so I had to settle for 254 yards. The other really big problem is that as I was setting up the sun started breaking through the 100% overcast and that almost immediately caused the winds to double in speed as well as kick off thermal turbulence and gustiness. 5 mph is about my max for reasonably doping the wind for 22lr, gusts were spinning off erratically at three times that speed. Way out of my league, as it turned out, but I still shot half a box of R 100 to learn what I could. Even half a box is an expensive day.

The only group that showed promise was the very first one which I got off before the sun broke through and kicked things off. Had I not pulled that shot close to the target dot it could have been an awesome 5 shot group. I tried 4 more times but the the best I could do was around 3" after this first group.

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Stag,

You are by far outshooting me, I've had a busy summer so haven't been able to put the time into the range that I did last summer, before I had to send my rifle back to the factory (new barrel, out of spec chamber) I was lucky to get 1.5" at 100, and at 200 I was averaging 6". I remember telling myself that shooting rimfire HAD to be cheaper than what I was spending on 6.5 ammo, then my rifles both showed a preference for Lapua Midas+ and Ely Tenex. Can't exactly tell myself that I'm saving money.

Have you tried putting up crepe paper streamers or engineer/caution tape on stakes every 50 yards or so? My range has us shooting through a 10' long tunnel so anything to make a windcall off of has to be in line with your target. Its not as accurate as a dedicated wind flag but it'll give you a baseline to judge what the wind is doing downrange. What I wasn't ready for with the .22 was how a zero value (headwind or tailwind) will make the impact change vertically. I still don't have enough data to make accurate calls based on that.
 
Stag,

You are by far outshooting me, I've had a busy summer so haven't been able to put the time into the range that I did last summer, before I had to send my rifle back to the factory (new barrel, out of spec chamber) I was lucky to get 1.5" at 100, and at 200 I was averaging 6". I remember telling myself that shooting rimfire HAD to be cheaper than what I was spending on 6.5 ammo, then my rifles both showed a preference for Lapua Midas+ and Ely Tenex. Can't exactly tell myself that I'm saving money.

Have you tried putting up crepe paper streamers or engineer/caution tape on stakes every 50 yards or so? My range has us shooting through a 10' long tunnel so anything to make a windcall off of has to be in line with your target. Its not as accurate as a dedicated wind flag but it'll give you a baseline to judge what the wind is doing downrange. What I wasn't ready for with the .22 was how a zero value (headwind or tailwind) will make the impact change vertically. I still don't have enough data to make accurate calls based on that.
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In large part--my strategy is to wait things out for conditions as calm as possible. I live on the Atlantic coast and once the wind starts blowing it's really tough. Using premium ammo DOES make a big difference in 22lr--problem is all the practice shots figuring out the dope becomes enormously expensive very fast sticking with the good stuff. I have trouble enough consistently breaking off a clean shot in no winds at all.;) That incremental increase I shot today from 200 yards to 254 resulted in an increase in bullet drop of about two feet.

As for the head/tail wind changing elevation, my attitude about that is that it really depends, if it's a cool overcast day without convective or advective (surface heating or mechanical obstructions) upsetting a laminar flow they can work to my advantage once I figure them out, especially a tailwind.

I have started putting up streamers which do help. The really confounding part is where I shoot it's basically down a road lined by trees which also is slightly hilly--and opens up into flat wide gravel pit areas at both ends if shooting past 200 yds.
Very often the wind can be blowing or gusting in opposite directions at either end of the road. Then it's a game of timing the balance of the winds--and trying to shoot a string as quickly as I can when things look good.
 
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You are by far outshooting me
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If it makes you feel any better--I went out this morning and shot in winds in the 5 to 10 mph range; no matter how hard I tried to dope the wind and timing--the best I got was about a 3" group at 254 yds. after at least 50 shots.:rolleyes: 22lr has a "nefarious" side--once you get addicted it's hard to keep the round count low when shooting.:D
 
I've seen that video before--the ELR 22lr movement here in the US got a big push with Cutting Edge's introduction of solid 22lr bullets, but those things require absolute jedi master skills in matching up a load with a custom barrel that can optimally shoot them. I've tried--and so far have failed.

Couple of interesting things about that video--it looks to me like the bullet skips and makes a secondary impact in the right background in at least one of the shots, maybe bounces is a better way to describe it considering the trajectory. Notice also he picked early morning calm conditions to shoot in--that far flag showed only the slightest stirring of any kind of wind. But the fascinating part to me is that it appears to me that dispersion of shots seem to be mostly in elevation--not windage, which is exactly what I typically experience in ranges past 150 yards. I shot my 17 HMR and 22 lr at 230 yds yesterday in wind and the HMR's flatter trajectory gave it a huge advantage in any kind of wind.
 
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