First impressions in a word... good. I think it's going to shoot well.
I mounted up (in the conventional location, not forward over the barrel) an old Leupold 3 x 9 that I had laying around and took it to the range with some factory loads. A fifty round box of Black Hills with 69 gr. MKs, and several boxes of PPU 55 gr. soft points.
I got the scope close with three shots and moved to a hundred yards. Five shots of the PPU sprinkled around the upper half of a 2" square but 5 rounds of the Black Hills went in an even 1/2". I was pretty excited about that but disappointed when I followed it with a 1.53" 5 shot group. I will say this, one shot spoiled that group and it was the first one after a scope adjustment. The next four went into .88". Two more 5 shot groups went .765" and .975". average for those groups, .924". Take out one errant shot and it becomes .780".
I went out to 200 yards but my results there didn't correlate with my 100 yard groups. My targets with 2" squares at 9x and a 4lb. trigger opened up my groups. What I did notice about the PPU, was that it must be pretty fast. They sprinkled around the lower half of the box... not much drop as best I can tell.
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I'm eager to start handloading; the factory loads shot today have considerable bullet jump to the lands. My rifle will chamber a round loaded to 2.46" while the Black Hills rounds were loaded to 2.243". Even so, the average for four, five shot groups was sub moa, a pretty small sample I admit but all in all, not too bad.
I mounted up (in the conventional location, not forward over the barrel) an old Leupold 3 x 9 that I had laying around and took it to the range with some factory loads. A fifty round box of Black Hills with 69 gr. MKs, and several boxes of PPU 55 gr. soft points.
I got the scope close with three shots and moved to a hundred yards. Five shots of the PPU sprinkled around the upper half of a 2" square but 5 rounds of the Black Hills went in an even 1/2". I was pretty excited about that but disappointed when I followed it with a 1.53" 5 shot group. I will say this, one shot spoiled that group and it was the first one after a scope adjustment. The next four went into .88". Two more 5 shot groups went .765" and .975". average for those groups, .924". Take out one errant shot and it becomes .780".
I went out to 200 yards but my results there didn't correlate with my 100 yard groups. My targets with 2" squares at 9x and a 4lb. trigger opened up my groups. What I did notice about the PPU, was that it must be pretty fast. They sprinkled around the lower half of the box... not much drop as best I can tell.
.
I'm eager to start handloading; the factory loads shot today have considerable bullet jump to the lands. My rifle will chamber a round loaded to 2.46" while the Black Hills rounds were loaded to 2.243". Even so, the average for four, five shot groups was sub moa, a pretty small sample I admit but all in all, not too bad.
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