Great Starter Setup: Long-Range Rifle and Accessories
Q: What happens when a professor in a technical area decides to get into long-range shooting?

A: He ends up with the gear described in this document, after a huge amount of research and trial and error.

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Q: What happens when he is getting divorced later (after not having time to shoot the rifle for 2+ years)?

A: He sells it. This saves those who hope to get into long-range shooting a HUGE amount of time. Especially if you do not presently have time to learn and master handloading…

Summary

OK, so nowadays Dave is selling his rifle and setup (he lives in Pullman; not interested in shipping so someone within 100 miles of Pullman, or near Missoula). In doing so, anyone who wants to get into long-distance shooting can buy this and save a HUGE amount of time in researching options.

Here is what he is selling:

Item	List ($)
Rifle Setup	3290
Ammo	106
Supporting Gear	398
Gear in the Toolbox	320
TOTAL$$	4114

Asking Price: $3500.

Background

Dave started his interest in long-range shooting 10+ years ago (really before that, when he was at West Point 1979+). So he read a lot of books, and then took a few long-range shooting clinics from Army Major (ret) Eugene Econ, at a few boomershoots. That went OK, but after a few times Gene said (rightly so) that his .308 hunting rifle was not accurate enough for his classes (way too much wasted time on too-loose variables). Ergo, he started to look around. [Now switching from the third person to the first person… of that bothers you, then go FY yourself!]

In doing so, I learned that the 6.5 Creedmoor was an almost perfect match. It was designed to be a long-range round that a non-handloader could hope to be competitive with, at long distances. Furthermore, I learned that in the last few years, more than half of the winners in long-distance rifle competitions were either a 6mm or a 6.5mm bullet. So the ballistics seemed to shine here. And here's an analysis on "Going Long for Less"; they like the 6.5 Creedmoor!

So, then, after doing some homework, I was at a boomershoot (ca. 2010) with my son, Sam. Near the end, we were leaving and were passing by Monte, the Savage Rep for the area but who was also formerly on the US National rifle team (he had been an assistant at Gene’s long-range shooting clinic the day before). Monte let Sam shoot his Savage Long-Range Precision Model 12 (LRP-12). Sam was able to hit 3 of 3 man-sized targets at 700 yards. To say that he and I were impressed would be an understatement!

So I took the plunge. Not only getting the Savage LRP-12. But also getting it decked out appropriately, with advice from Monte and others. He ended up with the Rifle Setup described below (with huge help from Monte):

Rifle Setup

· Savage LRP-12 6.5 Creedmoor Rifle

· Ken Farrell base (30 MOA tapered)

· Ken Farrell scope rings

· flatline ops sight level

· CenterShot Muzzle Brake

· Sightron SIII 8-32x56 MOA-2 scope

· Harris Bipod with swivel head: $50

· St. Clair Forend Benchrest Adaptor: $40

These cost right about $3290. Dave has competed with this at the Montana NW 1000 Yard Benchrest Club, where some world records have been set (e.g., a group of 10: 2.68” at 1000 yards).

The rifle has about 800 rounds shot through it. Not much….

Now, truth being told, you will NOT be in the top 5 or 10 in these competitions with this rifle setup; there are some of the best in the world here. However, it will be 20-40 matches at least until you can shoot better than the rifle can, i.e. you outgrow it.

Ammo

However, in order to shoot the dang rifle well, one needs good ammo. Like most of you, Dave did not have time to learn how to handload. However, Monte told him about a semi-custom ammo place, Copper Creek Ammo. There, Dave paid the shipping back and forth, as well as the load development cost, to get 1200 rounds tuned for his rifle. Here are the results. They are from a high-quality ZZZ chronograph at the LC Wildlife Club.

Cartidge	Sample	Mean(MV)	Stddev(MV)
Copper Creek (Berger 140 Hybrid Match)	41	2771	14.0
Hornady Amax 140	19	2773	22.6
Nosler Trophy Grade 140	20	2578	24.5
Nosler Match Grade 140	19	2763	23.9

Spreadsheet PDF.

I’ll be happy to give you the full spreadsheet (in excel format). I hired my son and his friend to measure and weigh ALL of my Copper Creek Ammo. I was hoping to find any correlations between (length, weight) and MV. I have not had the time to do this analysis, but you can with the spredsheet if you want to. The hope here was to find ways to cluster the ammo into groups of 10 whereby the groups would have a smaller stddev(MV) than the set at large. Which would be good for competitions!

So you can see that my semi-custom ammo from Copper Creek absolutely kicks butt! Not quite sure? Well, if you have not read it yet, check out Brian Litz’s seminal book: Accuracy and Precision for Long-Rang Shooting: A Practical Guide for Riflemen. The difference between 22.6 Stddev and 14.0 for the Muzzle velocity is HUGE!

In my package that I am selling, it has the following ammo (all priced at $.25/round):

· Copper Creek (tuned for this rifle): 182= $45.50

· Hornady Amax 140: 84= $41.00

· Nosler Trophy Grade140: 0

· Nosler Match Grade 140: 79= $19.75

That adds up to the following: $106.25

Supporting Gear

So, actually, you are not quite ready to engage in long-range shooting (at least not effectively) with just the rifle setup and ammo above. Trust me, I learned that from multiple boomershoots plus multiple matches at the Missoula …. You need

· Fred Sled (lets you load on one round at a time, per benchrest rules, without dinging up the tip of the bullet): $28.00

· 2 10-round aftermarket magazines (work great, but FYI not allowed in the Missoula benchrest rules): $100

· Length Caliper: Hornady Digital Caliper 6” Stainless Steel: $25

· Weight scale: Frankford Arsenal DS750: $25

· Barsaka 25x125 spotting scope: $160

· Borka Multi Torque Driver MTD-15x72-12FS-MG: $50

This adds up to the following: $388

Gear in the toolbox

· Cost of the toolbox is about $40

· Sandbags (misc) :$80

· The Rock BR: $150

· Other Misc: $50

Total: $320

Summary

So if you are starting out in long-range shooting, you can hardly do better than to buy this setup that a stubborn techie professor spent a lot of time researching and procuring.

$3500 buys it for you! Email dave.bakken@gmail.com.