I had some time yesterday evening to hit the 1000 yard line at Douglas Ridge. My intention was to shoot the 80 SMK, but somehow I packed the wrong ammo box which only had 100 rounds of .223 Rem loaded with 77 SMK bullets for an upcoming service rifle match. Ugh!
Fortunately I did have some 88 ELD factory ammo and 88 ELD hand loads. The factory stuff is definitely tamer than my hand loads. The brass ejects nicely at about 3:30 with a silencer and my 24″ 1:6.5 twist barrel. Come up at 1000 yards with the factory ammo is about 10 mils, while my hand loads were centered at about 9.5 mils. Wind was only up to maybe 5 mph but was switching from up range to down range and from left and right. Definitely a tricky situation to put good groups together.
On another note, the 1000 yard targets from Midway were perfect for my Caldwell target camera system. These photos are from up close with my phone. The first one is my sight in target that I had the Caldwell camera pointed at. I used this one to chase my zero for the different loads I was shooting:
That little bug was living dangerously. Once dialed in on this target I adjusted what should have been for zero then shot blind on the other targets. First the factory Hornady 88 ELD:
A little high, a little right. The wind had changed from up rang (from target to shooter) to left to right, and so bullet impact was right and high. There aren’t any flags up and there was effectively zero mirage today so I didn’t bother doping the wind. I shot these pretty quickly too, about 5 seconds between shots. Next some hand loads with RL17:
This was after adjusting 5 clicks down (0.1 mil/click). Again I’m chalking the high shots to changing wind conditions. I wasn’t letting the barrel and silencer cool either, which probably didn’t help with my accuracy, again shooting this string in under 30 seconds.
Conclusion: .224 Valkyrie can reach out there easily. I didn’t miss paper at 1000 yards with any rounds. It helps to have 42″ square targets, which you can get at Midway USA.