Q 500m Fly Spotting Scopes & Cartridges

[Curtley78]

G'day Ned,

The loads I have tailored for the 7mm 08 IMP are yet to be chronographed. As soon as I have opportunity to do so I will let you know.

Regards

Sean

[jimbo]

G'Day BA,
have you looked through the 8-80 March? Is it as good as a ziess 20-60 in resolving bullet holes at 500m?

As for crying, I've done it twice and I don't think i can stand any further trauma!

Admittedly, I'd prefer the optics on the rifle not a tripod for faster shooting!

Cheerio Ned

No mate, not at 500m. I have however seen the photos that Stuart Elliott has taken through the lens at a target at 1000yds. Very Impressive and you can see the patches that they put over the bullet holes.

If you do a lot of long range work, the big March would certainly be worth considering, as it would be a life time investment. As I have told people for years, you can't wear scopes out by looking through them.

Cheers

BA

[petevm]

Hi Geoff,
It's been interesting following this forum - plenty of opinions from the experienced to the relative novice. I use Nightforce scopes exclusively on my rifles but back them up with a Swarovski 20-60X80 spotting scope (this is the 'High-Definition' version and to my knowledge nothing better exists). A while back at Canberra in the morning, before any mirage set in, I was able to see 30 cal bullet holes in the white part of the target at 1,000yds - no other spotter was as good. Despite this - at 500mt any amount of mirage negates these optical qualities to varying degree - and will defeat all optics once the mirage beats a Nightforce 12-42 wound back to about 35X where I usually run mine. Higher magnificaton is a myth - it can only enlarge the obvious or (more commonly) further blur the indistinct. Your pursuit of the magical spotter/rifle scope is not going to happen no matter how much money you throw at it. The beauty of having a spotting scope set up next to you is that you can run the preferred magnification on your rifle-scope and a different magnification on the spotter if you feel that will help (mirage not-withstanding). Having said all that, I would now like to add that despite the optical qualities of my Swarovski spotting scope I have rarely used it above 50X - so any talk of an 8-80x scope is entirely frivilous for serious competition work, as I doubt any serious contender would ever use such a scope at 80X when shooting 500mt (a gimmick at best to suck in the novice).

Pete

[RDavies]

Maybe where and when you shoot will dictate when you can make out bullet holes.
In August at a shoot in Brisbane at 1000yds, just after rain had cleared and no mirage was present I was able to check out bullet holes appearing on an orange spotting disk. This was with a 10-60X March scope and 7mm bullets. But then at a 5 day shoot in Canberra last week (warm weather, light winds, lots of mirage), I never once saw a bullet hole at 600M in the black. (I dont think I saw any 6mm holes at 300-500M with my Sightron either). I remember TonyZ posted a while back that a 60x March is a waste of money as mirage will stop you from seing any bullet holes. Yep, in Townsville, the mirage would probably limit any scope, as would any place in Australia in the warmer 9 months of the year. I do remember a few other March owners here though checking out 30 cal bullet holes this winter at 700M, and at 500-600yds it was done regularly. My 10-50 Sightron could see 6mm bullet holes at 600M at one stage recently as well.

A lot of money to spend on a scope though to find bullet holes in the few cooler/no mirage times of the year. And my cheap Sightron was not much better than my march either when mirage was up, like others said.

[a.JR]

In Australia a lot of guys make a choice about the gear they buy simply because of the FLY .. Well after 15 years of shooting Long Range Benchrest i think this is the wrong direction ,set yourself and your gear up to shoot small at 1K and the Fly will fall into line also..To shoot big scores in FLY,and big i believe is above 245 then you don't need to see one stinking little bullet hole in the target to get this job done .. And you Can get it done on bad mirage days, my best score of 253.6 was shot on a day that i probably saw only 3 bullet holes on 20 power, but the warmer target proved that you could not trust what you think you were seeing anyhow .. .. At 1000yds you can't trust spotting ALL the bullets holes in the white even if you can see them on good days , and if your waiting to confirm what you can see then i believe you have lost the match already.. Fly/ 600yd and 1000yd Benchrest is and never will be either F/Class or point blank bench ,.. The sooner that shooters change their ideas to suit the competition ,the sooner the good results will follow.. JR.. Jeff Rogers ..ps i have not used a spotting scope since 2001

[Ned Kelly]

G'Day All,
I was wondering when all the experienced shooters would start commenting.

Thanks for all the input, i'm beinging to think it is more to do with shooting strategy using a well tuned rifle that makes the grade.

Keep the info coming, it's great valueto all us novices!

Cheerio Ned

[Tony Z]

No matter how often these same questions get asked, there always is a split of views as to what way the Fly should be shot and what is the best cartridge option. From my own personal view and after one single solitary year of shooting a LG in all our matches up here, Light Guns suck. They are slow, they are twitchy and unless you have perfect bag setup or light recoil, precision is difficult to sustain. I cannot wait to get back into a HG. Simply, if a LG wins a Fly outright when in a field of HGs, those HGs should be piled into a heap, doused with an ample amount of fuel and set alight. What the HG will do and a LG won't is aggregate more consistently. One solitary great group means shit, but five 3 inch groups centered well mean a winning score. That is what a HG will do.

I cannot say this often enough, a new shooter to the sport of long range, should head to a HG straight up. Tune the sucker and then watch the flags and shoot. Most human error is damped out by the mass of the gun and it all becomes a very quick learning curve of trust the gun and flags to back yourself into taking the shot when you can barely see the "V" on a Fly target.

Now here is the question: is the object to win the Fly outright, or is it to win Light Gun? To think that you can win a Fly outright in a field of HGs while using a LG, has the statistics against you, as it should be.
Where Light Guns fail is at two ends. Firstly to get them to be nice and tame on the bags and repeat with some sort of precision, a light recoiling caliber cartridge combination is used. Nice to shoot but lose out to the big banger HG with its higher BC bullet in some nice magnum case. Then if you build a LG to compete with that, you gain the big bullet and BC, but then all precision with the rifle goes out the window with disruption on the bags, poor form because of more recoil etc. So it becomes a tail chase for the LG owners, nice to shoot looses out to the big BC, then big BC looses out with poor handling traits. The middle ground is something like a 6.5 Almost, or a 7 mil Maybe. Close but just not close enough to a 30 cal magnum in a chassis that recoils like a 22 Magnum. That is the real world and why i like HGs and would only enter a Fly match with a LG as a bet.

As to the question of scopes, there is no scope made and there will never be one made that can add to the accuracy of the rifle. But there is a whole bunch of scopes out there that will add to the precision of the rifle. To think that a March or a Nightforce is the difference between the groups/scores you shoot now and the groups/scores shot during these matches by other rifles is just pure fiction. What i have learnt from some years in BR is that in the short range version it is about fashion where it changes, like clothes, from season to season. But in the long range version it is more about function where it takes a lot to change from a known working formula. I agree with PVM where he is saying to be wary of the hype and advertising connected to certain products.

I think that the quickest and simplest way to get an edge in an event like the Fly is to just simply spend a bit of time searching through the various links to pages that have all the match reports where you can browse through the equipment lists to see who used what. I can tell you now that there is a couple of anomalies. Firstly John Rawson with that 6 mil Cactus and his numerous wins with it. Short life span cartridge, but a real hammer at the target. Then there is my own outright win with a LG in 6BR of all things. Scored 232.xx on a day where you where looking through soup all day. Gun weighed 12 pounds and was my LV rifle at the time complete with the 36x Leup. Great bullets won that day. There are a couple of others like those of Herb Valerius but you will see a trend if you lock out the anomalies. HGs win outright 99% of the time and they are near always a bigun in 30 or 7 mil Magnum of sorts. Light Guns show a slightly more open trend which i put down to handling more than caliber. Interesting read but pay most attention to the last 10 or 12 years. The years before that are more of an evolution rather than any showing of dominance where great shooters won then whereas great guns win now, or should i say great reloaders and tuners win now.

[BRT]

Hi Geoff,
- so any talk of an 8-80x scope is entirely frivilous for serious competition work, as I doubt any serious contender would ever use such a scope at 80X when shooting 500mt (a gimmick at best to suck in the novice).

Pete

Who are your 'serious" contenders Pete? Maybe the ones who sell that brand of scope you don't? Gimmick eh? You wish.

Richard Wild used the March 8-80 when he shot his record 5 shot group of 2" at 1,000 yards. He was using the scope on 70x or 80x as I recall. I also use that scope set on 80x when I can. Sure that does mean in more ideal conditions, overcast and cooler. When the mirage is up then nothing much overcomes it but I will say that the March 8-80 set at 42x is much better than your Nightforce is at 42x or any setting. Many competitors at the 1,000 yards BR here in Brisbane can attest to the fact that I usually have my scope on 80x when I can. They have observed it and they have all looked through the scope as well. I guess you have not seen one.







As to other use by "serious" contenders as you say, in shorter range stuff recently Annie and I both used an 8-80 on our 30 BR to set 2 new Australian records in Hunter Class BR. September actually. We used the scope on 80x at 100 yards and at 200 yards and it was great. She shot a 100 yd record of 250.22 dots and I shot a grand agg (100 + 200)of 500.31dots. In fact she shot 500.30 dot grand agg as well so the one rifle with that one 8-80 scope helped us achieve 1000 points and 61 dots for the days work. Only some people say you cannot use 80x. So your comment saying "the use of the 8-80x March scope is entirely frivilous for serious competition work", as you put it, doesn't stand up. As we have seen it is possible and your comments just look like sour grapes.

Stuart

[a.JR]

Stuart , I don't know where you got that target pic from as this is the 2inch group from Brisbane i have a pic of .. Will the real one please stand up ..JR..Jeff Rogers

[BRT]

Stuart , I don't know where you got that target pic from as this is the 2inch group from Brisbane i have a pic of .. Will the real one please stand up ..JR..Jeff Rogers

pre photo shop.jpg

Yep, same photo. Look where the shots are. Harder to see with the dots but guess what.... they are actually in the same place.

[a.JR]

Oh good that clears it up then , there is only one 2.067 group shot in Brisbane. The two different pics just threw me for a while ..JR..Jeff Rogers

Stuart , I don't know where you got that target pic from as this is the 2inch group from Brisbane i have a pic of .. Will the real one please stand up ..JR..Jeff Rogers

pre photo shop.jpg

Yep, same photo. Look where the shots are. Harder to see with the dots but guess what.... they are actually in the same place.

[BRT]

Oh good that clears it up then , there is only one 2.067 group shot in Brisbane. The two different pics just threw me for a while ..JR..Jeff Rogers

Stuart , I don't know where you got that target pic from as this is the 2inch group from Brisbane i have a pic of .. Will the real one please stand up ..JR..Jeff Rogers

pre photo shop.jpg

Yep, same photo. Look where the shots are. Harder to see with the dots but guess what.... they are actually in the same place.

Yeah, I can see how it would...eh?

[a.JR]

Eh stuart, After getting over the shock of the mystery targets i reread your Infomercial above , seems we a are at crossed swords , so to speak , this is about what is usable for LRBR.. The magic 2 ins group in Bris was shot using the marked target system ,was it not . So your saying that the 80 power scope was invaluable to see the 4inch square spotting discs at 1000yds ,christ i can see em quite clearly with 20 power scope that costs about $500.. Then you rattle on like the bloke on DANOZ DIRECT about shooting Hunter class at 1/200 yds .. Just to clear it up for ya ,it's 500 meters and through to 1000yds the original poster asked for the info on .. As PVM mentioned there is not need to spend the equal of a trip to Europe on the scope to shoot good at 1K ,look at me ,a 14 year old Nightforce and a 1000 yd 7.639 inch 10 match agg for 2010, Who'd a thunk it, eh ..JR..Jeff Rogers

[petevm]

Stuart and others,
May I respectfully suggest you look again at the title of this discussion! 500m Fly Spotting Scopes & Cartridges. All that I have posted still stands. Any reference I made to the use of my spotting scope at 1,000 yds was purely to demonstrate that it's optics are second to none, it was not intended to bring 1,000 yard competition into the discussion. I will re-iterate that on a clear day one can see 22 cal bullet holes thru most any quality scope of 25X upward so no need for extremely high magnification. Conversrely, decent mirage will negate all optics. Most days will offer a bit of a mix of conditions and hence my earlier comment that my spotting scope is rarely, if ever, used above 50X. If I can't see my bullet holes thru my Nightforce at 35X then I am not likely to see them thru the spotter either - regardless of power setting. Of course you can sit there for a while and sooner or later you will get a glimpse as the mirage clears momentarily but this will generally break the rhythm of your shooting - you may as well go back to the splash plate and start again. The most important usage of my spotter is not for when I am shooting but when I am spotting for others. If I can see the bullet hole I can mark it while the shooter reloads - speeds things up nicely. On the other hand in heavy mirage I can often see the approxiamate flight path of the bullet and advise the shooter accordingly. Once again all of this at no more than 50X.
Waffling on about using 80x in other disciplines is pointless in this discussion - so my comment re a 'gimmick' stands. For the 500m Fly a $1700 NF 12-42 is all one needs - to spend more on the rifle scope is simply a waste of money. As for the comment by Stuart that the March optics are superior to Nightforce what else could we expect from someone with a vested interest in the March product. Let's see an independent comparison with at least 5 samples of each brand to get a fair result.

[Ned Kelly]

G'Day All,
well thanks for the input on optics, I had suspected as much for 500m Fly, as my main experience at LR is F class. I'll save my pennies for barrels, bullets and maybe an upgraded spotting scope, probably a nikon.

Since it very unlikely that I'll build a dedicated HG and stick to 17lb LG class with a weight system for F class, what is the largest practical cartridge that does not produce excessive torque/recoil above a 6x47lapua. It seems the typical ca;libres in LG are 6BR, 6BRX/Dasher or similar but I've had a quick look on this site but most results do not show equipment lists. So where the equipment lists are on the web? Any suggestions as to where they my be located would be great.

Failing that could members please list typical LG cartridges and bullets used. I can work it out from there

Thanks for all the information offered so far as it re-inforces my limited 500m Fly experiences in both cold and warm Victorian weather!

Cheerio Ned