Two .16XX agg's in one day..
... was a day of a lifetime. Nobody was more surprised than I was that this happened. About one time every year I am a spectator watching the gun that I am shooting perform that well. I am usually just along for the ride when this happens. I was lucky to shoot it at my home range, but unfortunately I would have liked to have shot them a week and a half later. At the risk of not getting too greedy I'll take what I was given.
Last Saturday I had one of those days. I watched the flags and when something looked decent, I let the gun do its work.
The incredible thing about it was that this happened to me with two different guns. One is my favorite LV Bat/Scoville #126. This gun has given me nine HOF points; three of which was the action out of the stock on my Jay Young rail gun last year at St. Louis. I put a new Krieger on it on Friday before the match and decided to shoot an agg. with it to see if it would work. It did. I shot Hottenstein boatails .005 off the jam with 29.2 of lot # 18166 of 8208. I use the standard Federal 205's. The barrel was chambered by Dwight Scott with an .035 Hendriksen reamer with a degree and a half leade. I had a stock Leupold 45X on the gun. I put it up after Saturday morning with hopes that I can get it to shoot similarly well at Kelbly's next week.
In the afternoon I shot my HV Bat/Scoville #119 with a Krieger barrel that has about 3,000 rounds on it. This was the gun that I, and three other guys shot at the IBS benchrest school a couple of weeks ago. Then I shot 29.8 of 133, but on Saturday I used the same seating depth and load of 29.2 of # 18166 as in the light gun. This gun also has a stock Leupold 45X on it. This action on one of my rail tops was shot by Bob Scarbrough, Jr. for three points at Canastota in 2006. I shot a .1955 grand with this gun over the weekend and with 3,000 rounds it still doesn't cooper foul. I'm afraid to shoot it at Kelbly's and have it die on me with one group left to go; but I feel that the gun earned its chance next week so I'll give it a try.
I shot another LV gun and barrel on Sunday afternoon at LV 200 so as to not put rounds on that new barrel that I shot on Saturday morning. Going into Kelbly's that first barrel has 56 rounds on it.
Dan Honert is right that I have a Gary Hayes front rest with a Randy Johanson windage top.
I am honored to have been along for the ride when those two guns did what they do best. I wish that everyone who shoots benchrest would get a chance to experience the kind of day shooting that I had last week at least one time in their career. I'm not sure, but Jackie may have done this a few years ago at Rachael's Glen or one of the Texas matches. Maybe he would respond to this question.
I also bought a lotto ticket on the way home from the range and won $25. Go figure.
