Graham Smith

Saw a review of a (new?) 3-gun bag from Uncle Mikes that's designed to fit inside a standard Pelican/Storm rifle case (without foam) for travel.

This is something that I had only run across in passing until you brought it up, but I've been reading more about it and it's actually quite an interesting study of internal ballistics. Normally you don't want to use a pistol powder in a rifle because it won't work well and if you use the volumes required for most rifle powders, you will blow the rifle into the next county (and pieces of you with it). It seems that with Trail Boss, it's hard to use too much because the powder is quite bulky and rapidly fills the case. You can, apparently, fill the case up to where the base of the bullet is and still have a safe load.

The idea behind these loads is to give the bullet a sharp punch right off rather than having a slow burn that runs the length of the barrel. You get a lot less velocity but by it's very nature you don't get nearly the same consistency. I've seen some recommendations for using pistol powders with lighter weight bullets as you describe but they are a very special purpose load. I believe that Trail Boss was originally developed for low velocity cowboy shooting loads. These can be used in both pistol and rifle.

I really question the advice of using any pistol powder as a .308 rifle powder. They are extremely fast burning compared to traditional rifle powders. You can use it, but at reduced loads and I would expect that even a small variation in charge could result in a large change in velocity. Are you certain that the Trail Boss loads you have read about are not sub-sonic loads? This type of load is a whole different ball game. A lower velocity should not effect accuracy (or more correctly, precision) that much at 100yd as long as you have a consistent load. That said, some rifles like some bullets and powders while others like something else. The trick is to start with a low load and work up and look for the sweet spot. That is the place in the load where you get good precision and where small variations in charge have very small variations in velocity. If you are going to use plated ammo, then don't go cheap. The Xtreme bullets have a good reputation so you should be fine with them. Just to cover all the bases, the Mossbergs are good hunting rifles, but don't expect the kind of precision you would be getting from a target rifle.

Not sure if it would work with a bolt gun, but JEC has a brake with an optional sleeve that covers the ports for those times when you don't want a brake. It can also be used as a mount for some suppressors.

Depends on what you are using it for. A suppressor is arguably, the best thing you can put on it. A lot of serious bolt gun shooters won't use a brake of any kind. On the other hand, if you are shooting something like practical rifle or sniper competitions, then you might want to have a look at this: http://precisionrifleblog.com/2014/01/18/best-muzzle-brake-and-rifle-suppressor/

There are a number of "great tools", IF you already know how to use them. For someone starting from scratch, with no experience with a particular tool, it may be a completely different story. I find PowerPoint to be fairly easy to use and even created some templates with the ranges and props to scale for creating plan views. But give that to someone who hasn't used PowerPoint and who hasn't a clue what a plan view is, and they will be lost.

Let the good times roll. And welcome to the wonderful world of action shooting.

Weak/Stong is different. Each shot taken with both hands rather that one handed is a distinct advantage. The time gained by not doing a reload may, as Nik says, have a bigger advantage depending on the stage. And it just occurred to me that one thing that was distorting my view on advantage is that this stage had a reload when changing sides of a barricade. That's a good deal less advantage than on something like El Presidente where there is no barricade and no position change. It's all relative. But it's a mistake I won't make again.

I got caught making an error regarding 10.2.4 last Saturday. I remembered a lengthy discussion in a CRO class we hosted regarding penalties and the point that was made that one penalty is assessed for each shot if the shooter has gained an advantage in those shots - like in standing outside the shooting area. So when the question of shots fired after failing to make a mandatory reload came up on a classifier, I said one penalty. I was wrong as can be seen from 10.2.4 Now the question in my mind is why was I wrong. A shooter may gain an advantage for that first shot after failing to do the reload, but they certainly don't gain an advantage for every shot. I simply don't get the reasoning behind 10.2.4. Can anyone explain it as anything other than, "That's the way it's always been done?"

To the question of a separate division, no. We don't need more divisions. To the question of shooting Open Minor, there are people who do it and do quite well. We had one guy with a regular G17 with factory magazines and a red dot shoot a match a few months back and he did pretty darn good, considering.

As a match director, I spend the first 3-4 hours of match day managing the controlled chaos of coordinating everything to see that the stages get setup and registration gets done and solving problems, etc etc. By the time I get everything running and can start to think about actually shooting, I'm often so wired that settling down is nearly impossible and my shooting suffers as a result. The only thing you should be thinking about is the stage in front of you. Take your time, shoot carefully, and above all, enjoy yourself. You are there to have fun. If you are wound up so tight you squeak when you move, then you won't shoot well and won't have fun.

In a match I setup Saturday, I put two forward poppers next to each other with a rear popper behind. From the shooting area, all three were easily seen so people tended to shoot them left to right. I saw four people who hit the left popper and when to shoot the middle (rear) popper and had their bullet actually strike the left popper as it was coming down, then shoot the right one. Three shots, three dings, but only two down. Now that the match is over I can say that I designed this array this way on purpose - I knew that it might catch a few people. Not trying to be mean but just trying to make people think a bit. Of course, the "trick" to that array was to either shoot very fast or shoot the middle (rear) popper first. The really strange thing is that in one squad, even when this happened to someone and the RO told them why, the rest of the squad continued to shoot it left to right and just a few shooters later someone had to take a makeup shot for the same reason.

Defensive shooting instructors teach you to do a "scan" after shooting to "see if there are any more bad guys that need shooting". That's not a bad habit to get into. Of course if it takes you 2-3 seconds to spot a standing popper then you might be better off leaving it standing, as long as you are sure you shot at it. How many seconds = 1 miss? Depends on the COF.

If you really want to learn spotting, you either need to team up with an experienced spotter or take a class that teach it. I tried a few times to figure it out but it wasn't until I took a class that teamed shooters up for three days of shooting that it really made any sense. You are never going to be able to be in a position where you can see things exactly the same as the shooter but if you can get low, immediately behind them or low right next to them, you can start to learn to see the trace and the splash. That part is fairly easy. Knowing where that trace and splash is in relation to the target is the real trick. Communication with the shooter is also an issue. If you are behind them, they can have trouble hearing what you are saying so sometimes it's better to be right beside them. That's a tougher place to spot from however. Here's a few pictures at the place I trained: https://www.snipercentral.com/pm.phtml

Since this has opened up again, I'll jump back in with our recent experience. We've been doing 6 stages and somewhere between 60-70 shooters most months for the past two years. We've tried doing 6 squads and 5 squads and 5 seems to work better even though that's more people per squad. The reason is that we can start with one empty bay which seems to help stages from getting backed up as much. The backups still happen because some squads are faster and some stages are longer, etc, but if you walk around during the day (which I do as the MD) you will see that more often than not, if one squad is waiting for the prior squad to finish, it's usually only a short wait. And that short wait gives people time to fuss with their gear and eat and make a run to the porta-potty, etc.

It is a high heat resistant adhesive, which is why it's used for muzzle devices. IIRC, you are supposed to be able to just remove it with a wrench and a good twist. Soaking the threads in water will help remove the residue.

Agreed. One observation here, expense accounts do sometimes have entries that lack receipts. That doesn't mean that they should be left unreconciled - the expenses should be documented and either be approved or denied promptly. I'm trying to not take sides, but it's hard to not look at this is sloppy bookkeeping. And an auditor should not be letting something like this pass.

I'm not going to obsess over it but I don't want to waste time on a high pressure powder that I have to back off on, or worry about throwing a bunch of slow burning powder out the muzzle.

Right now, the thing I am mainly trying to sort out is what powders to have a look at. Don't you wish that they sold 1/4 lb sample bottles of powder? As I said, trying to sort out which might be good for a 20" AR is a bit tough since most (published) loads are for a 24" barrel which is probably a bolt gun. I'm talking about the manufacturers published loads, BTW. I'm going to take recommendations from people and see what the mfg has to say. Partly because they generally have the barrel length, COA, velocity, and pressure and I work on the basis of gathering as much verifiable information I can and then throwing out the stuff that turns out not to matter. I suspect that pressure is going to be one of those things in this case but I'm not in any rush. The powder that I am seeing at the top of a lot of lists is AA2520. This powder is (or rather was) on my list of .308 powders to look at so it may be worth some time. But my starting point has to be AA2230 which I use for .223 and which also looks good for Grendel. CFE223 would be the first powder I don't have that I would be likely to try because it can also be used in both calibers. My next choice would have to be 8208 XBR but I'm still bothered by the fact that I'm seeing that a lot of places as a load for bolt guns. This whole bolt gun vs AR thing is a real PITA. Way too many "recommendations" I'm seeing on other forums are too vague and often seem to be based on something someone read somewhere. Like this classic that I just copied from another forum, "I've heard Varget is the go to powder for 30 cal." Well, I've tried Varget in both my AR 5.56 and in my bolt .308 and had lousy results both times. One real problem with loading in general is that there are often way too many choices. Unless you've got endless time and money to spend on testing (and throwing out unused powder), you pretty much have to settle for trying a couple things and then choosing one. I've used two powders (H4895 and RL15) for my .308 that are equally accurate but I like the feel of RL15 over the H4895 so that's what I use. But there may be a powder that I haven't tried that may work better - who knows. FWIW, the load data from Accurate Arms includes a section specifically for AR15 style 6.5 Grendel tested with a 20" barrel. This is giving me some good information for comparison. And Alexander Arms data sheet shows AA2520 as their top choice for 123gr bullets. Oddly, they have no Hornady bullets on their reloading data sheet.

I've changed how I've been searching and am seeing XBR as a powder a lot more now. Trouble is, it's usually mentioned in conjunction with a 24" barrel and no indication if it's for a bolt gun or AR15. That last part is the most frustrating.

Accurate Shooter is on my regular read list and it was some information here that first got me interested in this cartridge. I have found that they frequently deal with information more suited to bench rest shooters and/or single shot shooters. A lot of good information but not always what I need. I've been to the 65Grendel forum before and found the comments to be an extremely mixed bag with several cases that appeared to be the blind leading the blind. Doesn't mean I don't read, just that I'm careful with what I take as fact.

I don't believe I've seen IMR 8280 or RL 15 recommended before. The IMR looks to be a similar speed to AA2230 and H4895 which are on my list. I use RL 15 for my 178gr .308 and it works well, but I had no plans of trying it for a Grendel. Also, most recommendations are for magnum primers, probably because that's the general recommendation for ball powders. As to the Lapua brass, that's also my preference. If I was shooting someplace where I couldn't get my brass back, I might think twice about that, however.

There are huge differences between the 100gr and 123gr bullets. The heavier bullets are high BC bullets for longer range accuracy while the 100gr are mostly for hunting. Grendel brass normally has small primer pockets, so you are going to have to tailor your loads to work with large primers. Prvi brass is not very high quality so you are going to have to watch it very carefully if you are reloading. Chances are you will only be able to get 3-4 loads out of it before you see pressure signs. And a 24" barrel will do better with a slightly slower powder while a 20" will do better with a slightly faster powder. So, basically, any loads that might work for me probably won't work for you. Like I said, loading for cartridges like the Grendel can get complicated.

OK, I've found something that helps point the way. An article that traces the evolution of the cartridge states, "The smaller Grendel has a propensity for double-base ball type propellants." And the powders that people seem to have better results with fit the bill. Read more: http://www.rifleshootermag.com/uncategorized/6-5-grendel-evolution/#ixzz3DQ0h2tOB So, since I have AA2230 on hand, I think that I'll start with that with some AMax bullets and see what that gets me. Then try and get some CFE223 to try out.