I am looking to build a long range rifle for target shooting. I am looking between a 6.5 and a 7mm Rem Mag. I am wanting to be able to expand out to shoot up to 1300m to 1500m any thoughts. looking at bartlein for barrel and defiance action. not sure on stock yet.
merwin907
Jan 13
Discussion
Oh lord why didn't I listen! Why did the Steiner have to be out of stock everywhere I looked! I ended up getting a 5-20x50mm Razor HD for $1899.99, what a great deal. Put in on my beautiful newly rebuilt savage 110. XLR chassis, MPA single piece rings, Atlas BT-35 bipod, a smoking hot 29 inch stainless heavy palma barrel, and a camo Cerakote on the whole thing. I get it all together and I am ready to shoot laser beams with this thing. Nope, POI shifts as much as 10 MOA JUST SITTING IN THE CASE. I cant get it zeroed, cant index a FS, cant do anything because of a $1900 POS. I saved my pennies for so long to have a rifle that would make heads turn. I was starting to really reach out there with the range- pushing 1200, 1300 yards and making first round hits- so I wanted to treat myself to something nice after practicing twice a week for almost two years straight. I had my eye on the Steiner T5XI, and they were on sale for like 1300 bucks, but everyone else and their sister saw it too and bought them up quick. I settled... I am sending the scope to vortex today, hopefully I will get one back that works. I was in denial- Couldn't believe the stories were true. I tried everything to correct the problem. Bedded the action into the chassis, unmounted and remounted the optic like ten times. messed with torque and turret caps. Its a crying shame that at 400 yards, I can't hit the target because the scope put my projectile three feet to the right. If they send me a new scope as some attempt to rectify the issue, I am going to the local fudd forums and I am going to sell it for $1500 brand new in the box, and I am going to put my SWFA back on until I can afford something from IOR. at least with SWFA I know damn well I will make a hit whether its rain or shine- I have three of them and they are all reliable. like, go-to-war level reliable. Its sad that a guy can start really feeling confident about LR, and then have a piece of equipment bring him down. I took this scope to my first competitive shoot ever in my life and I didn't hit a single target- put me in last place... I felt like a moron lugging this 28 pound beast of a rifle around like I was some kind of badass and then have my equipment fail on me- totally making me look like an idiot. further more, half of the guys out there had vortex scopes that somehow worked. makes me sick. I am glad you all are here to listen to my angst. sure, I could afford to be a little more humble about the whole thing- and I would be if this wasn't a $1900 mistake. Had Athlon been known to me before hand, I would have went with that.
7mm Rem mag has downsides but is really nice in its way. The belted case ends up making for shorter than necessary case life and other minor hassles. It's also got a huge appetite for powder. I shoot a couple of them. < 100 rounds per pound of powder starts stacking up pretty quick. Something like a .284win would give you the 7mm bullet, plenty of case capacity and decent barrel life. A 6.5x284 takes from barrel life quite a bit but pumps velocities way up and long 6.5's have pretty huge BC's. I'd also factor in recoil. Heavier bullets is more kick and there's no attenuating recoil from bullet mass. Only from powder mass. You can get a 6.5CM to 1500 supersonic but that's going to be pretty close to the limit especially in dense air. Since you're building, I'd think more .284win. You can take a 7mag to 2k with the right bullet and load but that might be just a little more snot than you need and 7mag will have no better barrel life than a 6.5x.284.