Hi folks!
Rifles and riflecraft has always been a strong interest for me, but about three years ago I "discovered" nice shotguns and the clay shooting sports. I dove deep down that rabbit hole and had a total blast experiencing the sport of competitive sporting clays, so much so that I re-allocated my shooting time almost exclusively to clays and began to work my way up the ladder in our national competitive league. As I got better and ascended through the various classes, something strange happened in that I began to enjoy it less and less. My mind turned more and more to my lost but not forgotten love for rifles and how much I enjoy practicing practical shooting from field positions.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I REALLY enjoy practicing with the rifle; possibly more than I enjoy my annual trips afield to fill our freezer with wild game. If you know me at all, you'll know that I LOVE hunting, so to realize that I love the rifle practice equally as much, this was a pretty big deal for me.
So I decided that rather than clays this summer, I'm going to allocate much more of my recreational time to bolt action rifles. The past few years been hunting with a Browning X-Bolt in 30-06, and while it's killed a lot of deer and elk for me I've never really felt the romance with it and am wanting to try something new again. I've played with lots with remingtons, winchesters, savages, some Blasers, Garands and M14/305 type rifles, some rugers, and even a couple custom actions. But I've never tried a Tikka or a SAKO. Time for a trip to the gun store!
Tikka's new T3x rifles seemed pretty neat, and I was kinda gravitating towards trying out the new Canadian Ranger Rifle, or as Tikka calls it the T3x Arctic. But impulse and curiosity won out over repulsion of the Arctic's orange laminate stock, and I left the store with a Tikka T3x TacA1:
I had 4 or 5 range sessions with the TacA1, but came to the decision that a chassis style gun was just not ideal for the type of practical-field-position that I enjoy so much. Proned-out off a bipod this rifle and I were deadly accurate...easily less than a minute, and often less than 1/2 minute. Sitting I was pretty good too, but kneeling and especially standing I struggle to hold tight more than I'm used to. I loved the action of the gun, but in the end I had to admit that the weight and pistol-grip ergonomics were not for me. So up on the EE she went and sold to someone who's likely going to love her better than I would.
Now with the TacA1 gone, I had the funds to pick up a Tikka T3x Arctic....woohoo! While my plan was to pull the iron sights off the rifle completely such that I could mount my scope in the optimal position (low), I was pretty curious about how the iron sights would shoot. So before doing rifle surgery to take off the irons, I hit the range to shoot with them. They were close to being zeroed right out of the box, and with only a small downward adjustment to the front sight (made with a simple flat headed screwdriver) and a few clicks of windage, I was both shocked and thrilled at how well the diopter sights worked. I set up a few gongs and had a total riot ringing them between 100 and 400 meters. The rear diopter apparatus of the Arctic's sight system worked really well for this.....it has a turning drum with incrementally smaller apertures that go all the way to 600 meters! The best part was that the diopters have built-in elevation adjustment that ACTUALLY WORK - provided I could see the gong (an interesting issue), I would just dial the aperture to the appropriate range. Boom............GONG! I have not had that much fun in a long time.
The gun is reasonably light with just the irons, and feels quite comfortable to cinch up into such that good solid position seemed easy to find. I liked it so much that I decided to keep it in irons, and sold one of my fancy shotguns so I could get another to undergo surgery for my scoped-rifle project. I took her twin-sister home a couple days later and removed the irons as well as the short picatinny rail that Tikka both machine-screws AND pins to the top of the gun. I then used a set of low Warne 30mm rings to mount my Swarovski Z8i 1.7-13x43:
With the Swarovski weighing in at 22 ounces + a few more for the steel rings, on an 8lb rifle the resulting rig is not exactly light at 10lbs. But compared to the 11lbs of the TacA1 plus glass for a total package weight of just under 13 lbs, the rifle felt quite a bit more stable in the sitting, kneeling, and standing positions and consequently I absolutely believe I shoot it better. Proned-out, this rifle was easily as-accurate as the TacA1 and as I ran through my field-position practice routine a big smile came over my face.
So with a newly kindled fire for riflecraft and field-position practice, who would be interested in a summer-2017 iteration of the hunter marksman challenge??
Proposed course of fire would be, in a nutshell, 10 rounds at 100 yards fired at an 8 inch plate, 2 x standing, 2 x kneeling, 2 x sitting, 2 x kneeling or sitting supported, 2 x prone. How many hits and how long did it take? Downloadable target here. If there is any interest I will get another thread going for us to share range stories and results.
Thanks for reading, and I hope I'll get to share some virtual range sessions with you all!
Cheers,
Brobee
Rifles and riflecraft has always been a strong interest for me, but about three years ago I "discovered" nice shotguns and the clay shooting sports. I dove deep down that rabbit hole and had a total blast experiencing the sport of competitive sporting clays, so much so that I re-allocated my shooting time almost exclusively to clays and began to work my way up the ladder in our national competitive league. As I got better and ascended through the various classes, something strange happened in that I began to enjoy it less and less. My mind turned more and more to my lost but not forgotten love for rifles and how much I enjoy practicing practical shooting from field positions.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I REALLY enjoy practicing with the rifle; possibly more than I enjoy my annual trips afield to fill our freezer with wild game. If you know me at all, you'll know that I LOVE hunting, so to realize that I love the rifle practice equally as much, this was a pretty big deal for me.
So I decided that rather than clays this summer, I'm going to allocate much more of my recreational time to bolt action rifles. The past few years been hunting with a Browning X-Bolt in 30-06, and while it's killed a lot of deer and elk for me I've never really felt the romance with it and am wanting to try something new again. I've played with lots with remingtons, winchesters, savages, some Blasers, Garands and M14/305 type rifles, some rugers, and even a couple custom actions. But I've never tried a Tikka or a SAKO. Time for a trip to the gun store!
Tikka's new T3x rifles seemed pretty neat, and I was kinda gravitating towards trying out the new Canadian Ranger Rifle, or as Tikka calls it the T3x Arctic. But impulse and curiosity won out over repulsion of the Arctic's orange laminate stock, and I left the store with a Tikka T3x TacA1:
I had 4 or 5 range sessions with the TacA1, but came to the decision that a chassis style gun was just not ideal for the type of practical-field-position that I enjoy so much. Proned-out off a bipod this rifle and I were deadly accurate...easily less than a minute, and often less than 1/2 minute. Sitting I was pretty good too, but kneeling and especially standing I struggle to hold tight more than I'm used to. I loved the action of the gun, but in the end I had to admit that the weight and pistol-grip ergonomics were not for me. So up on the EE she went and sold to someone who's likely going to love her better than I would.
Now with the TacA1 gone, I had the funds to pick up a Tikka T3x Arctic....woohoo! While my plan was to pull the iron sights off the rifle completely such that I could mount my scope in the optimal position (low), I was pretty curious about how the iron sights would shoot. So before doing rifle surgery to take off the irons, I hit the range to shoot with them. They were close to being zeroed right out of the box, and with only a small downward adjustment to the front sight (made with a simple flat headed screwdriver) and a few clicks of windage, I was both shocked and thrilled at how well the diopter sights worked. I set up a few gongs and had a total riot ringing them between 100 and 400 meters. The rear diopter apparatus of the Arctic's sight system worked really well for this.....it has a turning drum with incrementally smaller apertures that go all the way to 600 meters! The best part was that the diopters have built-in elevation adjustment that ACTUALLY WORK - provided I could see the gong (an interesting issue), I would just dial the aperture to the appropriate range. Boom............GONG! I have not had that much fun in a long time.
The gun is reasonably light with just the irons, and feels quite comfortable to cinch up into such that good solid position seemed easy to find. I liked it so much that I decided to keep it in irons, and sold one of my fancy shotguns so I could get another to undergo surgery for my scoped-rifle project. I took her twin-sister home a couple days later and removed the irons as well as the short picatinny rail that Tikka both machine-screws AND pins to the top of the gun. I then used a set of low Warne 30mm rings to mount my Swarovski Z8i 1.7-13x43:
With the Swarovski weighing in at 22 ounces + a few more for the steel rings, on an 8lb rifle the resulting rig is not exactly light at 10lbs. But compared to the 11lbs of the TacA1 plus glass for a total package weight of just under 13 lbs, the rifle felt quite a bit more stable in the sitting, kneeling, and standing positions and consequently I absolutely believe I shoot it better. Proned-out, this rifle was easily as-accurate as the TacA1 and as I ran through my field-position practice routine a big smile came over my face.
So with a newly kindled fire for riflecraft and field-position practice, who would be interested in a summer-2017 iteration of the hunter marksman challenge??
Proposed course of fire would be, in a nutshell, 10 rounds at 100 yards fired at an 8 inch plate, 2 x standing, 2 x kneeling, 2 x sitting, 2 x kneeling or sitting supported, 2 x prone. How many hits and how long did it take? Downloadable target here. If there is any interest I will get another thread going for us to share range stories and results.
Thanks for reading, and I hope I'll get to share some virtual range sessions with you all!
Cheers,
Brobee
Last edited:
