Target Sports

PROJECT RIFLE: SMOOTH OPERATOR

Created on 29th May 2009

In part 3, ROB HUNTER finds the Surgeon is just what the doctor ordered when he takes it sniping in Prague

SEVERAL MONTHS ago, when Vince Bottomley dropped a small cartridge in my hands and, with a big grin on his face, said: "it spanks your .308 in wind and drop, and with less bang, too," my response was b******s, but I should have known better than to question him.

Vince has been shooting very successfully with the Swiss Match and other small capacity rounds in 6mm for some time, so the 6.5x47 was a natural progression; plus a quick look at the 6mmbr website also shows it's being used by some of the top US tactical/sniper competitors, because of its ballistic abilities and light recoil. When I got home I ran the .308 and 6.5 cases through the Quickload programme, which showed the 6.5x47 is a full 100" flatter in trajectory at 1,000yd and, in a 10mph crosswind, shows 23" less drift - impressive stats!

Horses for courses

Around this time I was invited back to the Strenla military range on the Czech Slovac border for another sniper competition in mid-October. Vince suggested that a new rifle in this chambering would be a great tool for this particular competition, and that was all the persuading I needed. Pete Walker of Walker Rifles builds all my rifles, but demand for his services meant he couldn't fit this in at such short notice, so Vince offered to help out. Vince has built several personal project rifles and, having shot against him, I'm aware he knows how to put a rifle together. So, with a miniscule time frame of one month in which to build, load-develop and shoot, I gave Vince all the necessary parts and waited for a call. He rang three days later.

If you've read Vince's previous articles you will be up to speed on this rifle, so I won't go into the build. Suffice to say the components are all top-notch, and so is the end product. My part of the project was just to shoot it and hopefully win the competition - I always get the easy bit!

Ready...steady...shoot!

A two-hour flight gets you to the stunning city of Prague; from there it's a further four-hour drive to the picturesque village of Stranla. After a welcome drink of the local firewater (Slimavich), it was off to bed. The practice morning dawned bright and sunny, and the 33 competitors gathered to check zeros and each other's kit. As it was my second time at this competition, it was a chance to renew old acquaintances. But friendships aside, make no mistake, everyone was there to win. The top-of-the-line kit showed there were rifles from AI, Sako TRG, Sig, Dragunov, Blaser, and the odd custom job too. There was glassware from Leupold, S+B, Bushnell, and a Tasco.

My last experience taught me to expect the unexpected, and although we were told the weather forecast was good, the first day of competition was misty and rainy. This set the tone for things to come, so on the first COF I wasn't surprised to be marched into the woods and told to run to a barricade, kneel, find an egg with my number on it and shoot it in 30 seconds. The eggs were scattered on poles in a field anywhere from 20- 30ft away. The stress element of the competition is standard and is an important part of the proceedings for this type of event, even down to carrying a whole day's kit - rifle, clothes, ammo etc - all day, every day. The egg shoot was followed by a short walk through a clearing in the woods to the first of many unknown distance shots. Rangefinders were disallowed this time, so all ranging was done by the WAG (wild-ass guess) method or by rangefinding using your scope reticle (the second is preferable for reliable results, but the key to successful ranging is knowing the size of your intended target). Then, a simple mathematical equation of height of target ,multiplied by 27.778, then divided by the number of mm your target covers, should get you on target, but precision measuring is needed for accuracy.

Burst your bubble

The next targets were balloons tied to the tree line approximately 150yd away; not too difficult. but the five-minute wait and instructors throwing flash-bangs, plus a gusty wind, didn't allow for a really steady shot. Next was a tricky two-plate left-and-right shot; these plates were set at 30° to each other, so you could set up on the first but a big re-adjustment of the kneeling position was required to make the second shot. Just when I thought there was nothing else that could surprise me, we were taken a further 500yd into the woods where were told to drop the rifles, strap on a pistol holster, grab a 9mm and stand by for a pistol stage.

This was no big thing for all of the other competitors, as their respected governments still trust them with handguns. But for us Brits?! I couldn't resist putting my hand up to ask "what's a pistol?" I'm sad to report that everyone else just laughed. So, with the British contingent trying to drag back muscle memories of past days of pistol shooting, we moved down into a small wood. On sight of a moving plate coming through the trees, we dropped the rifle and had five rounds to hit the moving plate while reliving happy times of shooting practical pistols.

After a good lunch of local fare we started on the known-distance, shooting at 100, 200, 300-500yd at varying sizes and types of targets. This at least gave us a chance to catch our breath and assess our good and bad points of the day, dry out and plan for the next day.

Day two

The weather threatened to outdo the previous day, with cold winds, sweeping mist and dropping temperatures. Not to be outdone, the competition organiser turned up the heat and the pressure with COF, like kneeling 40yd steep downhill shots onto bad-guy targets, with hits in the eyes counting only. We were shown a very small 1.5" picture of a target face in the briefing on the first day, so when we were taken out to 70yd and turned away from the targets, I had an idea this face might have been coming up. The only command that was given was: "You have 45 seconds to turn, drop, load and fire. If you see a target - shoot it!"

The face was on the target, but so were 10 other very similar-looking faces, and not surprisingly many people got it wrong. We repeated this type of shoot at 200yd. The scope was closed, and we were given 45 seconds to memorise a face target that may have been disguised. Given a choice of four faces to shoot, the time restriction caused lots of stress-induced mistakes.

With the snow and sleet starting, we moved to a part of the range I hadn't seen before for an unknown distance shoot over a lake. This clever trick uses open water to fool the eye into thinking the distance is greater than it actually is; at only 180yd, it fooled a few.

Long shots

This type of COF is meat and drink to the classic image of the sniper, and to top off the day we all moved back to the range house for the long-range section.

Three steel plates of known sizes were placed out at unknown distances. The instructors nominated a target and gave one minute to range it, and on the command, engage it. It was a case of hit-or-miss, simple but very cruel. Later we learnt the distances were 442, 559 and 640yd; any small error in ranging using reticles can easily mean a miss. This caught me out on two out of three plates, showing up a weakness I need to remedy, but I didn't feel too bad as others suffered the same fate.

Night vision

With the onset of evening, we enjoyed a hot meal and waited for night to fall. For the ‘night shoot', a 2" black disc on a white background makes a hard target, even at 100yd under a five-second illumination. Moving back to 300yd, even a larger head-sized target with inward scoring rings caused problems. The mist and dropping temperature, combined with military illumination flares that seem to make the target move, meant those of us with illuminated reticles came into their own here.

The extreme changes in temperature could have also accounted for some ballistic errors, a swing of 30° over the three days meaning that all components were tested to the extreme. Water, mud and snow were thrown at the gun, and I'm delighted to report it didn't miss a beat - Vince had done an excellent job. A strip-down at the end of each day showed the Duracoat paint job had protected the working parts and kept the gun looking like new.

Sneaky stalkers

The final day was taken up by the stalk. This is as near to a real-world exercise as most amateurs come to true sniping, unless you're a deer stalker (only the deer don't try to shoot you).

We moved approximately 1km from the MIG, and were told that a meeting of drug dealers was taking place by the aircraft and that sometime within a two-hour time frame we would be given a signal to shoot our designated target from a minimum distance of 300m. We would then have one hour to withdraw to within 20m of the start position, without being spotted, and only the successful completion of all parts meant points on the scoreboard. But this time, not only were the spotters around the plane, there were hunter packs of bad guys roaming around the whole area picking up the careless and unlucky; this element of trying to stalk to a position and being hunted was not nice to say the least, but really sharpened the senses.

As people trickled back into the base, there were lots of adrenalin-fuelled stories of daring stalks and near misses. This final COF was much harder than last year. The organiser had it all cleverly thought out, and the setup meant there were only a few places from which a shot could be taken. Testament to this was that just nine out of the 33 competitors took a shot, and only one managed to take the shot, hit the target and make it back without being captured to complete the exercise successfully.

Later we were treated to a large roast pig buffet dinner washed down with lots of blond beer, which was followed by the announcement of the results. All the hard work paid off, as I came in a respectable joint-third position, with the rest of the seven Brits showing within the top 10 places. The sponsor, Meopta, provided a great selection of prizes, including spotting scopes, riflescopes, and some great tactical gear.

Thanks go to: Vince Bottomley; Preston Pritchard and all the staff at Surgeon Rifles; James Clark at Jager Arms; Terry Mann; David Shone; Nikita; Andy Massingham and Paul for the photos