Ok so this will probably be long winded but just trying to paint a full picture to see if anyone has any thoughts or advice for me. I have a Swarovski Z5 5-25x52 on a Tikka T3 lite in 30-06. I've used this scope on it for a few years. I have a custom turret which maxes out at 600yrds as the Z5 scopes only allow one rotation.
I've spent a lot of time at a local long distance range and can consistently hit targets out to 400yrds but cant seem to hit the targets at 500 and 600 consistently. My Tikka typically groups well under and MOA at 100yrds but thats as far as Im able to shoot at paper targets and the steel targets are all shot up so not sure how its grouping past that. In an effort to make everything as precise as possible and eliminate variables I decided to do some improvements to my setup. I glass and pillar bedded the rifle and free floated the barrel. I had a gunsmith look at my work and he said everything looked great. While doing this I had to remove the scope and in doing so I realized that the gunsmith at Gander who mounted my scope years ago used Warne rings but some unknown bases that had deep gouges in them from the recoil. It appeared to be steel rings but aluminium bases. I replaced the rings and bases with a pair of Warne Maxima that mount directly to the Tikkas dovetail rail. The scope sits at the same height it previously did as measured with calipers.
I've gotten everything put back together and used a Wheeler Fat Torque wrench to make sure everything is torqued to specs and used the Wheeler Pro leveling kit to make sure the scope is level. All in all everything is working great and I'm now shooting an almost perfect clover pattern at 100yrds with Hornady SSTs.
However, my turret is now hitting the end of adjustments and cant go past the 500yrd mark. Previously I still had quite a bit of adjustment even past the 600yrd mark so not sure why changing these things would have caused that much of a difference POI shift. Either way Im topping out in my turret and cant go any higher. Just curious if anyone has any thoughts. I know I could get a 20 MOA rail and use different rings to get the adjustment back but just curious if there is something else more obvious that I may be missing first.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
I've spent a lot of time at a local long distance range and can consistently hit targets out to 400yrds but cant seem to hit the targets at 500 and 600 consistently. My Tikka typically groups well under and MOA at 100yrds but thats as far as Im able to shoot at paper targets and the steel targets are all shot up so not sure how its grouping past that. In an effort to make everything as precise as possible and eliminate variables I decided to do some improvements to my setup. I glass and pillar bedded the rifle and free floated the barrel. I had a gunsmith look at my work and he said everything looked great. While doing this I had to remove the scope and in doing so I realized that the gunsmith at Gander who mounted my scope years ago used Warne rings but some unknown bases that had deep gouges in them from the recoil. It appeared to be steel rings but aluminium bases. I replaced the rings and bases with a pair of Warne Maxima that mount directly to the Tikkas dovetail rail. The scope sits at the same height it previously did as measured with calipers.
I've gotten everything put back together and used a Wheeler Fat Torque wrench to make sure everything is torqued to specs and used the Wheeler Pro leveling kit to make sure the scope is level. All in all everything is working great and I'm now shooting an almost perfect clover pattern at 100yrds with Hornady SSTs.
However, my turret is now hitting the end of adjustments and cant go past the 500yrd mark. Previously I still had quite a bit of adjustment even past the 600yrd mark so not sure why changing these things would have caused that much of a difference POI shift. Either way Im topping out in my turret and cant go any higher. Just curious if anyone has any thoughts. I know I could get a 20 MOA rail and use different rings to get the adjustment back but just curious if there is something else more obvious that I may be missing first.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
