1000-Yard Shooting with Surgeon Scalpel .243 Win
Forum member Stan from Northern California (aka BigBamBoo) has produced a cool video showing a 1000-yard shooting session with his Surgeon Rifles .243 Win. As he shot prone from bipod, Stan filmed with two cameras, one aimed at the shooter and the other zoomed way out at the target 1000 yards away. Using frame in frame editing, Stan combined the two camera viewpoints so you can watch his trigger-pulling and simultaneously see what’s happening downrange. Stan hits steel five times in a row.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the steel ring about three seconds after each shot (it takes that long for the sound to travel back). On a couple shots you’ll see dust kick up at the side of the target — but that’s not a miss. Remember his bullet is impacting on steel and what you’re seeing is dust kicked up on ricochet by a bullet fragment.
The main purpose of Stan’s shooting session was to evaluate a new Badger FTE muzzle brake. Watch the video and you can see that the big brake dramatically reduces both rearward movement and bipod hop. Stan was very happy with the brake’s effectiveness, as it allows him to keep his scope on target, and cycle quickly for the next shot. Stan reports: “Just keep an eye on the rifle. Watch the recoil — it’s greatly reduced with the muzzle brake. Makes spotting my shots very easy.”
LOAD: Lapua .243 Winchester brass, Sierra 107gr MatchKings, Wolf LR primers, 40.1 grains of H4350 powder.
Stan posts: “I recently sent my Surgeon Scalpel in .243 back to Surgeon to have a Badger FTE muzzle brake installed. Got a chance between rain storms to get to the range and do some shooting. As you can hear in the video…the wind was blowing pretty hard. But that just adds to the fun of shooting at long range. Turn up the volume and you should be able to hear the five hits on steel. If you set the playback resolution to 480p or better and go ‘full screen’, you should be able to see most of the hits.”
Why is the Sound of the Hit Delayed So Long?
The speed of sound at sea level, in dry 59° air, is 1116 fps. With the steel target 3000 feet (1000 yards) away, it takes 3000/1116 or 2.69 seconds for the sound of each hit to reach the shooter.
