So I got the chance today to go down the range with a bloke who knows his way around rifles in a big way. He's a mate from work and really loves the sport of rifle shooting, has a few state titles in F-Class and is a fairly handy gunsmith himself. He gave me a nudge on Friday to give him a buzz Monday if I was around and had time to give the rifle a clean, sight it in and put some lead down range. He had a look with his bore scope and said the barrel on this T1X is pretty bloody close to a custom match barrel in quality and very impressive for a sub-$1000 rimfire rifle. He expected it to shoot well.
We probably shot close to 250 rounds in 10 shot groups and even thought the wind was a fairly gusty right to left around 10-12km/h we still have some pretty pleasing results with the little Tikka T1X in 100% standard configuration.
Complete with Shoehorn, un-adjusted trigger and standard bedding etc. we just nipped up the action screws by hand, fitted the scope at the right orientation (I had it 90 degrees out), bore sighted in the backyard and away we went.
We shot mostly off a rear bag and a front Caldwell height adjustable rest which was sitting behind the front sling stud. A few groups were off the bipod but they weren't as nice, we think the stock flexes quite a bit and was causing a bit of an effect. We also shot from the prone position at around 55 paces for all groups.
The range of ammo we had is in a post above.
Started with the 400pack of Winchester Super X. Hit the paper, did a tweak on the scope and went from there. We weren't trying to get a zero/point of aim just test a few types of ammo and see what it likes, this isn't too bad. The first group was the best out of the 4 to shot rounds with this ammo. I've got a box of....360 left so plenty of plinking to be had with this.
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Next was the CCI Standard, shot 5 groups of this one and they're all about the same, very good considering the conditions from a 22 with less than 100 shots down the barrel. The coach was very impressed at this stage. I pulled the bottom two shots of the best group which was disappointing
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Up next were the CCI Segmented HP Subsonics - I was hoping this would group as well or close to the CCI Standard as this is what I was hoping to use if I went rabbit shooting. These had a funny knack of dropping the first one a little short and then the rest of the group being fairly consistent. No other ammo seemed to do this.
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After these 2 groups we chucked on the bipod to see if it was any better or worse.
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SK Standard Plus was the standout of the day. 12mm 10-shot group even with the conditions. Do SK do a hunting ammo?! Pretty happy with this group in the conditions we had, the coach was chuckling to himself as the last 5 shots all went in the same hole.
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CCI Velocitor was next up, we tried it on the bag first
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Then the bipod - probably my go to hunting ammo at this stage...
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We had some power points too which were okayish but the velocitors slightly out performed them.
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All in all, an absolute ripper day apart from the wind, the back of my knees are sunburnt to buggery so I've learnt that lesson for next time. Hoping for a calmer day in the near future and we're looking at setting up a little rimfire range a bit closer to home so we can have a bit more of a play. The stock didn't feel too horrible in the prone position but with the bipod opening up the groups there is some definite fore end flex there. I've taken the shoe horn out of the stock when I cleaned it before putting it away and I'll get some lower mounts for the scop as well which should improve my cheek weld as I daresay the groups would have been tighter with less wiggling of my head on my part.
Cheers!
Easy come, easy go.
Tikka T1X 22LR - VX Freedom 3-9X40