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Much of the .223 experiment’s suc-cess, of course, came from stealingbenchrest shooting techniques. Afew years prior, several avid shoot-ers attended one of the GroundhogShooters and Prevaricators Con-ferences held annually at an oldfarmhouse in West Virginia. Amongthe conference attendees were hostMelvin Forbes of New Ultra LightArms, editor of Gun Digest KenWarner, Field & Stream rifle colum-nist Dave Petzal, president of Dou-glas barrels Tim Gardner, well-known accuracy gunsmith MickeyColeman and me.

Between forays after groundhogs(as woodchucks are known inmost of the East), we sat aroundthe front porch of the lodge, pre-varicating and telling tales. Once inawhile some of us actually shot rifles at the 100-yard benchrestrange within sight of the porch.

One day Mickey Coleman askedif I’d like toshoot a realbenchrestrifle. The rifle didn’t seemall that much different than manyvarmint rifles, but between thebench and the target, Mickey setup several complex wind flags,saying they should all be pointingthe same way for each shot. Thefirst three shots on the target “justmade the hole darker,” as Mickeyput it. I started thinking this waspretty easy, but the fourth bulletlanded outside the dark hole byabout the thickness of a playingcard.

“The third flag gotcha,” Mickeysaid. “It flipped a little just beforeyou shot.”

Benchrest flags normally consistof at least three elements: a pro-peller, a rear vane and a strip of flagging tape. For the .223 ex -periment, I acquired a couple ofSinclair wind flags with plasticpropellers shaped like large sun-flowers. These helped a lot whentrying to put five, 50-grain bulletsin one hole.

TJohn Barsness

The desire for superior accu-racy has been around as longas rifles, but the modern ac-curacy game started in the

years after World War II, one of thepeak periods for hunting and shootingin America. Many returning service-men had developed an interest in rifleshooting, and wild animals reboundedduring the war, recovering from theirlow populations during the Depres-sion. Even the populated Northeaststill held lots of open country, andlandowners often allowed hunters toshoot the woodchucks that ate cropsand dug holes in fields.Super-accurate varmint rifles developed in the North-east long before World War II, but after the war somany men started building rifles on “war-surplus” boltactions that informal matches were often held toprove whose woodchuck rifle shot most accurately.Soon this benchrest shooting became organized, withthe first formal matches held in 1947 in Johnstown,New York.

Over the next half-century, the accuracy techniqueslearned from benchrest competition became a big partof American hunting and shooting. Most rifle looniesare benchrest shooters, whether they know it or not.Witness the constant striving for the magical .5-inchgroup at 100 yards, even by deer hunters who nevershoot beyond 300 yards. At those ranges .5-inch accu-racy is as superfluous as a pearl necklace on a wildhog, yet the boys keep plugging away. As a result, atleast half the questions received by gun writers in-volve dissatisfaction with deer rifle accuracy. In orderto answer these mournful requests, many of us per-form experiments like those performed by benchrestshooters.

About a decade ago, a Remington 700 varmint riflebecame the center of several serious accuracy exper-iments. Chambered for the .223 Remington and “ac-curized” with a few basic gunsmithing tricks, it provedso accurate that carefully assembled handloads aver-aged .25 inch for five-shot groups at 100 yards. Thesmallest group measured .227 inch, center to center;the two widest bullet holes essentially touched eachother.

6MM PPCLoads for a Benchrest Rifle

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With the 4.5-30x Bushnell scope, John’s 6mm PPCErhardt weighs exactly 13.5 pounds, the HeavyVarmint Rifle weight limit in benchrest matches.

Handloader 278

The action was a “sleeved” Rem-ington 700. Many benchrest riflesare built on custom actions, butoccasionally blueprinted 700s areused, usually with an aluminumtube (sleeve) epoxied around thereceiver, stiffening the action.

The biggest unattached scope onhand turned out to be a 4.5-30xBushnell Elite 6500. Most bench -

rest shooters use fixed-power scopesof at least 35x, but I mounted theBushnell in Talley steel rings, usingbases filed to fit the sleeve, thenordered Redding Competition re-loading dies and Norma 6mm PPCcases. I already had a Caldwell BRfront rifle rest and a selection ofBerger 6mm target bullets.

While waiting for everything toshow up, I began rereading mysmall collection of literature onbenchrest rifles and shooting, es-pecially Glen Newick’s fine bookThe Ultimate In Rifle Accuracy, agift from Walt Berger. Some goodinformation also came from an In-ternet acquaintance named ButchLambert, a rifle loony and bench -rest competitor from Poetry, Texas.Butch had read an article of mineabout using wind flags and con-tacted me, claiming that his com-pany, Shade Tree Engineering (www.shadetreeea.com) sold some of

more consistent and sturdy arrange-ment than action screws. Sloppycleaning often results in cleaningsolvents dripping onto the actiontang and inside the front receiverring. Eventually this loosens theaction, but this rifle appeared tobe firmly bedded.

6MM PPC

Left, Redding Competition dies resulted in a maximum bullet runout of.0005 inch. Below, case necks were turned using the Forster tool Johnhas owned for decades. A real benchrest shooter would use a special-ized hand tool.

Super-accurate varmintrifles developed in theNortheast long before

World War II.

The success of the .223 experi-ment created a hankering for areal benchrest rifle, but I was toocheap to spend the money on arifle designed to punch holes inpaper, for the next few years blow-ing most spare cash on hunting rifles and hunting trips instead.Then one day late in the summerof 2011, I stopped by Capital Sportsand Western Wear in Helena, Mon-tana, to look over the racks ofused firearms. These racks swellin the weeks before deer and elkseason, and on one stood a bulky,heavy-barreled rifle with a syn-thetic stock painted a metal-flakeemerald green. It turned out to be a genuine benchrest rifle madeby one of the store’s gunsmiths,Arnold Erhardt, chambered in 6mmPPC. The rifle showed evidence of long use, but the price was toolow to pass up.

There are two main risks in buy-ing a used benchrest rifle, the firstis a barrel worn out by shooting,over-cleaning, or both. Benchrestshooters are addicted to brushingthe heck out of their rifle bores,sometimes wearing out the throatand crown before the barrel getsshot out, but this rifle’s heavy 25-inch barrel looked good through aHawkeye borescope. The othercommon problem is another by-product of clumsy cleaning. To -day’s benchrest rifles have theaction epoxied into the stock, a

Hodgdon H-322and IMR-8208XBR are oftenpreferred forthe 6mm PPC,but in this in-stance they didn’t show any significantadvantage overBenchmark.

meaning the necks of the brasshad to be lathe-turned to measureno more than .262 inch in diame-ter with bullets seated. This meantthe neck walls should be no morethan .0095 inch thick. I used aForster trimmer that’s been boltedto my reloading bench for over 35years, but a real benchrest shooterwould use one of the precise handtools on the market.

Cases were then weight-sorted,and the 50 cases in the middle ofthe bell-curve were run throughthe Redding neck-sizing die with a.262-inch bushing. The cases wouldhave to be fireformed in the rifle’schamber to obtain the finest accu-racy, so I loaded them with 65-grain Berger flatbase target bul -lets and a starting charge of Hodg-don Benchmark, a rather unusualchoice, though Butch Lambert sayssome bench shooters use it andsuggested a couple of loads.

The modern benchrest game isalmost totally dominated by the6mm PPC cartridge, designed afterconsiderable experimentation byDr. Lou Palmisano and gunsmithFerris Pindell in the mid-1970s.Their first round was the .22 PPC,but the 6mm version soon tookover because 6mm bullets driftedless in wind, and 6mm is the minimum required for the Hunterbenchrest game. While a few peo-ple still experiment with otherrounds, during the 2011 SuperShoot (one of the biggest benchrestevents), the top 20 competitors in both the Light Varmint (10.5-pound rifle) and Heavy Varmint(13.5-pound rifle) categories allshot 6mm PPCs.

Most competitors use bullets inthe mid-60-grain range. HodgdonH-322 was the preferred powderfor many years; however, all buttwo of the top competitors at the Super Shoot used VihtavuoriN133. (The others used IMR-8208XBR, which caused a stir in 2009when former Wolfe Publishingstaffer Jim Carmichel used thenew powder to win the Interna-tional Benchrest Shooters HeavyVarmint championship.)

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the best wind flags ever made –designed and manufactured byAustralian benchrest shootersAnnie and Stuart Elliott. Butchsent along some of the flags, sug-gesting putting a couple in myyard for a day or two, just to seehow they worked. They provedmuch more sensitive than my oldsunflower flags.

The first handloading task turnedout to be turning the necks of thecases. Benchrest rifles normallyhave minimum chambers, with theneck smaller than the normalSAAMI diameter, eliminating asmuch “slop” as possible. My rifle’sbarrel was marked “6PPC .262 Nk.,”

The best load (top) turned out tobe 30.0 grains of HodgdonBenchmark and the 65-grainBerger Flat-Base Target bulletseated into the lands. The one-hole target (bottom) is two shotsof the same load, a test to see ifpoint of impact shifted with aperfectly clean bore. It didn’t.

Precise neck diameter is engravedalongside the chamber designation.

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Since the case neck issized only about .001inch smaller than thebullet, closing the boltseats the bullet to itsjammed depth.

The first 50 roundsalso tested which styleof shooting workedbest for me. The riflehas a typical 2-ouncebenchrest trigger, andmany top competitorstouch only the trigger– possible with a heavyrifle sitting firmly on asturdy rest. They aimthe scope primarily bysqueezing the rear bag, then care-fully touch the trigger when all thewind flags turn in the right direc-tion. Some shooters do better witha firm but light conventional hold.I turned out to be one of these,which was fine since that’s theway the rifle will be held to shootvarmints. The five-shot groups from

6MM PPC

BRT wind flags proved to be highly sensitive.They are colored differently on each side to help shooters see which way the wind isblowing.

the fireforming rounds measuredanywhere from .373 to .822 inch,about the same as many factoryvarmint rifles with good hand-loads, but shrank dramaticallyafter that initial session.

With neck-turned, fireformedNorma brass and Berger targetbullets, the second batch of 6mm

Unfortunately, VV-N133 is prettyexpensive, and the ultimate goalfor my rifle was shooting prairiedogs, where a lot of powder getsburned. My powder collection in-cluded small amounts of 8208 andH-322, but also most of an 8-poundjug of Benchmark, used for prairiedog loads in a couple of otherrounds; so it became the powderfor fireforming cases, plus seeingwhich bullet and seating depth therifle preferred.

Seating depth with the first 50rounds was what benchrest shoot-ers call “jammed” – full contactwith the lands. Many bench riflesshoot best with jammed bullets,and it’s also the best place to start,since seating bullets slightly deeperreduces pressures. The jammeddepth is easily found by seating abullet just slightly into a case, thenrunning the case into the chamber.

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PPC handloads had a maximum of.0005 inch runout, 1⁄ 2 0 0 0 inch, andmost rounds didn’t even move theconcentricity gauge’s dial. Pow-der charges in this second batchstarted at 27.5 grains, increasing insmall increments up to 30.0 grains,1.7 grains above Hodgdon’s listedmaximum. Berger target bullets,however, use thinner jackets andsofter lead cores than typical var -mint bullets like the 65-grain Hornady V-MAX used in Hodg -don’s data, and also they’re oftenslightly smaller in diameter. ButchLambert suggested the 30-grainmaximum, saying he knew someshooters who used it with noproblem. (It’s also worth notingthat Jim Carmichel’s winning 2009load used 31.5 grains of 8208 witha 68-grain match bullet, two grainsmore than the maximum listed byHodgdon for either 65- or 70-grainbullets.)

With these loads, the largest groupmatched the smallest group fromthe first range session. The small-est group measured .170 – withthe 30-grain powder charge. Sincethe goal of most benchrest shoot-ers is to have their rifle averagesomewhere “in the teens” (below.20 inch), this group was quite en-couraging.

I stuck with Benchmark for the next range session. Seventeenrounds were loaded with 65-grainBergers seated into the lands, but two, five-round batches wereloaded with bullets seated .001and .002 inch deeper. Another five cases were loaded with the65-grain bullet jammed into thelands and 30.4 grains of powder;and two, five-round batches wereloaded with 62- and 68-grain Berg-ers seated into the lands.

The shooting took place in an er-ratic breeze of 2 to 8 mph, accord-ing to a Minox Windwatch, but bythen I was reading the flags prettywell. Two of the 30.0/jammed-65loads were used to foul the boreand to see whether the first bulletfrom a clean bore would land inthe same place as from a fouledbore. They made a slightly oblonghole measuring .281 inch, mean-

ing the second bullet landed .038inch from the first. The most accu-rate load again turned out to be30.0 grains of Benchmark with the65-grain Berger seated into the rifling, three groups averaging .183inch.

The final range session testedIMR-8208 XBR and H-322 with the65s jammed, but neither powdergrouped significantly tighter thanBenchmark. Soon afterward Butch

Lambert sent along about 150handmade 66-grain bullets, and Istarted thinking some VV-N133might be a good investment, andmaybe even a 45x Leupold bench -rest scope. It sure would be greatto go from the high teens to thelow teens.

It turns out that benchrest shoot-ing is all about minutiae, which is,of course, what rifle addiction isall about. •