Hey everyone,

I recently picked up an old Remington 512-X bolt action .22LR from my local gun shop, and have been wanting to get into silhouette shooting. My local shooting range holds a match every month, and while I don't expect to be competing "hardcore" anytime soon, being a college student and all, I do want to go when I can for fun, for the social experience, and just to shoot.

I was wondering, for my purposes, will the 512-X do fine (I've heard some people say it was, and still is one of the nicest bolt action .22's out there, but I don't know if that's just them expressing lots of affection for their first rifle ) for silhouette shooting, given I do my part? The ranges at my field vary from 40-100 meters or 20-45 yards, I don't know what "class" the 512-X is in. I do have a 3-9 variable power scope on it.

Thanks!

k_s, as long as the total weight of the rifle/scope is under 8.5 pounds and has at least a 2 lb trigger pull it will fit into the hunter catagory. Which most of the 512's I knew would do.
Hunter rifles can be shot in both hunter and standard catagories.

Take it to the local matches, have fun, as a student use what you have and you will be surprised what you can do with it. As for being a great target rifle, you need to look at the purpose the rilfes were designed for. Manufacturers look to try to produce something for markets that they see a need for.
Accuracy and precision has many levels and there is a point in which the average consumer will stop paying for these qualities. That being said, the 512 is remarkably good for the design/build but when put up against some others that came out in equivalent price ranges, I would say it is competitive.

The important thing is take it out and enjoy the shooting.

Mary

Thanks for the reply! I'll be sure to sign up for the silhouette in about 2 weeks and report back.

I found out today the range will be 40, 60, 77, and 100 meters out. What range would you recommend I zero my scope onto (I have a 3-9 power scope if that's any help)?

K_s you sort of indicate by that question that the scope is not easily adjustable. If this is the case I would go for the 60 meters (pigs) and use Kentucky windage for the rest. Top to the legs for chickens. Top of back for turkeys and inline with the horns for the the rams. But if you can adjust, I recommend you try at all distances and find the settings that work best.


Mary

Sounds more like FL windage to me, Mary. You sure top of the horns is enough? The chick and turk sound just right. ARG.........

If you put the horizontal crosshair on the top of the horns, and don't jerk the trigger it should hit the bottom of the body, if you are on center with the pigs. Granted that is a tough thing to hold the crossharis like that, but it can be done.
And Jerry the only time we use Florida windage is times like now where the winds are gusting, as a result of our friend Irene, thus setting windage knobs are usless as it will change every 30-40 seconds.
Otherwise it is Kentucky windage, and thats my story and I'm sticking with it.

Innocent Mary

As Mary, says, K_S, the Remington is a good rifle.

I have the 510 and 511 and they are good to go.

A drawback, as I see it to the 512 is it's tubular mag.
You would have to load 5 rounds up for each bank on the ready call, so a bit fiddly.

But give it a go and see how you get on with it and your range officials.

As far as Hold-over is concerned, if you can't adjust your scope simply for each distance,
a bit of simple logic applies, although I take it you're a male of the species homo sapiens 'student',
so there may be a bit of resistance to the multi-tasking required.

On-line trajectory calculators give one a good idea of the bullet climb and drop from 40 to 100mtrs, dependant on your zero range.

Here's a good one;

http://www.jbmballistics.com/cgi-bin/jb ... mp-5.1.cgi

And a bit of explanation for the holdover,
Given a 60mtr zero,
you are near 1" high at 40,
so as Mary says,
on a Chicken which stands 2.2" high,
your simplest aimpoint would be at the top of the leg where it joins the body.

Aim dead on the middle of the Pig's body,
(The pig is your 'bread and butter', so we don't want to be mucking around with hold over/under on it.

On the Turkey, which stands 4.6" high, given a bullet drop of roughly 2.3”, or half the turkey’s height, then your aimpoint would be in the centre of the WHOLE target,
which equates roughly to the top of the turkey's back.

On the Ram, which stands 5.4" high, with a bullet drop of roughly up to 6.5", (depending on the velocity/bullet weight of your ammo),
so top of the horn might be a bit low.

You might want to try an alternate method, if it is, (You'll soon know if it's low, when you start hearing the rail ringing !)
i.e.
Envisage another Ram of equal size directly above your target,
and aim in the middle of that.
That should give you enough holdover, if not, then the top of the back on your imposed image.
(Or if too high, then the belly!)
(Not too difficult when you get the hang of it !)




(Courtesy of Nen namess ick' printable targets)

Hope this helps.

Printable target to scale from Jerry Webster @ Riflesilhouette.com; (Thanks Jerry)
(Shooting at paper targets is good practice, and you can hone your distance/aimpoint adjustments !)

http://www.riflesilhouette.com/PDF/ToScale.pdf



cheers,
SS

Thanks for the tip everyone, really appreciate it. I'll be sure to report back after my first silhouette match

I had another question.. I've heard hollow points are no-go for tubular magazines. They say the recoil can cause the metal tips in the ammo to hit the primer of the cartridge in front of it and set it off. These reports I've heard have been more for like .357's, but not .22's. I would imagine there would be no harm since the .22 has very little recoil. Does anyone have any experience with this? Are there any other safety concerns I should be aware of?

Also, are hollow points OK for silhouette shooting? Is there any specific kind of ammo that is better/worse than others?

Thanks!

K_S, many of the ranges have cast targets in the smallbore, and they usually are not too good at holding up with high velocity ammo, so many match directors do not let them be used. As far as hollow point, you will not gain anything by using them here. A good standard velocity round nose should work well. Many mention CCI on this forum, I have not had great luck with it in my rifles but YMMV. SK, Wolf, Aguila, Eley Sport are all fairly stable lower end ammo that will work. Wolf tends to have a greater drop at the 100meter distance in my rifles.

Mary

Innocent wrote: Top to the legs for chickens.

Mary

Mary, you shooting next to a nuclear power plant? All our chiken targets only have one leg?

J~

J...yeah man I be twix several nukes here in FL....all with "prevailing winds" going offshore and one(near a very large metropolitan area) still swears it's a coal fired. Wonder who paid who, even better yet, how much?

But all kidding aside I swear our chickens have two legs they are just perfectly inline with each other so you only see one from the rifle shooting angle. The second leg acts as a prop though so even some nice center hits don't always get them down.

Innocent

.22's have the primers in the rim so no chance of detonation from tube feed mags.

Mary are you sure those are nuke plants and not covert missile silos in case of alien attack!

jbolt, everyone knows chickens have 2 legs and pigs have 4. But in answer to your question, there are several nuc plants in FL but Mary comes from the swamps down south so who knows what they have there.

Jerry G wrote:jbolt, everyone knows chickens have 2 legs and pigs have 4. But in answer to your question, there are several nuc plants in FL but Mary comes from the swamps down south so who knows what they have there.

Swamp Gas

Jerry G wrote:jbolt, everyone knows chickens have 2 legs and pigs have 4. But in answer to your question, there are several nuc plants in FL but Mary comes from the swamps down south so who knows what they have there.

Maybe I need some of what you folks are drinkin' cause I only see one leg on the chickens and two on the pigs.

Mary, coal powered nuke plants? That explains a lot about Florida. Here in Kalifornia we can't have coal powered nuke plants cause of the soot (I even get complaints about my diesel truck..Sheesh) but we can have plain ole nuke powered nuke plants...as long as they are built on top of active earthquake faults.