I will preface this article, I have only shot 980 yards before and that was a single mag in a SAKO rifle at Shot Show Range day last year. The gun was all ready set and dialed in so it was relatively easy to hit steel with that gun. My personal best with my own gun was 650 yard steel with my SCAR17S. Shooting 1,000 yards was completely new territory for me.

Tredd Barton of Washington County Machine Guns (WCMG) hosted his first 1,000 Yard rifle match just last Saturday. His range only goes out to a 140 yards and they are currently working on a 200+ yard range. So this match was held on private land.

Last month, In order to prepare for the match, my friend Joel and I went to Thunder Valley Precision. TVP is the nearest public open range to Pittsburgh that has steel targets out to a mile.

Below is the view of the range from the shooting tables.

Zoomed in on my iPhone, you can see the 1k yard white paper target holders. The dark dirt berm is 600 yards. In a perpendicular line down, you can see 3 groups of small bushes. They are the 300, 400, and 500 yard steel targets. If you continue down and to the right, is a 200 yard steel target right above a bush. The steel targets are 12″ squares. At 400, 600 and 1000 yards they have torso sized steel as well.

Here is the 600 yard berm photographed through my Meopta MeoPro80HD. Above the berm, between 11 and 12, you can see the 900 yard 12″ steel target.

Joel was using his 6.5 Grendel AR. His home range he regularly shoots out to 700 yards but rarely gets to shoot 1,000.

I used my Ruger America Predator (RAP) 6.5 Creedmoor and borrowed a Viper PST 6-24x scope from another friend.

Here are Joel’s 6.5 Grendel vs my 6.5 Creedmoor.

Joel and my friend Tom, who tagged along to watch and help spot, helped me to get DOPE for my RAP. I managed to hit this 1000 yard steel torso three consecutive times.

Here is a video of Joel hitting the same target with his 6.5 Grendel.

And here is a video documenting his hit at 1,200 yards, a first for Joel.

While I was at TVP, I sighted in a 4×32 Browe BCO that I am borrowing from another friend. I was very impressed with the quality of glass in this little optic. It has a 5.56 reticle but tried it on my .308 SCAR17S.

With the help of Joel and Tom spotting, I was able to make hits out to 600 yards with the the Browe BCO and SCAR17S.

Was I ready for the 1k yard match? Probably not, as I didnt have a complete mastery and understanding of long range shooting. However I did learn a lot with the help of Joel. Again, long range shooting and bolt guns is not something I am accustomed to. In the past I rarely have to deal with wind or temperature shifts affecting my shots and often I am pretty sure my misses are probably due to me more than outside influences. Here I discovered first hand how getting a barrel hot makes the POI shift. I could see how the wind was affecting my rounds when I was shooting further out than I am used to.

While my experience was great at TVP under Joel’s tutelage and help, none of it helped at the Washington County Machine Gun 1k yard match. Why? Because I left my RAP 6.5 Creedmoor rifle at my friend’s house in South Carolina when I was down there for the FN SCAR Owners Group Shoot.

So what should I do? There was no time to go back down to SC and get my gun. So I decided to use my SCAR17S. I had little to no dope for the ammo I have and only had two optics I could use on it in such short notice. My Primary Arms Platinum 1-8x and the Browe BCO. The match fee was only $25 so it wouldn’t be a huge loss to back out of the match just the day before. But how often do I get a chance to shoot out to 1k yards? Not that often even with TVP about 2 hours away.

So I decided to just wing it and have fun. Highly doubtful I would be able to hit anything and I was right. I managed just one hit at 600 yards.

The WCMG 1k yard match had targets at 560 yards, 600 – 1000 yards. The actual yardages were a couple more yards than originally planned. In the photo below, you can see the open hill of light colored grass. That is where the steel targets are. Down where the grass field ends, and you can see shadow, is where the 560 yard steel targets were.

We started by shooting at 560, 600, 700 and 800 yard steel. Every shooter shoots five rounds at each distance. No spotters other than to call the hits. The first shooter of each distance gets 4 minutes to shoot all five rounds. Everyone else gets 3 minutes. This is due to the fact that Tredd had the next couple of shooters on deck and ready to go. So they had time to setup while the previous shooter was shooting.

There were 17 shooters. Two of the shooters had to quit due to equipment failure. One shooter stopped shooting due to a trigger malfunction in his $9k .338 Lapua. At the match it was believed to have been the fault of a broken firing pin given the light primer strikes. But Tom Sarver, of TVP, cleared it up. Another shooter was using a 6.5 Creedmoor Ruger Precision Rifle and his Nikon scope died.

There were some impressive setups at the match.

When Joel and I were at TVP, we met two other guys who were also shooting the same match as us. Terry and Ben. They were using a Celestron Ultima65 18-55×55 spotting scope. I was rather impressed with its ability given its size and price. It was bought for around $140.

In order to shoot 900 and 1,000 yards, we had to move back 200 yards up to the top of the hill.

Aside from having zero dope at these distances, I was further handicapped by my optic. The Browe BCO has a 556 reticle that only goes out to 800 yards. The Primary Arms 1-8x has the same problem, it only goes to 800. Below is an approximation of my hold and sight picture for shooting out to 900 yards. Joel recommended I hold the 800 yard BDC 3 feet above the 900 yard target.

To my suprise, I got rather close to the 900 yard target. The problem was I could not really see my impacts to make any corrections I finally saw my third shot. Corrected, fired my 4th and corrected again. My fifth shot got rather close.

It was interesting seeing people struggle. Many of them have practiced similar distances but the wind, heat and possibly geography made it tough. Joel struggled with the 560 yard steel but managed to get hits at all the other distances.

The guy with the bandanna was really good. He was making every hit and in rapid succession. He was hitting the smaller 12″ plates not even waiting for them to stop swinging.

Yuriy B. won the match by making great hits and beat out the bandanna guy by hitting the 10″ plates at 1010 yards away with his last two shots.

Washington County Machine Gun will host the match again in September. I probably wont see my RAP 6.5 until October. Joel might be able to pick it up for me when he heads down to Myrtle Beach in August but that is not a lot of time to get practice on that gun. I might just borrow a better scope and try using the SCAR17S some more. Hopefully I can do better next time. If I double my efforts I can get two hits lol.

The match was indeed fun. I would have liked it if we could use spotters to help give corrections. Many of the shooters, even with good optics, had difficulty seeing their impacts. Some feed back would be much appreciated.