Ballseye's Gun Shots 39 - Range Report - Remington 513T Matchmaster

I had a lot of good things to say about the Remington 513T Matchmaster in the post immediately prior to this one. The proof of a rifle though is in the shooting. I took it to the range this afternoon, and set up targets at the 50 foot line. The targets were NRA standard 50 foot rifle targets for 22's. The black bull's eyes are 1 3/16 inches across if I measured right. As you can see I am posting 2 pictures. The reason I am only posting 2 pictures is because I only shot at two targets. Each has 12 bull's eyes. In all I only shot at 18 of those in the hour that I was shooting and the total number of rounds I fired was 88. It would have been 90 but I ran out of a particular brand of ammo and just shot the last three of that offhand, and that was not too shabby. For all the other shots, I fired them from a seated position, arms resting on the bench, with a coat folded up and placed between my arms and the bench surface. Yeah I know, really professional, but obviously it worked just fine.

As for the ammo, I fired a variety. Some was just cheap stuff, which is the bulk of the .22LR ammo that I have. Some was more expensive but nothing of the high end target type ammo used by competition shooters. Ammo types I shot were: CCI Blazer, CCI Mini Mag, Federal's American Eagle, Federal Champion (target velocity), Remington Thunderbolt. Nothing special as far as .22LR ammo goes, some of it even considered to be pretty low end - the CCI Blazer and the Remington Thunderbolt. There can be some surprises though when you expect something to be junk and it isn't. A look at the targets will show you what I mean. Click on each to enlarge it. They are annotated to show which ammo was used on each bull's eye, and as to group size. All groups were 5 shots except for one in which I fired 4 because I made a mistake when I loaded the mag, and the other because I ran out of ammo - so I discounted both of them. As for measurment of group size, I measured the widest spread from the outside rim of one to the oputside rim of the other. I think that is not the proper way to do it
and that normally you would measure from the inside edge of one shot to the outside edge of the other. That would have been tough since the groups were pretty tight. It was just easier to measure the way I did it but had I done it the right way then the group sizes would have been a bit smaller, maybe by as much as 2/16" for some groups.

Looking at the first target, you can see that every shot is to the left of center. I probably had not fired this rifle for at least a year, maybe as many as 2 or 3 years, prior to today and do not recall if it was sighted in right before or not. It is possible that the sights got messed up during a cleaning or moving or rearranging of the gun locker. Whether or not it was shooting at the center of the target is inconsequential for all the shots on that target. The thing was that it was shooting pretty consistent groups and all groups were to the left. That was good. A bit of twiddling with the sights and the result was target 2 where many more shots are at center of the bull's eyes. The groups on the second target are not too shabby but I could not again achieve the best two groups on target 1 which were only 6/16" across each.

When I was shooting on the second target, I think know I was getting a bit rattled by two other shooters who just would not stop talking, one of them was exceptionally loud. Even with all the shooting going on all I heard was him. It was friggin annoying. I was about to say something to them when I noticed one of them pointing his shotgun directly across the firing points at a right angle to all of them next to his. In other words, had he let one loose, it probably would have injured or maybe killed a shooter on one of the other points. Lucky for them there were no other shooters at that moment, the other two guys in that bay of shooting points had already left. So, I gave them a good but restrained lesson in where to point firearms, when to have a finger on the trigger, and to consider all guns as loaded. They both listened and I think they got it too. That was it for me though, no more shooting. My getting annoyed combined with the strain of trying to shoot as well as I could , and taking my time doing it, had me at the point where my shots would not be getting any better.

By the way, yes it is pretty stressing to try to shoot as well as you can when hand holding an 8 to 9 pound rifle even if resting on the bench. Maybe I should invest in some shooting bags or a rifle rest. I suppose that working out a bit to better develop my arm muscles might also help, heaven knows I have not worked out recently because of Arthur I. Tispain. No excuses though, and heck I don't need any, I shot pretty good for a muddled minded middle aged guy whose eyes are not what they once were back in my day. In closing, I have to say that the Remington 513T Matchmaster is one heck of a tack shooter and is obviously capable of better accuracy than it can get with my finger on the trigger.

All the best,
Glenn B