[Buffalobob]

1200 yard antelope gun

About 20 years ago I took a FN Mauser action into a gunshop and had them send it to their gunsmith to have a Douglas barrel, Fajen stock and Timney trigger put on it. I had it chambered in 240 Wby. The barrel was a heavy sporter contour 26 inch length 1-10 twist with a factory spec chamber and free bore. I killed a lot of eastern whitetail deer with that and I doubt if a one of them was over 100 yards away.

About two years ago as I began considering retirement I decided to convert the gun to a longrange antelope gun. I looked around at the well known gunsmith who built 1K benchrest guns and settled on Clay Spencer of Spencer Barrels down in Virginia. The 240 Wby is ballistically similar to the 6-284 and the 6-06. Clay6 recommended minimum SAAMI chamber with no freebore and a 1-8 twist with a NBRSA HV taper. The throat was cut to seat 105-115 grain VLD bullets into the lands. The barrel would weigh about 6.75 pounds and be 30 inches long and with a brake 31.5 inches long. Because of the flexibility of the FN action it would have to be epoxy pillar bedded and have about three or four inches of barrel pad. I had scrapped the old stock and had Joel Russo of Pa. built me a laminated thumbhole stock. With a 30 inch barrel I could use slow burning powders such a RL-22 and gain back the velocity that was lost by doing away with the freebore.
Testing loads with the gun gave groups of about 0.2 to 0.3 for the Berger 115 grain match bullets just at maximum pressure. At any higher pressures the groups opened up and primers blew out. While the gun shot great but was very twitchy with the heavy barrel and lack of with on the rear bag. None the less I took it antelope hunting and killed antelope out to 686yds and 860 yards. Based upon the wound channel of the antelope I killed at 860 yards I would guess that the gun has good killing power for another 300 to 400 yards

This winter I decide to fix the twitchiness of the gun by adding weight to the rear of the stock. I went out to the garage and got out the skillet and sheet lead I had used many years before for casting muzzle loading balls and flopped it on a camp stove out in the yard and melted it down. The first batch I managed to spill into the yard before I remembered that you do not pour the lead from the skillet into the mold but rather ladle it in. Not having an old ladle around it occurred to me that an empty beer can would work so I emptied a beer can and finally got molten lead into some aluminum tubes. I took and drilled out the stock and forced the lead cylinders in so they would not rattle around. The extra pound of weight right in the rear of the stock changes the whole feel of the gun. While the balance point only moved three inches the weight on the rear bag is noticeably better.

The point of the story is that while a heavy benchrest barrel is great it can lead to an unbalanced gun. Fluting might have been beneficial.

Hopefully this Fall I will get a few calm days in Wyoming and will extend this gun past 1K.

Here are a few pictures of the gun and the process of adding weight to the stock. You can tell the barrel contour is extreme.