Allrighty then. After 4 days and 369 round of 7mm TC/U I have the best groups I can shoot (Give me some time guys) Here they are.

Ya done good. That's minute of coyote for sure. Don't you just love a warm gun? LOL
Sounds like you had a fine day at the range.
Yotebuster

many fine days it was. well it wasn't that fine. If you are bored, look up the weather from the 15th through the 18th in the zipcode of 56479. I think it hit about 10 degrees if you don't count the wind.

So it was cold, and windy and the shooting conditions weren't the best. but I had a great time and came back with only a little over 150 rounds unfired. 50 bullets to pull and some fire forming. but it was one heck of a week.

Matt

Matt,
Not bad for a beginner, not bad at all. If you are shooting from a bench, make yourself a lazy L stand out of 2x6 to hold the gun and support the butt. Pad the bottom and make a V notch in the leg top, put leather inside the notch stapled to each side. This will help stabalize a handgun for shooting groups when doing load development.

If you know how to shoot Creedmore, the position is very stable with a center grip bolt-gun. Some say better than the bench.

It appears that not all of your holes are round, could be the light or the photo. If you have some round and some slightly oblong holes, you may be at the edge of the twist rate's ability to stabalize the bullet. Of course if the 154 is a BT, at 60 yards it will not be 100% stable quite yet.

Suggest you find the 130 Speer flat base and put them over 29 grains of WW-748 powder. The dime will cover the group with the 130. The load does not just shoot sometimes, every gun I have ever owned shot the load. It is one of those rare loads that you can actually feel the accuracy as you shoot, it is as if you can not miss.

Also, change your target to a solid black square 1.5x1.5 inches and use the corners to match the corners formed by the crosshairs. Allow just a hair of light between square and crosshair. This stops canting and returns the cross hairs returning to exactly the same point. Your groups will be cut by 1/4.

You might try this site to find out about a rear grip stock. No doubt you can change the trigger to a rear grip configuration (standard rifle) if the parts are still available. I suspect that you have a Sako AI or Vixen action.

www.aimoo.com/forum/fr...?id=388847

Practice, practice, practice.
Good Luck.
Ed

Thanks for the advice Ed, I'll have to get me some 748 and 130 gr speers and see what I can shoot.

After digging through my targets I found some groups that were tighter with the 120 gr HP and with the 154 gr SPs. My father thinks that he requested that the barrel be optimized for the 139gr hdy bullet but I wouldn't know how that would be done or even if it was done (Something with the twist?) and I did have some ok groups shooting those but I wasn't shooting from a solid platform.
all I know is that it is a Sako L461 action and thats it. but as far is changing the trigger, I couldn't do it. it would feel too much like betrayal to my dad. I know that silly, but for years thats one of the big things I thought about when I thought about my father, that and the SKBs that he was bringing home and trading in and then selling to pay bills. its the only firearm that made it though all those years of change and strife.
as for the round holes, after inspection it was something in the photos and tweaking that made the holes look off. I had to brighten them to show the holes and sharpen them because I just quit smoking and my hands a still shaking a bit. I also know that I could shrink my groups by not allowing myself to take the shot till it was perfect. I'm still trying to break that habit.

Matt

bodyalter,

Your spot on, way to optimize a rifle for a specific bullet is to make the rifling twist match the bullet you want to shoot. Most firearms are a general twist to suit different types of ammo but you can get special twist rates in certain match guns for the type of ammo your going to be using.

Dimitri