Beginner long distance shooter

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Dang XC. This should be stickied as advice for beginners. This is like a condensed version of years of money, mistakes, lessons learned and information. Good write up. Take his advice OP, you'll be well served.

Edit: I don't have experience with anything 6mm outside of 243 and still not alot there, but from what I've read the 6mm's tend to eat up barrels a little more quickly than 6.5's or 308's. A cost to consider, but he's absolutely correct about spotting your own misses, and the 6mm family excelling there. There's usually a speed limit on projectiles in matches, but it's much safer and easier to push the 6mm bullets to that limit, which means less time of flight for wind to affect the path of travel. But even if your shooting every weekend, it'll take a year to burn it out. So put a $20 in your safe every weekend and you'll have enough for a great barrel chambered by a great smith at the end of the year. Also, if you're like me and most guys shooting long range, you'll soon find it a necessity to load your own rounds. Start reading about reloading if you're competitive. And read about wind.

[XC700116]

Dang XC. This should be stickied as advice for beginners. This is like a condensed version of years of money, mistakes, lessons learned and information. Good write up. Take his advice OP, you'll be well served.

Edit: I don't have experience with anything 6mm outside of 243 and still not alot there, but from what I've read the 6mm's tend to eat up barrels a little more quickly than 6.5's or 308's. A cost to consider, but he's absolutely correct about spotting your own misses, and the 6mm family excelling there. There's usually a speed limit on projectiles in matches, but it's much safer and easier to push the 6mm bullets to that limit, which means less time of flight for wind to affect the path of travel. But even if your shooting every weekend, it'll take a year to burn it out. So put a $20 in your safe every weekend and you'll have enough for a great barrel chambered by a great smith at the end of the year. Also, if you're like me and most guys shooting long range, you'll soon find it a necessity to load your own rounds. Start reading about reloading if you're competitive. And read about wind.

On the subject of 6mm's , yes typically the barrels don't last all that long, I've completely shot out 3 different 6X47 Lapua Barrels in the last year and went about half way through another before selling the barreled action to another forum member here. That cartridge has a typical life of around 1400 rounds. There are some other options though. Hoser shoots a lot of 6mm Competition Match witch is an improved 243 Win and by virtue of it's case capacity allows both great velocity and barrel life by using a slower burning powder (H1000 in this case), pretty sure he's seeing somewhere around 3000 rounds on a barrel, I'm sure he'll chime in here at some point and can expand on that. Then there's the 6BRX which I shoot now and I expect a total round count of about 2000 rounds per barrel including break in, fire forming, and load development which should provide me with at least 1500 match quality rounds from a barrel and 6 Dasher is VERY similar.

For comparison a 260 Remington or a 6.5 Creedmoor typically last about 3000 rounds give or take.