Beginner long distance shooter

[DocMedic]

So the situation you are in was me last year in October, and actually many years before that but I decided to finally act at the beginning of this year. As you I had a itch to get into PRS style shooting and already had a pretty good 308 bolt gun. A FN-SPR-A5. My experience to rifle style competitions has been 3 gun since 2009 which I shoot at least one major 3gun match a year (He-Man nationals) with my Heman setup with the rifle being a GAP-10 18inch barrel 308. My GAP would always group 3/4inch at 100yards with SMK and TMK's 155's, but anytime I ran the load through my FN I would get +2inch or bigger groups, I just came to the realization that I just can't shoot a boltgun worth a damn.

I shot a couple of PRS style rifle matches with my 3gun rifle with a bushnell tactical 3x-12 and one Major match and did ok... but I wanted something a little more design for the game but was at a loss as I just couldn't get my FN to group well. After some convincing from people here at COar15 I tried out 175's out of my 308 and bam groups tighten to 1/2 inch out of the FN. Cool... except 175's coming out at 2600ish fps out of a 24 inch gun is a thumper. So I was in the hunt for a 6.5 RPR, but during that time they were vaporware and some places that did have them wanted x2 MSRP. Since I didn't want to spend 2k on a Ruger I weighed my options, either shoot the FN for the handful of PRS style Major matches I wanted to shoot this year, or go with a custom/AI build.

I've done a ton of research and basically it came down that 6.xx is just superior to 308 in everyway. Yes PRS has a separate 308/223 division but not all the matches I'll be attending were PRS, so I decided I'm going the 6.xx route. After talking to a few 3gun/PRS high level competitors the "cheaper" route would be to rebarrel the FN since I already have 2 other rifles that were in 308, the GAP-10 and G-II. And everyone that I talked to agreed the FN action (Winchester 70) is actually pretty rock solid system, since it already came with a A5 Stock that's been bedded, 20MOA rail, and been trued at factory. Only issue is there's like one guy in Colorado that can spin a barrel on a FN. So after talking to Fritz that now works at Mile High, he convinced me to go 6.5 Creedmoor as it would give me more bang for my buck and then he went to work. He put in a new bartlen 1-8 26" barrel, threaded it and did his voodoo, as well as put in a new bottom metal that accepts AI mags and a 2lbs trigger job. When I got the gun back in Feb the first 3 shots from factory 140 Hornady Amax at 100yards was a little larger then 1/4inch. Since then I've worked up a pretty good load with Hornady 140s ELD's that stay within that group size now. I topped the rifle with a Bushnell Elite 4.5-30 G2 that I got at a killer deal at Mile high, and this rifle has quickly became one of my favorite rifles to shoot.

NOW.. with that said, if I do burnout the barrel on this rifle in the future instead of rebarreling the rifle, I'll more then likely go with a custom build that has the ability to put custom barrels on with some sort of "quick" change system. Nothing wrong with the FN as its hell of a shooter but it did cost me 1k to get the work done + the barrel. So my answer is to buy a more expensive solution down the road :P.

A lot of great answers are in this thread and I can only tell you what I personally went through this past year as my experience seems to mimic your current situation.