remingtonman_25_06
Handloader
- Nov 17, 2005
- 2,839
- 491
It's been a while since I've shot, or done anything with the wife's Kimber lightweight 7/08. Bought this for her as an all around rifle for deer and elk about 8 years ago. Nathan added one of his 4 port brakes to tame the recoil from a 7# scoped rifle. At the time just to get her started I threw a Vortex Diamondback 4-12x BDC on top in talley mounts. I loaded up some 150g NBTs over RL17 and it shot very well out of the gate. 5/8 MOA at 2825fps. With a 200y zero the BDC matched up pretty well out to 600, and she was able to bust milk jugs out to 500 with it with ease. I'll take that anyday from a mountain rifle. She has since had a lot of health issues and hasn't been able to do a lot of hunting so it has no blood on it yet. Fast forward to now, I finally decided to swap scopes as I wasn't a huge fan of that vortex and start shooting it some more. It worked well enough for her, but if I was ever going to use it, it needed a little better scope. So I did a little shopping and research. I wanted a little more magnification, but still needed to keep it relatively lightweight, good glass and tracking. I ended going with a good old Leupold Vari X III 6.5-20x40 w/fine duplex and target turrets. I scrapped the Talley mount and went with a Warne Mountain tech 20 MOA base and rings. Since the Leupold only has around 50 MOA elevation travel, the 20 MOA base is probably going to be needed to stretch out to 1K on steel. Threw a Vortex bubble level on it to round things out, and it all comes in at 7# 2oz. Perfect! Now just need to hit the range and get a good zero and she'll be back in business!
