Shot skeet for the first time over the weekend... god damnit that shit's fun.

Loads of laughs with a 20 gauge semi-auto. Same with a 12 gauge semi, but not so much the next day :lol:

I love shooting Pigeons. Cant beat the cheap shooting. Hell I'll use my tactical semi for shits.

Fun and addicting, which ends up being expensive. Why is it all my fun hobbies get spendy?

I prefer my O/U actually, probably cause it's my hunting gun as well, so I'm using the same firearm and used to it. :lol:

Yeah, a couple hundred through the 12g... recoil pad and all... still kinda sucks.

My buddy was using his sawed off, pistol gripped, 12g was doing surprisingly well shooting from his hip...

Yeah no shit... like, why can't I be into running or bird watching or some shit? The wife would fucking love that lol

Along with clays, we shot a myriad of other shit... First time ever shooting an actual hunting rifle... Kinda made me want to get into the long game a bit...

Now, when I say long... I don't really mean long. I mean, sub-500 yards... aka... far enough away for me to feel like a badass. I'd also like to do some hunting in the future, so it'd get used for that as well.

I'd like something with a certain amount of versatility and as cheap as possible. Started looking at entry level bolt-actions, similar to what I was shooting that weekend, and something like a Savage Axis or similar looks pretty good to me.

Then I started thinking, fuck it, maybe I'd just build an AR and use that... cause I've always kinda wanted an AR and if it'd do the trick just the same, everyone's happy.

Thoughts on:

• bolt vs semi auto
• AR vs something else
• caliber - price and availability the primary concern
• anything else I should consider

You will be surprised just how far 500 yards is, you probably want to look at more like sub 300 for practical fun, LoL. My club range has a 200/300/500 rifle range in addition to other shorter stuff. 500 is only open for competitions because you have to shoot across a road that goes to the rest of the ranges. It's really fuckin far away, LoL. I shoot my M1A at 200 mostly with a 3-10x 40mm scope, 300 is a big difference. When you get to 500 shit gets serious, I don't even bother right now. Still too much of a noob at distance. Most people I talk to about deer hunting pretty much say 90% of your shots will be at 100 yards or less. The guy I sit next to at work who is the president of the Safari Club in this region said he has only needed to make a shot over 150 a very low percentage of the time for deer.

If you really want to focus on distance and hunting, go with a bolt action and definitely go with a caliber larger than 223. I would probably go with a 30-30 for hunting, everyone just has it, hunters/stores/doesn't matter. People just don't regularly hunt with ARs unless they are fucking off with boars they don't want to eat or something.

For me (personal opinion) I prefer an AR base for just about every rifle need, thus my answers reflect my preference and reasoning.


I've owned bolt action .22, .223, .308, .30-06, 7mm mag (all scoped)

AR-15 (multiple, and several scoped)

AR-10 (scoped)

AK-47

SKS

.44mag, .22 and .357 lever



Followup shots are much more difficult to maintain target with bolt action. But at the same time....Bolt less tempting to waste ammo.

Bolt is going to be basically designated as sniper/hunting only rifle, as it gets to be a pain reloading a 5 round mag for "plinking" around having fun.


AR recoil is similar to 22 in many ways (as opposed to taking the brunt of the recoil in a bolt). The buffer tube absorbs most felt recoil allowing for very fast target acquisition after initial shot. I can empty a 30 round mag in 30 seconds and have a 12" group at 100 yards with iron sights (may not be impressive as military but for a "hillbilly with ammo", that's pretty dang good)

AR has endless parts and accessory upgrades. You can build a base AR for $600 and upgrade $100 here and there over time to have a superior rifle




The down side to an AR based rifle is that it IS only .223/5.56 and some states will not allow deer hunting with that small of a round.

EXACTLY

Ammo is plentiful and most establishments will have it in stock (zombie apoc consideration)

Most of the time I can score 1000 rounds of 5.56 for under $400. Sometimes $300 if I run up on a deal

New Magpul 30 round Magazines are running about $9 if you buy 10 at a time now.


AR platform is addicting as HELL. Yeah it's a "do-all" rifle, but you build ONE and think "damn I'd love to have a short barrel" or "Man a bull barrel sniper setup would be the tits" and before you know it you have 5 in the safe all configured differently. Then you gotta get an additional safe :skep:

And even more shocked how much money it takes to SEE shit that far away!

I've got my eye on This scope if I ever DO decide to venture past 300 yards. But I can't justify the money for just optics. So I'll stick with sub 300 for quite a while until I learn more about temperature, pressure and other effects on the bullets and why they do the magic they do

Yeah, no doubt. I just was googling 'long distance rifle' and different shit like that... everyone talks about 600+ yards... and the money that goes into shots like that. I figured I'd mostly be in the 100-200 yard range 99.9% of the time.

I knew the AR-15 was .223/5.56, so I guess I meant, should I go with the AR-10. I recognize that throws my economy out the window in more ways that one, but is it worth just sucking it up and investing in the bigun right off?