# Egg Shoot



## SDHandgunner (Jun 22, 2004)

The Tri State Shooters Club held it's annual Sight in Day / Fun Shoot Sunday in a hay meadow down along the north shore of Lake Traverse. It was an absolutely beautiful day, mid 70's and no wind (a rare day in South Dakota).

The Tri State Shooters Club tries to hold one of these shoots every year a week or two prior to opening day of the South Dakota Youth Firearms Deer Season. Our main goal is to get the local kids out shooting, sighting in their rifles and shooting at Gallon Milk Jugs full or water, and Steel Silhouettes at various ranges.

We had our best turn out ever. In fact some people actually got tired of waiting to get a bench to use and left (impatient I guess).

At any rate about 5PM when everyone had been shooting and had their guns zeroed we held our first annual Egg Shoot. The plan was to set up 5 eggs on a board with screws screwed in in a triangle to hold the eggs. Then each shooter would be allowed 5 rounds in which to try to hit all 5 eggs. Heck an egg measures roughly 2" tall x 1 1/2" wide so this shouldn't be too tough. RIGHT?

WRONG.

We set it up so any Rimfire Rifle would shoot Eggs at 100 yards and Centerfire Rifles would shoot Eggs at 200 yards.

Sounds easy, right? WRONG AGAIN.

The first couple shooters in the rimfire division manaed to each hit 1 egg out of the 5. My buddy Greg (that has a Ruger K77/22VBZ .22 LR that I customized for him) managed 2 out of the 5 eggs. I followed Greg and from our practicing I knew full well my Custom Ruger K77/22 was printing better groups at 100 yards than Greg's. Well it would appear that my Custom Ruger K77/22 shoots better at paper than it does at eggs as I only managed to hit 1 out of the 5 eggs.

My nephew didn't want to go through the hassle of rezeroing his Custom Ruger 10/22, so he used my Custom Ruger K77/22, and proceded to take top honors (and half of the entry money) for hitting 4 out of the 5 eggs. Well at least I know my Custom Ruger K77/22 is capable of hitting more than one egg now anyway. My nephew was pumped to say the least.

Once all the Rimfire Shooters were done we turned to the Centerfire Shooters, and set the egg board at 200 yards. Now I am here to tell you that an egg is not a very big target at 200 yards. The first two shooters failed to break a single egg. I thought this is going to be interesting. My nephew didn't want to shoot his .30-06 at the 200 yards eggs (I think he wanted to quit while he was on top, can't blame him for that one) so I asked if I could borrow his .30-06 since my Gunsmith doesn't have my new .30-06 T/C Encore Rifle finished as yet.

My nephew told me to go for it, so I paid my entry fee. My nephews .30-06 is a Remington Model 700 Stainless-Synthetic BDL that I picked up a 2 years ago for him. I immediately tuned the trigger, cleaned & polished the bore, free floated the barrel, worked up a good load for it and loaded my nephew 200 rounds of ammo.

I had spent quite a bit of time shooting this rifle and knew what it was capable of. However we lost a bit of info in the translation. I asked my nephew what the ballistics chart showed for a point of impact at 200 yards per the way he has it zeroed. He told me 1.6" high, and some how in my mind I kept thinking 1.06" high. Well I managed to hit 1 egg out of the 5 at 200 yards with the .30-06, and according to the spotter I took the top of the egg off.

Truth be known there was a 5 way tie for second place with 5 of us hitting 1 egg. The winner manged to hit 2 out of the 5 eggs with a Winchester Model 70 .25-06. This young guy even out shot his dad with the same rifle. Luke I believe is 13 years old and was one happy youngster Sunday afternoon when all the shooting was done.

I had coffee this morning with a couple of our shooters and we started making plans for next year. It was a lot of fun even though it was a bit humbling for some of us.

Larry


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## darkgael (Feb 10, 2006)

Yeah. An egg at 200 yards is a minute of angle tall and less than a minute of angle wide. That'd be challenging.
How were the shots taken? Standing? Sitting? Prone? Benched?
Pete


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## SDHandgunner (Jun 22, 2004)

All shots were taken from the bench with hunting rifles. No one had a target or varmint rifle so to speak. Heck trying to shoot em from the bench was hard enough, off hand we probably wouldn't have had to buy many eggs.

Larry


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## darkgael (Feb 10, 2006)

Hitting the egg at 200 yards is good shooting for a hunting rifle - a lot harder than just shooting for group size.
Strikes me that that would be a real test of how well a rifle/shooter combination works - instead of a five shot group, five shots, each at different MOA target - like you were doing.
Pete


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## SDHandgunner (Jun 22, 2004)

I am not gonna lie to you, but if the truth must be known it was kind of humbling, especially since I know how both of the rifles I shot group at those ranges. You are exactly right, it was a totally different type of shooting. We are already making plans for next years shoot, maybe more than one even if I can get everything set up.

Larry


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