My experience shooting 600 yards at the Talladega CMP (long)

Old man and I went up to the Talladega Civilian Marksmanship park for a 2 day Project Appleseed Known distance event. The CMP in Talladega is the most advanced rifle range in the US if not the world. Can't say enough good things about it. I've mentioned project Appleseed on here before and strongly suggest anyone who wants to be a better marksman to attend their events. The "normal" Appleseed event goes over the standing, sitting, and prone shooting positions and is shot at 25 meters on scaled down targets simulating shooting at 100, 200, 300, and 400 yards. All shooting is unsupported using only you, a sling, and your rifle. No bipods, benches, shooting sticks, grip pods, etc.

The known distance or "KD" events are shot at full distances on full sized silhouettes. The KD events assume you have mastered the shooting positions and instead you go into depths about bullet trajectory, wind and environmental effects, different methods of setting up your rifle to shoot at different ranges, etc. I would say 1/3 of the time is spent in the classroom, 1/6th of the time is spent gathering ballistics data establishing your battle field zero or figuring out the come ups/downs at various distances. The rest of the time is spent shooting the AQT which is the Appleseed qualification test which is based on the Army qualification test. The 25m events have scoring rings on the silhouettes but the KD events only count hits. So in effect the 3 ring disappears on the 25m targets and only 4's and 5's count. You have to get 40/50 hits to qualify as a long range rifleman and get your long range rocker.

Spoiler alert, I earned my rocker



My equipment. My cheapest AR I own which is my 16" carbine built on an 80% lower with a BCA stainless barrel barrel fre floated with a Bushnell 1-4x24 scope. Built it for less than $500 (with optic) about 3 years ago. I did add the LaRue MBT S2 and a Indian Creek Designs blast forward device. The BFD mount installs under a muzzle brake and allows you to screw on a flash can if you are at a range and don't want to piss off your neighbors. Shooting Wolf Gold 55gr 223.

Day 1 was spend on Range 2 which is the 100 yard range. We shot sighters and established our zeros. We shot stage 1 of the AQT 6 times that day since Range 1 doesn't have a 100 yard line. Stage 1 is 10 shots from a standing position in under 2 minutes. 8-9-10-10-10-9 were my 6 scores going into day 2.

100 yard range.


Day 2 was spent on Range 1. At the Talladega CMP Range 1 is set up for 200, 300, and 600 yards with electronic scoring so you can't fire at 400 yards and you don't fire at silhouettes. 200 yard target is shot from a sitting of kneeling position with a mandatory magazine change in the middle of the string of fire. You have 55 seconds to transition from standing to sitting, load your magazine, fire 2 shots, drop your magazine and fire 8 more shots. I have a really solid sitting position and I can make fast mag changes with my AR so for me this was the easiest course of fire. I know many other struggle with this one but for me this was the easiest. I scored perfect on stage 2 every time. Requirement was 7.5 or above counts as a hit.



Stage 3 shot at 300 yards with a transition from standing to prone, 10 shots with a magazine change in under 1:05. A lot of people run out of time on stages 2 and 3. I always seemed to rush at the end and would miss one of my last 2 shots. Need to be inside 7.5 to count as a hit.
Consistently 9 on this course of fire with one very notable exception which I will mention later.

Since there is no 400 yard line stage 4 is shot at either 300 yards with reduced sized targets or 600 yards. With 6 AQTs, the AQTs were split half and half. First 3 were shot at 300 yards with only 9 ring or above counting as hits. On the 600 yard target 7.5 or above counts as hits. Hits count double on stage 4. 10 shots for a total of 20 points.

First completed AQT I missed qualifying by 1 point. Starting off with an 8 on standing I went 10-9 on 2 and 3. I needed 7 hits to qualify and I got 6 :(

2nd AQT I started with a 9 on stage one. I was feeling good after my 10 on sitting going into the 300 yard target. Then disaster happened, I forgot to dial in my come-ups on my scope after moving from 200 to 300 yards. I was shooting 8 mils low (2.75MOA) and only scored 4/10. Fuq. Didn't think I had any chance to qualify on this AQT as I had to be near perfect on stage 4 which has never been kind to me. Then I did the unthinkable and pulled off a nearly perfect stage 4 with 9/10 hits with my lone miss being a 8.9. Added up to 41 and I earned my first Long range rocker.



Shot a 39 on the next AQT after going into stage 4 with 29 points. Had a great chance to pull off a high score and really futzed up the final stage with just 5 hits.

After that we moved out to 600 yards. I've never shot past around 150 yards and had no idea how the little 55gr Wolf Gold pill would do at this range.

First sighter group was off to the right.



Going from 100-300 I had to dial in a little leftward correction. I thought that was wind effects since it was windy on Sunday and not so on Saturday. It turns out my scope wasn't perfectly level. I had dialed in .3 mils of windage at 300 yards and turned into 2.4moa = ~14.5" miss to the right because my scope wasn't perfectly level.

First sighter group circled in red and me chasing my tail.



Next sighter group was much better and I left it along after that. Going from 300 to 600 was 3 mils (30 clicks at .1mil/click) up in elevation and 7 to the left for my unlevel scope for my rifle and ammo combination.



My best score of the day was a 45 (10-10-9-8) with this 8/10 group at 600 yards. The 8 ring is 24" in diameter at 600 yards. It's amazing to think with a cheap rifle shooting cheap ammo with no support other than a sling and just 4x magnification I was able to put 8 shots in that circle. I've never gotten below about 3-3.5" 10-20 shot groups out of Wolf Gold with my rifle shooting from a bench so I think I've maximized the potential of my rifle/ammo combo. Next KD I go to I'm going to want to try better ammo and fix (possibly upgrade) my scope.