I'm ready, but the weather.....

Well, the weather doesn't cooperate much.

I bought the. 45 cal Kodiak rifle a while back and ordered a couple new plugs for it so I could start with a fresh plug, not knowing how many shots went thru the original. The 200 grain XTP bullets I want to shoot have arrived with the sabots [thank you GM for the heads up on bullet availability] and I picked up a jug of T7 to get me on the range. I picked up the scope on Weds and had it mounted and bore sighted that evening. Then yesterday morning we got about 1/4" to 1/2" of rain before the temps went south and things froze and got slick just before the snow arrived. I was up at 5AM yesterday and watched the rain literally go from rain to frozen ice pellets in a matter of a couple minutes as the cold front that came with this storm blew in. The wind came along big time mid afternoon yesterday and hasn't really let up yet. The wind also ushered in some more sub-0 temps. The forecast is for cold again for over the weekend, letting up about Tuesday of next week so I guess I'll be making tackle instead of making smoke. Maybe I'll measure and tube some charges.

I like my 209 powder so I plan to make the conversion to the original breech plug to make sure things work like my other inlines before I convert the new plugs for vent liners. The T7 will be used to get the gun sighted. The gun came with a ton of powerbelts, pellets and a couple clam packs of the ballistic tipped Hornady bullets/sabots in 200 grain....these Hornadys will be used to rough sight the gun.

I'm ready. The weather is typical Minnesota so I'll have to wait.

I hope you have better luck with the XTP 200 grain than I did. When I set up an Encore with Lehigh, SST, Shock Wave 200 grains and XTP 180 grain all but the 200 grain XTP shot with excellent accuracy with the 200 grain bullets I found the accuracy load at 120 grain BH with the 180 grain it was at 70 grains BH.

I generally love winter but this one has been no fun. Way to cold to have the kids outside and not enough snow to do anything. Got the kids out sunday when it hit 30 which was nice. But now the sub zero is back. Im about 4 hours north of you and it was -20 this morning! Makes it tough to have a good range session.

I here ya. -4 here yet and this is supposed to be the high for the day. I'm back at the jig casting table and will paint later today. Good day to make a pot of chili.