When I attended the NWTF National Convention in Nashville this February, I went to a handful of events where they had firearm raffles going. One lunch event was called the Freedom Gun Vault. It was an event with a bunch of raffles for a lot of different firearms. I had offered to volunteer and run on of the raffle games along with another volunteer from New York.

I was in charge of any credit card transactions at the game while Mike was in charge of cash sales. We sold most of our raffle chances (a binocular harness along with a raffle ticket for a Benelli shotgun) before they served lunch. After lunch, I went and checked out the other raffle games to see if I wanted to buy any chances at them.

One game had custom metal trivets that were the NWTF logo and they came with one ticket to win a beautiful maple-stocked Browning rifle. I decided to buy a trivet because the other raffles didn’t have prizes that I really wanted to win. After awhile, they started picking the winning tickets for the different raffles. When they got to the trivet game, I got my ticket out from my wallet to check the number. As the emcee read out the number, I looked at my ticket and matched the numbers. I threw my hands up to show them I had the winning ticket as I walked up to have them confirm I was the winner. It matched and I was sent to the firearm warehouse table in the back of the room to give them my information and where I was going to have the firearm sent.

As I filled out the top of the form, I asked them what caliber the rifle was because I had only cared about how cool the stock was. “300 Win Mag” I was told. A little bit of the wind came out of my sail upon hearing that. In 2024, I had won a Benelli Lupo in Nashville and chose 300 Winchester Magnum for the caliber. And I hadn’t even put a scope on that rifle, let alone shoot it. So I asked the firearm warehouse manager if there was any way to see if it was available in another caliber. He opened a file on his laptop, typed a few things in and gave me the three other calibers they had (6.5 Creedmoor, .270 Winchester, and .243 Winchester). I told him I’d prefer the .243 but they only had 1 so .270 would be my second choice if the .243 was sold before he could move it in the system as taken. He scribbled out some of the gun details on the paper I had filled out and changed it to what I wanted. So once I got home, I went to a local dealer and had them send their FFL license to the warehouse so they would ship the firearm out. A week or so later, I went down and did the background check. I passed and took the firearm home. I spent some time researching scopes and ended up ordering a Vortex Diamondback 3.5-10x50mm to put on it.

With this new rifle and scope setup combined with getting into hand loading, I figured this would be a great summer project for me. I can get experience making the hand loads and then shooting them to see what works best. It is also a good reason to go shooting more in my free time.

Then last week I had Thursday off as a holiday and I used a vacation day on Friday to make a 4-day weekend. On Thursday I received a package from Fedex, a Garmin Xero C1 chronograph that I had ordered. Chronographs tell you the speed of your bullet when it leaves the muzzle of your gun, which can help you determine if your powder charge is safe to use in your gun. The reloading companies have pressure sensors in their test barrels so they go use pressure to decide what the maximum powder charge is and publish what the speed was at that charge when they make their reloading books.

Since you don’t have a pressure sensor in your barrel, you can compare bullet speeds to make sure you are the same or lower (which also means similar or lower pressures in your firearm so it is safe to shoot). Friday afternoon I was able to go to a friend’s gun range and finally shoot the .243 I had won in Nashville and test out the chronograph. I brought a box of factory load ammo and a box of 20 hand loads. I didn’t plan to shoot all of them but I wanted to try some of each. I ended up shooting 6 of the factory rounds to get the scope close to zeroed and then shot 4 of the hand loads.

I was fighting with mosquitoes the entire time I was there so I shot my 10 rounds at 50 yards and called it a day without going out to 100 yards. That’s for next time! I enjoyed how the rifle shot and how clear the scope was so I can’t wait to go back to the range and shoot it some more.