TargetTalk

Best calibre for rifle target shooting? I'm considering buying a good longer barrel bolt action rifle (24 to 26 inches) for target shooting. Ruger makes a nice 24" 22 LR. Remington, CZ, Ruger and Savage make some very nice longer barrel rifles in the 204, 223, and 243 calibres. The 22 LR might come up a bit short, but what's the best calibre for target shooting up to 200 yards?
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Assume your question and post is genuine, here is what little that I know:

Back in the old old days during the Olympics they have military team rifle as an event. Each nation was required to send a team to use their ordnance rifles. They were required to shoot various distances all the way to 800M (IIRC). Every member and the scores from every distance will be added up to come up with a grand total. The country with the most points win.
So for example, the Enfield SMLE would be used by team Great Britain and team South Africa. .303 Caliber.

If you are looking for modern rifle, there is no such Olympic event, but in the ISSF there is something close to 200M. They are standard rifle 300M and free rifle 300M, both 3P and prone. The brand that are most commonly used are Bleiker and Kepeler. However frequently the athletes will use other companies parts to build their rifle. So it is possible that the Bleiker will have a Lothar Walther barrel. The standard rifle event is a left over of the old military team rifle event, but in this case it now has an individual event. You no longer need to use an ordnance rifle, but the construction rule is much stricter and it resembles a little bit of an ordnance rifle. As for free rifle, as the name implied, the design is most liberal.

All ammo are center fire, a typical caliber would be the NATO rounds. While they are all designed for 300M, I am sure 200M should not be a problem.

I am not a rifle shooter, but am a keen student of the sports history and enjoy the research. I am sure there are other people who can provide better and more suitable answers. But this is mine.

Good luck.

Ok for positional target rifle shooting, including prone, none of the manufacturers you mentioned make a suitable target rifle. Although CZ and Ruger make and many others make some nice sporting rifles they are not really suitable for either ISSF shooting at 50 m or any of that competitions run by various national governing bodies which may well include shooting both at shorter 15/20/25 yards/meters or even 50 feet, or longer at 100 yards/meters. By far the most popular, and therefore most numerous secondhand, manufacturer of suitable smallbore match rifles is Anschutz. Walther and FWB have also had a long history of producing world class match rifles, but not in the quantities of Anschutz. There are also some others such as Valmet Finnish Lion, BSA and Unique that made match rifles but these and most others are no longer in production, so spares are harder to find. So that mostly covers smallbore match rifle shooting. There are classes for sporter type rifles from the manufacturers you listed within competitive Bench Rest shooting.

Within the ISSF the only matches for centerfire rifles is at 300 m. These are for either the Standard or Free Rifle classes, the main difference between the classes is the weight limit and stock design limits. The Standard rifle having a lower weight and much stricter stock dimension limits. Any caliber up to 8mm is allowed, and the 7.62×51 NATO/.308 Win round was once very popular. These days most of the good shooters seem to be using 6 mm BR Norma or a variant of it. All of the rifles are single shot only. In fact that applies to most smallbore match rifles too. The rules do not allow you to use a magazine fed rifle in many cases, not even single loaded.

At a domestic level then most of the English speaking world also have different series of matches for centerfire target rifles. In Great Britain and most of the other Commonwealth countries the rules are similar. In this case using either 7.62×51 NATO or the 5.56×45 NATO round and shot at distances from 300 to 1000 yards with some matches actually going back to 1100 & 1200 yards. They also all use pretty much the same size targets at each range. There are many international matches shot to these rules and the USA sometimes also takes part. There is also a world long range Championship shot to the Palma Rules, at 800/900/1000 yards which for many years the USA dominated, but in the last 20 odd years GB have been the leaders in the four yearly matches. The USA has the largest range of matches for centerfire rifles and there are even categories for Semi Auto military type rifles such as the AR 15 and M1. For details of these matches it is best to contact the NRA of America.

Alan

Hmmm

to quote Monty Python: Spam! Wonderful Spam!

Tim I wanted to give the OP the benefit of the doubt on the Spam front. In a country where it is pretty easy to go out and just buy a rifle without much thought it may well be a genuine question. As Brits, with the need to be a member of a rifle club in order to be able to buy a rifle for target shooting I think we sometimes forget this. It's the sort of question you hear some prospective members asking at the club when they first attend. At least the questions were not really daft, nothing about AK's etc.

Alan