A few months back I took an $800 chance and bought a new Sabatti Rover Tactical rifle chambered in .308 Winchester. It has a 26.5" bull barrel, a synthetic stock, adjustable trigger and uses Remington 700 bases. I use it in our local club bench rest matches... purely factory, out of the box stock. I put Leupold standard bases on it and have mounted a Sightron SII 36X42 BD scope on it. With the scope, it weighs over 12 pounds.
The rifling is a proprietary "Multi-Radial" design similar to the Remington R-5 rifling. It takes little effort to push a tight patch through the bore. Cleaning is super easy and I've gotten absolutely no copper fouling whatsoever.
The picture below shows the very first groups I shot with it. It obviously didn't care for the Serbian bullets. Since then, I've settled on this load: Winchester brass, standard LR primers, 45.0 grains of H-4895 and a Nosler 140 grain Custom Competition bullet seated to an OAL of 2.750". It's a consistent 5-shot 1/2 MOA load. My best 5-shot group to date is .287" C-C.
Yesterday a friend showed up on the range with an identical rifle and shot his first test loads. He used the same Nosler bullet as I do and his best groups were with 46.5 grains of H-4895. That load gave him 1/2 MOA groups.
So does anyone else have and use a Sabatti in any caliber for their bench rest rifle?
The rifling is a proprietary "Multi-Radial" design similar to the Remington R-5 rifling. It takes little effort to push a tight patch through the bore. Cleaning is super easy and I've gotten absolutely no copper fouling whatsoever.
The picture below shows the very first groups I shot with it. It obviously didn't care for the Serbian bullets. Since then, I've settled on this load: Winchester brass, standard LR primers, 45.0 grains of H-4895 and a Nosler 140 grain Custom Competition bullet seated to an OAL of 2.750". It's a consistent 5-shot 1/2 MOA load. My best 5-shot group to date is .287" C-C.
Yesterday a friend showed up on the range with an identical rifle and shot his first test loads. He used the same Nosler bullet as I do and his best groups were with 46.5 grains of H-4895. That load gave him 1/2 MOA groups.
So does anyone else have and use a Sabatti in any caliber for their bench rest rifle?
