adamjp,
Congrats on your hunt, and wonderful pics. What is your overall synopsis of the Micro-action Grendel bolt gun? Obviously, the little rifle is lightweight like what we would normally see in a small .222 Rem or .223, but the ballistics are a different animal.
If you were to compare it to another short or even long-action cartridge, performance-wise, what comes to mind?
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Great to see you get some really positive results after the initial barrel disapointments Adam. and a good pig to boot.
Gents, thanks for the words.
BJORN - The Ontario RAT 3 in D2 is a great general purpose knife that always sits on my hunting belt.
LRRPF52 - IMHO the bolt action Grendel compares favourably with the 257 Roberts - a well known killer of deer. A 100gn bullet at just on 3000fps is central to the success of the Roberts. My father's Model 70 Winchester is a Featherweight 257 Roberts so I'm quite familiar with the cartridge (the Model 70 will become a 338/06 when the barrel arrives from Lilja as the Roberts tube is truly stuffed).
Today was spent out recovering some long term cameras on a property I have permission for, but don't spend much time on as they get pigdoggers in regularly to control the pig population. The property does have Fallow deer, but only a very small, transient population. I suspect the pigdogs make the deer nervous and they have moved on.
Well you could have knocked me over with a feather when driving alongside the lower floodplain at 0730 I spotted a mature Fallow buck trying to hide under a Willow tree. He was obviously not well as he should have been haring off for the other side of the swamp - in fact he shouldn't have been there at all if he was well. Anyway, I Grendelised him at 90m for lack of another rifle handy (I was expecting pigs), but due to his sheer bulk I had to stalk him down across 300m of swamp to finish him off. The Grendel was a poor choice for this as most shots presented to me were stern shots - I wasn't convinced the 100gn NBT would penetrate the gut to do some real damage. A 100gn TTSX might have been more confidence inspiring - but almost any other rifle in my safe would have been more confidence building. Eventually he turned to go around a tussock and presented a quartering shot which I took. That put him down hard (although the first shot should have) and I closed in and put one through the back of his skull.
He had already cast for this year, and was just going into velvet for next year. Apart from an obvious gammy foreleg (possibly the result of a past hunter) he was in fine condition. Can't understand why my initial shot (front of chest) didn't anchor him - but it didn't. He was starting to fatten up and the condition was so fine (probably >70kg - 160lb) I couldn't drag him out of the damn swamp and had to butcher him on the spot. The backstraps, eye fillets and hindlegs were carefully whipped off (with the RAT 3), bagged in some old pillowslips and walked across to a shady tree to hang for a while. Then I schlepped back across 500m of swamp to get the car! No photos as I didn't have the camera with me and wasn't going to go back for it.
Got back to the car by 0900, washed my hands off, and the knife, then went and collected the cards from the cameras, changed batteries, spotted some poachers tracks (more to follow on these bastards) and collected the meat at 1130. Back home by 1300 after leaving one hindquarter with the caretaker.
Does that experience lean you towards finding a heavier hunting bullet of better construction that will handle both pigs and larger game, like in the 123gr or higher class? A 123gr or 129gr SST at 2500-2600fps would do the trick.
Yes and no.
The rifle is really built for my kids and in the situations I intend them to use it the 100gn NBT will be more than adequate - standing game, deliberate shot, within 100m if at all possible. Both children are on topic with shooting pigs and foxes, not so keen on goats or fallow (too much Bambi).
For larger critters like a Fallow buck I would load the 100gn TTSX any day as the muscle bulk needed to support a decent rack makes life harder for the smaller cup'n'core bullets. My experience with the Barnes Monometal bullets is that they punch above their weight in all respects. If I had been loaded with a 129gn SST out of my 6.5/06 (just a touch over 3000fps) I would also have hesitated to take a stern shot on such an animal, but a mono metal will penetrate out of all proportion to it's weight and calibre. Another option is a 125gn Partition, not as accurate in my experience, but definitely effective construction.
I had toyed with the idea of taking my 300H&H but chose not to as I was convinced we would only bump some small pigs or a fox, not a full grown mature buck.
The Grendel would have done the job fine if my first shot had gone home where I aimed it. With a little luck I'll get to the range after work some time this week and check my zero - I won't be surprised to find the old Leupold has shifted PoI a few inches to the left at 100m. If so, I'll swap it out for a Leupold 6x36 until I can get some Talley Lightweights and another Kahles.
Managed to clean the pork off the remnants of the 100gn NBT and weighed it out at 52gn.
Finally got to the range today to check the 2.5-8 and as I suspected, it was no longer zeroed.
So I dropped the old faithful 6x M8 Leupold onto the little rifle and got it zeroed in. Let the barrel cool, then put down two three shot groups, 1-2-3 at 100m, 4-5-6 at 200m.
100m went 0.176MOA, 200m blew out a little to 0.75MOA. Wish I could shoot that well at 100m all the time!
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It now weighs 6lb 2oz with the 6x scope and I'm trying to find a set of Talley lightweights to drop it below the 6lb mark.
