I have a situation that happened over the weekend and I wanted to know if anyone could help in any way. I have a Bergara Wilderness Ridge in 308 with an 18 inch barrel, Vortex Crossfire 3x9x40, Dead Air Sandman-S, and a Dead Air E Brake. 2 Weeks ago, I shot the setup (50 yard target in a lead sled) with Winchester Powerpoint 150 grain. The gun was zeroed. The gun or scope was not used, bumped, or dropped since then and the can wasn’t taken off or changed. This weekend the gun needed to be set again with Powerpoint bullets, but not by too much. I then decided to try out Hornady ELD-X 178 grain. The bullet missed the whole target. Once I got the shot to hit the paper, I then shot a 3 group shot and it was a 4.5 inch group (still at 50 yards in a lead sled). I took the can off and set the gun in 3 shots. It is shooting great with all bullet holes touching. Can anyone shed any light as to why this occurred?
Contacted Dead Air, Hornady, and did some asking around. Dead Air seems to think that maybe I need to make sure it is still concentric. Hornady thinks the bullet may have hit a baffle and said to contact dead air. A friend of mine told me that he read online about it and said there have been some people reporting the same problem with Bergara b-14’s paired with a silencer and eld-x ammo not doing well. Something about the harmonics of the barrel.
Oh man, tough to nail down issues like this without seeing it but here are a few issues I’d look at.
My first guess is that the suppressor wasn’t tight. Any looseness can really send things wild. But aside from that, here’s the process I’d follow to narrow it down.
First, I’d love to see you shoot three 4-shot groups of everything to make sure we’re getting a good sample size. I’d start by testing the ammo without the suppressor. Let’s just see if the ammo shoots decent in the gun. Three groups of four and take an average. Also take the powerpoint and get its average.
Next, I’d add the suppressor with both. Don’t worry about being off paper when you first put it on. That’s normal point of impact shift. Once you’re on paper, let’s see groups with both sets of ammo.
That should let you know separately how each load is shooting, as well as good proof of if the suppressor really is part of the problem. I’ve really not seen suppressors hurt accuracy, but maybe I’ve just been lucky.
I’d really doubt the last theory mentioned of the Bergara B14, silencer, and ELDX. I’ve never seen anything like that being an issue. Whenever someone blames it on “harmonics” it seems to be code for “dunno what’s going on”
The suppressor was tight as I could get it with my hands. Unless there was some sort of malfunction with the brake and the silencer but I didn’t notice any looseness or rattling. I have been looking into getting a direct thread…
I didn’t try shooting the power points without the can because I didn’t have an issue with zeroing 2 weeks ago but I may try that out. At the end of that day I did shoot the ELD-X without the can and it shot good but I do agree more shots would have been beneficial. One of those deals where I didn’t have much ammo left and it was getting time to go. At that point I was happy to just get the small win that it was shooting good after a while of frustration and confusion.
The most confusing thing to me is that with the can, the Power Points were shooting good and the ELD-X’s were not. At the end of the day I was scratching my head thinking maybe the ELD-X’s just weren’t compatible with at least that suppressor. But surely someone would have ran into that problem before me. I take it you have shot them fine?
I really appreciate your help and input on this and thank you for saving me the trouble of looking into harmonics! lol.
I’ve always seen silencers impact damage ratings in video games. So maybe it’s just an accuracy thing. We all know video games ALWAYS get guns and ballistics spot on, and never ever have any artistic butchery… I mean license…
