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Hello Shackleton,
Thanks for the reply,

You are more than Welcome to come up and shoot, any time. All I need is a day's notice.

Hello 4seventy,
Thanks for the reply,

I'm having a lot of fun with this rifle. Its already approaching favorite status.

Hello NitroX,
Thanks for the reply,

Bruce said he would run some brass when he found some spare time. I imagine there are not a lot of 700NE shooters out there.

I use this link to calculate recoil. http://www.shooterscalculator.com/recoil-calculator.php

The 1500fps loads are at 70 ft/lbs recoil and the 2000fps loads are at 123 ft/lbs recoil. The 70 ft/lb load is a lot more fun.

I'm pretty sure I'll only be hunting paper elephants and paper cape buffalo, and such. Unless I can find someone that will trade a dangerous game hunt for guns.

And like I did last year with my VC 600NE, I will be using this one for Wisconsin Whitetail this Fall.

update

Yesterday I had my first disappointing failure. I was planning on taking this 700NE Turkey hunting today, so yesterday it I loaded up some shells with 2-1/4 ounces of #5 shot with my standard 1500fps charge of 95.5g AA5744 powder. The 2-1/4 ounce payload equals 382 pellets. I used a 16ga over the powder plastic wad, filled the case with shot, and put an over-the-shot card on top. Then I gave it a hard crimp.

That 2-1/4 oz grain payload of 5's is the same weight as a .700 bullet.

I fired the first barrel from 25 yards. Recoil was about the same as using a bullet. However, I didn't see a lot of pellet holes. So, I moved closer and fired the left barrel from only 20 yards away. That's the typ. range I've had success with my shotgun. This was a complete and total failure.

Those 2 shots totalled 764 pellets, however only 17 pellets hit the paper - and none of them were even close to the Turkey. You can see the 17 holes (circled) on the target. I would have thought that with such a large payload of shot, there woud have been more pellets that made it to the target, inspite of the twist of the rifling. Not so!

When I got back to the bench, I looked down the bores and found a lot of residual leading at about 10" ahead of the chamber in each barrel.

I grabbed a couple of my 1500fps loads with the 1000g Woodleigh Soft Points, and proceded to fire a pair of shots in hopes of "shooting-out" some of the leading. With nothing but the Turkey target set-up at 50 yards, I took careful aim and put the front bead right on his head.

Unfortunately, here in Wisconsin you can only hunt Turkeys with "shot" and not bullets. Darn! So, I took my antique 1885 Hopkins & Allen falling block shotgun this morning, and left the 700NE at home. And, once again I've proven that you can use a fine antique shotgun for Turkey hunting, and be just as unsuccesful as using a modern shotgun.

By the way, I used to say that most double rifle groups were measured by minute of "pie plate". This one seem to shoot minute of "Turkey-face".

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"You never pay too much for something, you only buy it too early."

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