Thompson Long Range

[stokesrj]

My oldest son Bobby and I signed up for this course and mad a fun mini vacation of it. Most of you already know, I am a US Distinguished Rifleman and an accomplished long range shooting competitor. However, I am first and foremost a hunter. All competition has been for the benefit of my hunting skills.
Bobby is more comfortable bow hunting than he is rifle hunting. So my thoughts were to include him in learning a simple and intuitive way to use long range hunting skills in a way he was familiar, five pin bow sight familiar.
We took off from Bobby’s house which has a hanger on the property that houses our family built BearHawk.
Bobby is a wonderful father and engaged my two grand daughters, his wife, and his brothers in building this airplane. We cherish opportunities to use it in ways that build family bonds.
Mark Thompson is a man after my own heart, an entrepreneur with many successful businesses from shipping pallets to antler art he has been majorly successful, but his passion, much like mine, is hunting.
He also began experimenting with custom ballistic reticle around the same time I was. However, he followed through where I became distracted and perused other paths.
Mark followed through and had Premeir reticle build custom reticle much the way I also did. However he was smarter and pursued the constants where I pursued the nuance.
He discovered when using a variable power 2nd focal plane scope with reticles that followed a common relationship, you could build a custom ballistic reticle for the fastest caliber rifle and then by backing off on the power for less flat shooting rifles still have a ballistic reticle that would work, simply by reducing the magnification to the fit the reticle.

I just did this today, using my 6.5-300 Weatherby and a Berger 140 grain Hybrid Target bullet and Vihtavuori n568 powder I was able to develop a load that tracked Marks reticle to 1,000 yards.

This reticle when sighted in at 300 yard has dots that then correspond to 400, 500. And 600 yards. Then a short cross hatch at 700 yards followed by dots at 800, 900, and 1000 yards. It works wonderfully. The adjustment for atmosphere is done via the power ring.
Today U shot at 300. 400, 500. 600, 700. 800, 900, and 1000 yards with first round hits on an 8” gong at all distances.
It works!
Pictures are to large so sorry, I’m not willing to resize to fit this site.

[Gamsjagd]

I have heard he is heavily reliant on the velocity of Weatherby cartridges versus the high BC world of bullets to make things work for him.

I have read and watched some of his stuff and it is a totally different take on what everyone else is doing.

If it works for you then "by all means". Looks like a hell of a system.

[mchughcb]

Very interesting

[stokesrj]

It is true that the system is built around the 30-378 and a Nosler 180 grain Accubond at 3370 fps. However it will work with other slower calibers as well, simply reduce the magnification, everything scales. My 6.5-300 Weatherby works just fine with several loads. Even a 300 win Mag works with 215 Berger at around 13X.

[SPEEDY]

A simplified version for standard rounds to 500m that could be fitted to existing scopes would be brilliant.

[deerhunter338mag]

I remember watching his vides 10+ years ago, and he very much made it look so easy. But like anything if you are good at what you do everything looks easy. Now you have reminded me of him, I'll have to hunt around for the old DVD's.

[stokesrj]

Mark is an interesting guy, he took my son and I on a tour of his businesses, introduced us to his crews and had them explain what they did. One of his businesses is manufacturing and refurbishing fork lift palates and the other is making replica antlers for chandlers and other decorations for restaurants and custom homes.
He is very mechanic minded, not so much science minded and he did his initial work before there was ballistic software available to the public by using two sheets of plywood framed vertically and walking back from 300 to 1000 yards and measuring the drops. Then having Premier reticula build those dots into a reticle as you see in this video.
Believe it or not, it is really this easy.
In the class Bobby and I took a brand new Weatherby Mk V in 30-378 and assembled it with a new Leupold VX5 HD 3-15x44 with his reticle, aligned and lapped the rings, aligned the scope level and plumb using a plumb-bob. We then took the rifle to the range and bore sighted it, the old fashioned way, by looking down the bore and alighting the scope to match, fired one shot at 300 yards, made a slight correction, fired one shot at 500 yards, then two shots at 700 yards and then fired a three shot group at 1000 which was centered vertically but about 10” to the right of center. That group placement was just about what I would expect for the left to right very gentle wind we had. So then I moved to a 10X12 steel plate at 1,200 yards, cranked the bower back from 15 to 12 and held into the wind and centered the plate.
If you are counting that is a first round hit at 1,200 yards on shot #8 out of a brand new rifle, no break-in needed.
Of course, this is shooting a load, known to be accurate from this rifle platform and Mark has done this for 20 years so knew exactly what magnification reduction would be required to put that 1000 yard dot, on the money, at 1200 yards.
I have all kinds of dial up scopes from ATACR to K25 Kahles and use them and prefer them at the range. But Marks system is simple enough that anyone can master it, and that simplicity is far more attractive to me in the hunting field.