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What I would like is a basics intro into the hardware needed to achieve in L.R. shooting.
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First, you must understand its not about the "hardware". Its about the software.
Its all about the shooter. Its about learning the fundamentals of rifle marksmanship.
IT IS NOT THE RIFLE, IT IS NOT THE SCOPE, IT IS NOT THE BULLET.
Those are hardware. Its about the software, that bing the shooter applying the fundamentals.
Forget what rifle. If your rifle can shoot 2 MOA, you're good to go.
First take what ever rifle you have. 22 is good, any centerfire would work.
Practice by dry firing. Get a good natural point of aim and dry fire. Now get lined up. Dry fire, without moving anything open your eyes and see if you're still lined up.
Sight alingement and natural point of aim are important. Trigger control is more important because you'll blow everything else with improper trigger control.. Follow throught follows.
Then get you some NRA 50 Ft small bore targets and tons of ammo. Get to where you can hit the 10 ring on these targets CONSTANTLY.
Then and only then move out. Learn the ballistics of your bullet. You can then adjust for elevation, and spin drift (if you go that far).
Learn what temp. does to your bullet. On the average a 15 degree change in temp will move your impact 1 MOA. Don't think that's only outside temp. Its the temp of the powder. If left out of the chamber and in the shade you can adjust for outside temp. If you lay your ammo in the sun, the temp will rise and you don't know how much. Same with chamber. After you shoot a while the temp of the barrel/chamber will go up. Don't let the next round set in the chamber. You never know how hot the power is so you can't adjust for it.
Only chamber a round the instant before you fire.
Now consider wind and mirage. That's gonna get you. It takes a long time to learn to adjust for wind and mirage. Most say take the wind reading at mid range (I agree with that). Wind at your firing point will be different at the target (normally).
As we know the bullet does not fly in a straight "line of sight" it goes up, and it comes down (you aim up to compensate for gravity). Your bullet may be 15 or more feet above the line of sight at mid range.
Wind at ground level and wind 15+ feet above ground will be different. You want to know the range at mid range. Which normally is the high point of the arc.
Look at a range flag at a range. Its 20 or so feet off the ground. Take another range flag and put it at eye ball or 6 ft off the ground. The two flags will be acting differently. Because the wind is different at ground level then it is at the top of the pole.
You see people use a wind meter to get the wind velocity. That works where you are standing using the meter. But that's not what the wind is doing down range.
I love wind meters, but as a training tool. Go afield with you wind meter and spotting scope. Get a wind reading then look in the scope and see what the mirage is doing. Keep doing that in all kinds of conditions. Once you learn what mirage looks like at given wind speeds you can use mirage to estimate wind.
Then you can determine what the wind is doing mid range, at 15 feet above the line of sight by focusing the scope at that point and reading the mirage.
Careful not to focus the scope on the mirage beyond the target. That often will give you a false reading, it can and will reverse the mirage.
Once you determine the wind speed you need to adjust for the wind.
That fomula is Range in hundres of yards X wind speed in MPH divided by a constant.
If you don't know the constant. Use "10".
Example: You're shooting at 600 yards in a 15 MPH (full value) wind.
R=6 W=15 6 X 15 = 90
90 divided by the constant of 10 is 9. So click 9 MOA into the wind.
The constant of 10 works well for 308/30-06 rounds.
To get a correct, more accurate constant, you can figure your constant by using a Balistic Program. From the program (if you put it together right it will give you the correct constant at any distance.
Let say you ran the balistics of your bullet and it says a full value wind for 15 mph at 600 yards correction is 6 MOA.
Fomula: R X W / correction.
So it would be range 6(00). W is 15 MPH
6 X 15 is 90 According to your balistic program you see for a full value 15 MPH wind your correction is 6. So:
6 X 15 / 6 = 15 Your constant is 15
(its different then the 10 above because I used the numbers for my 250 grn 375 instead of the 308 but you get the idea).
All the above is SOFTWARE not HARDWARE.
Forget spending big bucks on rifle/scope, etc. When you can constantly out shoot your rifle or you can constantly shoot 2 MOA at distance with what you have, then worry about getting a fancy rifle.
You see all kinds of itty bitty groups posted on the internet. But you see few clean 1000 yard targets. The X-10 ring on a 1000 yard target is 20 inches across or 2 MOA.
Like I said, its fundamentals. Get those down by dry firing. Get to where you can clean the 50 Ft NRA small bore targets, then move out to distance.
Then learn what conditions. Wind, mirage, light, temp etc does to your bullet. Spend the money on rounds down range. Get to where you can out shoot your rifle then more to the fancy high price rifles.
Sorry for the rant, but trying to buy good scores is a pet peeve of mine. It don't work. Hard work does work.