Had a lot of fun today.
Bad news first. I didn't win. Didn't even take first in F class. But among all the long range shooters, we had around 30, I finished mid pack with my $400 investment. The majority of the shooters were using Palma rifles, all the other F class shooters were using custom "heavy" rifles with 35X-42X scopes, machine rests, and basically benchrest type ammo.
But I did NOT embarrass either myself or the Swiss rifle. Had a lot of people come over and look, and comment how well the rifle ammo combo worked. We shot 3 times at 600 yards, 20 rounds for record each time. My best score was a 188-1X out of a possible 200, with my other two scores being slightly lower. Only ONE F class shooter shot a 200, and he only did that one time.
We (the F class shooters) were shooting on the NRA HP SR-3 300 yard target, while the Palma guys used the standard 600 yard target - which is TWICE as big. The hardest part for me was due to the scope. It's only a 2.5X and the cross hairs, while pretty fine, covered about 50% or more of the black bull. I couldn't even distinguish the rings at all. That made it pretty difficult to tell if I was exactly centered or not. I could have been off an inch or two and not been able to tell.
The target rings, as measured by my tape measure outside edge to outside edge are:
X ring - 3"
10 ring - 7"
9 ring - 13"
8 ring - 19"
My shot totals per ring were:
X ring - 5
10 ring - 20
9 ring - 22
8 ring - 9
7 ring - 4 (7 ring is in the white)
So you can see that:
over 30% of my shots were inside 1 MOA
over 75% were inside 2 MOA
56 of the 60 shots (not counting the 6 sighter shots) were inside 3 MOA.
I was shooting the Sierra 175 Match King, in Graf brass with a Federal GM210M primer, over 43gr. of Reloader 15, with a avg muzzle velocity of 2525 FPS.
My come up from a 200 yard zero was approximately 15 MOA.
When it was over, at first I was slightly disappointed in my scores compared to the Palma shooters, a few of who cleaned their targets (shot a 200-xX). Then I realized that their 9 ring 18". And even though I had a scope, my target was 1/2 the size of theirs. so I was basically seeing the same "size" black as they were.
I honestly think that with a good high powered scope THIS PARTICULAR K31 would be competitive in the F T/R class.
As to the question of the bipod. I drew a line down the center of the fore stock with pencil, then moved the bipod back and forth till it was where it was comfortable for me, then installed a lag type (not machine screw) sling swivel stud and attached the Harris bipod to the stud.
Some of the serious shooters thought I was nuts. Other serious shooters thought it was great. One guy came over and said "now that's a tactical rifle."
I had a GREAT time.