We Turned This Tikka T3X Into a HALF MOA Hunting Rifle

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:30]Hey everybody and welcome back to Bald Guys with Guns. I'm Jeremy >> and I'm Rob.

[00:00:34]>> Today we are back testing our 65 Creedmore.

[00:00:39]>> Your 65 Creedmore.

[00:00:40]>> I'm trying to give you credit, Rob.

[00:00:42]>> You can my ammo in your 65 Creedmore.

[00:00:44]>> Okay, we can say that. Now, this is going to be a Tika T3X light. Yes, this is the pencil barrel and this is my hunting 65 Creedmore. We have done other tests with this where we decided which bullet we wanted to select and if you want to know on that go back and check but we did choose the 140 grain ELDM. So in this video we will be testing bullet seating depths and we'll go from the furthest seating depth out and we're going to push it in and see how that group closes.

[00:01:15]>> Yes. And we're going to go in 3,000 for each depth test. Um Jeremy will be shooting two five shot groups with each seating depth. Uh and the other thing is, you know, we when Jeremy talked about testing other bullets, it was factory ammo out of his factory Tika, right? So now I have done a lot of reloading over the last couple years. Um and Jeremy doesn't have any reloading stuff, so I was like, let's get your Tika shooting better. So, we're using the 140 ELDMs because they're great hunting bullets, even if you don't think they are.

[00:01:55]>> Yes.

[00:01:55]>> And uh we're going to figure that out today. So, let's go ahead and we'll jump right into it. We're going to shoot our biggest or the furthest seating depth.

[00:02:03]And this is measured based to ojive um based on Rob's competitors here. So, we'll just tell you that it's going to decrease by.3 with each little section.

[00:02:13]>> Well, 3,000 >> 3,000. Z3.

[00:02:16]>> Z. Yeah. Sorry, not tous.

[00:02:19]Okay, >> perfect. Perfect height, I should say.

[00:02:26]>> Right.

[00:02:38]>> Very good.

[00:02:44]>> One more.

[00:02:56]I had it on there.

[00:02:59]>> Was it good?

[00:03:05]>> Okay.

[00:03:08]>> I think we were an SD 4. 9 >> first group.

[00:03:24]>> Well, this shot about just as good as a factory ammo.

[00:03:28]>> Yes, the first seating depth did. And that was I so I did have your gun with me when I started making this ammo and I found where jam was and I came back a little bit off of jam so that you know it still fit in the mag and um wasn't jammed into the lands anymore and this was the the furthest length that I was comfortable starting with and uh yeah it performed about as good as the factory ammo >> did not not the greatest. So we did uh 1.2 in group the was the largest and the first group happened to be just a little better at 8 what was that 836 >> yes that's edgeto edge taking out the diameter of a single 65 which is 264. So edgetoedge measurements there with calipers. Um, so anyways, >> let's push that bullet in or no, sorry, let's pull the bullet out. Push it in.

[00:04:26]>> Push it in >> and uh shoot two more five shot groups at 3000 lower.

[00:04:42]>> Might have been me.

[00:04:52]that it's gone 2700 on average. That's what his barrel like if you could find RL16 dirtier powder.

[00:05:02]>> Okay.

[00:05:03]>> It shot amazingly and I use 39.3 from RL16 with the >> Yep. That second shot you must have pulled.

[00:05:17]>> Yeah, >> that was really good.

[00:05:20]>> That was a very good group.

[00:05:28]>> Good. That's right where it should go.

[00:05:31]>> See, it hit my hand and bounced in, dude. And it's backward.

[00:05:43]>> Good.

[00:05:45]Right side white paper. Any any target on there.

[00:05:53]>> Okay, Joe, you're looking good.

[00:06:02]Real good.

[00:06:11]Good. Same hole as your four.

[00:06:14]>> That was way slow. Oh, no. Never mind.

[00:06:16]It was way slow.

[00:06:17]>> No, that was good.

[00:06:18]>> Yeah, that was good.

[00:06:19]>> So, those shot better.

[00:06:21]>> Better can I would say it's at least a quarter inch better than factory ammo.

[00:06:26]And where this is a hunting rifle, it's still fun to shoot this long range. I mean, we ran an evens challenge with it.

[00:06:34]Uh we've done some other competitions with it and know your limits. So, just knowing that it can get down there to, you know, less than an MOA rifle, that's pretty fun.

[00:06:43]>> We like to see this. Um, first group was 8825.

[00:06:49]The second group on this one was 736 deducting the 264 and starting to like what we're seeing here.

[00:06:57]>> Yes. So, speeds were good, too. That's I mean, we found >> I mean, we have the same powder charge for all of these because we found a powder charge that we liked. Jeremy's rifle likes 2700 ft per second.

[00:07:09]>> Yes.

[00:07:10]>> Helps with the Creedmore hack, too.

[00:07:11]>> Right. We want to explain that real quick.

[00:07:13]>> So, the Creedmore hack is when you have a mill scope in Miller radiance. Uh, if you take your distance, let's say 500 yd, you take the first number, the five, you minus two from it. So, you dial up 3 mil with a 140 grain bullet going 2700.

[00:07:30]You should hit your target or be very, very close. And we have tested it and it is it works. So take that for a grain of salt. Enough talking. Let's get down.

[00:07:40]We're going to go ahead and push that bullet in another three thou and then fire two more five shot groups.

[00:07:49]Do you even evenss? Because we do. And we want you to come out and do the evens challenge with us. And also support our channel baldguyswithguns.com.

[00:08:00]And you can get your even shirts today.

[00:08:03]Fill out the form linked in the description. But before you come shoot with us, make sure you have your own evens challenge shirt because do you even even?

[00:08:12]>> I do.

[00:08:13]>> I do.

[00:08:15]>> I don't think so.

[00:08:18]>> Going from his trigger to is a big difference.

[00:08:21]>> Oh yeah.

[00:08:27]>> Left my chair down here.

[00:08:36]Are you at four shots?

[00:08:42]>> Really good.

[00:08:48]>> Really good. Jar, >> is he hitting anything?

[00:08:55]>> They're lower than what I think.

[00:09:15]I don't know about >> now Rob just had to sneak in on this one. I I need to take some blame. It seems like I may have opened up your group on accident.

[00:09:31]>> Definitely. Rob, this was going to be a half inch gun right here. Rob just had to throw it out the window.

[00:09:37]>> I don't know. We'll see. I mean, we still have some more testing to do.

[00:09:40]Maybe I didn't screw it up, but I do feel bad. Jeremy was like, "I feel bad you're not shooting. Why don't you just take five?" And I'm like, "What if I screw up your group?" "Oh, you'll be fine." And then >> And then he screwed it up.

[00:09:50]>> I screwed it up.

[00:09:51]>> So, um, >> tell what were the groups on this one?

[00:09:54]uh 0502 and804.

[00:09:59]So we have a half inch and a 08. Now that's actually tracking a little bit better on average than the last two. So going lower did work out. Um we're going to push that bullet 3 thou lower still and see if we can get >> another group that's that good or if we found our node here.

[00:10:21]>> Perfect. Push it in and let's fire.

[00:10:29]>> That was probably me cold.

[00:10:41]>> We'll message you >> with you guys.

[00:10:42]>> Yeah, we'll message you.

[00:10:44]>> Kick one.

[00:10:45]>> Yeah, do it.

[00:10:47]>> We'll see you guys, buddy.

[00:10:48]>> Hey, see you.

[00:10:54]shooting a can.

[00:11:00]>> I think your left to right wiggle is a lot.

[00:11:04]>> Yeah, >> that was five.

[00:11:05]>> Yeah, >> that's actually not bad.

[00:11:12]>> Might be a hair low.

[00:11:14]>> Yep, >> that was me 100%.

[00:11:23]That bring it back up.

[00:11:24]>> No, you were lower on that one.

[00:11:27]>> Really?

[00:11:33]>> Nice.

[00:11:37]>> Uh That was a good group, Jar.

[00:11:52]>> And I maybe Rob didn't ruin it. Maybe that's just me, too. We got it right back at that point8 with the first group there. It was 8225, but then followed it up immediately with a 0.593 group. Yes.

[00:12:07]>> Which keeps that average right there.

[00:12:09]So, I think we found that good node. um keeping it right around what we'd have to figure out what that average is.

[00:12:15]>> Yeah, I mean that gives us three groups that group8 or less >> three three seating depths that do.

[00:12:21]>> Yes, that's a very good very good note I think we're in and probably we'll we'll sit somewhere in there because as Rob's explained >> um the the bullet seating depth kind of works like a sound wave.

[00:12:34]>> Sine wave.

[00:12:34]>> A sine wave. Do you want to show them?

[00:12:36]sine wave, >> meaning you might catch it at that peak as it's going just above, just below >> or down.

[00:12:44]Yes, you don't want to catch it on one of the ups or the downs. You want it either at the peak or at the bottom. So, depending on where we are in the sine wave, we are clearly at the top or bottom with these last three. We do have though one more seating depth to test.

[00:12:59]>> Yes. So, we'll ram that bullet in another 30,000 and shoot two more five shot groups.

[00:13:04]>> Yep.

[00:13:05]Oh, the GoPro died.

[00:13:17]>> Might be a hair right on the line.

[00:13:45]Whoa.

[00:14:18]And we found the Oh, the >> the rise or the low.

[00:14:21]>> We did. This opened up quite a bit. You got over an inch and almost exactly an inch on this last one. And not to mention, our GoPro died in the middle of of filming. So, we didn't get the Garmin. But, as you could have as you saw with like >> the last however many groups we just did, it it was consistently around 2700 ft per second, >> which is all good and that's what we wanted.

[00:14:46]>> Now, Yep. So, that's out. Let's We're going to go back. We'll choose one of those seating depths. But we wanted to point out one thing. Rob has a theory.

[00:14:56]And >> you want me to just tell them what my theory is?

[00:14:59]>> I think so.

[00:15:00]>> So, because Jeremy's running a hunting rifle with a pencil barrel, um, I went back into the footage. We're going to put those images up on screen now.

[00:15:10]They'll be above our heads up here and over here. And um you'll see the three shot groups from the two best seating depths that gave us the8s and.5s.

[00:15:23]Um and as you can see we got a 368 on the first threeshot group >> and on the second one we got a 688.

[00:15:38]On the third, we got a 435. And on the fourth, we got a 4815.

[00:15:45]And we did the math. We added all those up and took the average of all four and an average of 49.

[00:15:53]So, in three shot group territory, which with a pencil barrel and as a hunting rifle, if you're taking more than three shots, you need to stop hunting, >> right? Um, but if if you do three shot groups because of those aspects, his gun technically is a half inch gun.

[00:16:12]That's how good the Tika is.

[00:16:13]>> Yep.

[00:16:14]>> With this load data.

[00:16:16]>> And I think there's only one way to test it. We need to get on the ethical hunter challenge with 65 Creedor and shoot three times.

[00:16:24]>> I guess we have to do that.

[00:16:25]>> Maybe once if I'm lucky.

[00:16:27]So, there you guys have it. It uh turned out good. we were able to shrink that group down, make it a very good hunting rifle.

[00:16:34]>> Whether you're taking it to its max, heating it up to five shots, >> or just taking your three, your three is going to be your most precise. Um, so I mean, it's a Everybody loves Tikas. They say they're great. We kind of just proved that they are.

[00:16:50]>> Yeah.

[00:16:51]>> So, you know, take that for what it is.

[00:16:53]We hope you enjoyed this video. Um, Jeremy now has a great hunting rifle with 140 ELDMs. And yes, we will say it again, those are hunting bullets, not just match bullets.

[00:17:03]>> If you want more information on that, check out our podcast with Timberline Outfitters who came and got on the show and explained to us in in very good depth why that ELDM is a great bullet.

[00:17:15]Yes.

[00:17:16]>> With stat with like statistics to back it up.

[00:17:19]>> Yes. So, anyways, thank you all for watching. As always, please remember to like and subscribe. It really does help.

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[00:17:36]>> Right. We have a lot more content coming your way. We got some pretty cool tests we're going to start running.

[00:17:40]>> Yes.

[00:17:40]>> Uh looking forward to it.

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[00:17:50]>> Hey, always remember guys, only the most beautiful scalps are bald. We'll see you next