The Richard Utting Blog - 2024 Roundup
Well, with my 2025 season of Ballistics Training days only a month away, I thought I’d look back at 2024, which was another fun year of rifle work up on the high moor.
Undoubtedly the year of the radar, 2024. This is a data-processing, technical game and the new kit helps a lot. As things advance year on year, our ability grows to quickly and efficiently reach out and smack small things a long way away. Low-error chronographs have always been fundamentally necessary to precision long range shooting. When we didn’t have them, our first shot kill rate was lower, end of.
When Magnetospeeds came along, there was much rejoicing but strapping the blade on was a necessary hassle. Now radars have landed, you simply plonk them beside the rifle and that’s that.
Tremendous tech. In 2024, the Garmin model was the big news. It’s the best value for most folks. Better in some technical areas, bigger and more expensive is the FX True Ballistics, and somewhat lost in between those two is the Labradar LX. But by god all of them I’d have given my first child ten years ago!
Other than that, I feel 2024 brought significant steps forward in UK ELR. I ended the season with some of my regular trainees delivering half MOA strings of fire at all my targets including 3000y. The year before this was perhaps half a mile less. That’s quite the jump in one season. For me, the main reason was the decent availability of the utterly superlative Hornady A-TIP bullets.
Some better availability of magnums equipment – reamers, brass, dies, etc, for cartridges like 375 CT, 37 XC, etc, helped make for some ultra high consistency magnums that can deliver the SDs needed for tight vertical dispersion/waterlines at over a mile. Hits are one thing, a string of hits another, but a long string inside a half MOA vertical/ couple of tenths of a MIL, is a different story entirely.
These rifles will drop bullets into the same splash at 1200y like you’re shooting 100y – things are getting really impressive these days.
Ballistically, both Kestrel and Garmin keep walking the walk and Applied Ballistics’ aerodynamics work helps us all have the hard data we need to rock and roll. I love how Garmin are bringing the AB solver to more and more devices, including now the brand new Montana 710i/760i series with InReach, great as an all-in-one device for adventurous folks. For 2025 I’m giving up the unbelievable battery life of the smaller GPSMAP67i for the big touch screen of the Montana. The pictured Garmin 901 is still brilliant, of course, but the Montana does detailed mapping and tracking and comms as well:
As are their watches: a watch that tracks your fitness, talks to all your sensors from satellite SOS through to laser rangefinders, sorts your navigation out and helps you make the shot when you get there! Great tech.
Some of the longer range guys, myself included, really fell for the NightForce prisms this year. No mechanics to fail, you can keep your current eye line/cheek height, no need for risers – you just whack one or several on and then take that amount off your dope…an elegant solution to the problem. And really expensive- typical! But they just do a better job of the job so it’s fair, I suppose.
LED level-bubbles are great and I welcomed the new SG Pulse this year. I had always felt the Send-Its were a little first generation for the money, although a great innovation at launch, but in 2024 the new SG brings improvements: proper waterproofing, rechargeable battery, easily adjustable ranges and sensitivity in an app which ties in other features such as full rapid-fire drills and shot timing, aim tracking, firmware updating etc, and it’s cheaper!
Scope-wise, the big Sightron S8 remained super popular and with good reason – one being it’s got a tonne of windage over everything else. And in the windy UK at ranges over a mile, it’s not only elevation range you run out of!
They also brought out the 34mm “normal” sized S6, which are proving popular as they offer great value well below £1500
Look at my 2024 scope roundup on YouTube for recommendations top to bottom, but the list is:
Arken EP5 5-25 in the £500 area. And the new 7-35 is a notch better still.
Then the excellent Delta Javelin 4.5-30 at the £1k area
The great value Sightron S6 in the sub £1500 arena
The ever-reliable Delta Strykers in the £1750 area
The new Minox LR 5-25 is a class act at £1900
New Vortex Gen3, the ZCOs and the ATACRS have been the top choices above £2k, and in high mag it’s all Sightron S8 and some ATACR 7-35s. S&B may well be back on top as soon as they finish the final tweaks on the 6-36s - we shall see.
Scope of the year for me was the wonderful 1-10 Delta Stryker, with their uber-versatile 3-21x44 not far behind.
As always, Opticswarehouse will talk you through your options and all these top choices you can demo with me at SharpShootingUK.
I discovered how handy and versatile a good shooting table can be. Be it for cleaning the rifles, sorting out rails and scopes, or for shooting from at medium ranges, or just as an extra seat, the Caldwell StableTable Deluxe has been a why-didn’t-I-do-this-years-ago find.
The wonderful Fortis multi-adjust became very prolific this year, with almost all of my clients choosing them over traditional bag rider and bag, or metal lifter options. Real progress for precision shooting in the field:
Hope you enjoyed the British Shooting Show, I know I always do and it gets me in the mood for my training day season, which is only a few weeks away. 2025 - let’s go!
Thank you so much to Richard for writing this great blog. If you're interested in getting into long range shooting, head over to his website, SharpShootingUK! He's the best in the business!