Published: August 24, 2008 11:39 pm            

Long-range rifle makes local debut

On Sunday afternoon, Lydia Farabaugh laid down at the edge of a sunny field of goldenrod, put her cheek against the stock of a futuristic-looking rifle, and squeezed the trigger.

Nearly four-fifths of a mile away, the Carrolltown teen’s bullet punched through paper and plywood inches from the bull’s eye. She slid another 4-inch round into the chamber and fired again, poking a second hole near the first.

“I was impressed before I saw it, and I’m definitely impressed after I shot it,” said Farabaugh, who is both an experienced hunter and long-range bench-rest shooter.

The gun she used is the .338 Xtreme, a new cartridge-firearms combination developed as a military and law-enforcement weapon by Xtreme Machining of Grassflat, Clearfield County.

“It is a rifle that’s built in central Pennsylvania by a small manufacturer hoping to make a big splash in the firearms industry,” said Xtreme Machining President Bob Zelenky, who has decided to offer his creation to the civilian market as well.

Farabaugh was among a mixture of police, outdoor writers, big-game hunters, long-range target shooters and firearms aficionados invited to try the gun during a demonstration on a Somerset County farm at the foot of Laurel Mountain.

Zelenky said he developed the .338 Xtreme as an improvement on the round that has set the standard for long-distance accuracy.

“Everyone is looking for an alternative to the .50 BMG which, in its own right, it is very, very powerful cartridge,” he said. “But to be able to knock it down by 33 percent as far as the size of the cartridge, cut the gun weight in half and keep the same or better ballistics, I think you’re doing something.”

Zelenky boasts that his gun is not only lighter – weighing between 15 and 20 pounds, depending on accessories – than the .50 BMG, but has comparable accuracy with much-reduced recoil. He is confident it has a dependable range of 3,000 yards with the “kick” of a small-caliber center-fire.

Farabaugh agreed.

“I love it,” she said. “The trigger on it has no slack at all. There’s no recoil to it. It’s less than a .243, like he said. I was expecting there to be a little bit more, but there’s nothing to it at all. The trajectory and the way your vapor trail is is flat. It just shoots really nice. I’m really impressed with it.”

Farabaugh said she thinks the gun would make a good bench-rest rifle at 1,000 yards, but not at shorter distances because the trajectory doesn’t stabilize until about 500 yards. She also said she didn’t think it would make a practical deer rifle, but would be applicable to long-range hunting for species such as groundhogs.

At a cost of about $5,000 per rifle and $6 per loaded cartridge, Zelenky conceded the gun is unlikely to become popular with the masses. He expects it to be used by extreme-range target shooters and in long-distance hunting applications.

“The normal Pennsylvania deer hunter at 100 yards will not see the benefit of this gun,” he said. “A mountain man who shoots from side-hill to side-hill will see great advantages.”

Zelenky said the barrel of the .338 Xtreme will handle any .338 bullet, but the chamber will not take standard .338 brass, accepting only the casings his company derives from the .505 Gibbs.

He plans to market reloading components and dies in a month. In addition to selling complete guns with several stock options, he said, the company also markets actions.

Zelenky said the .338 Xtreme derives its performance from a combination of innovations in both bullet and rifle design.

“This bullet will improve other .338s, but they will never get to where this is,” he said. “The way this is engineered and the way it is produced, it is far superior to other rifles in the sense that it’s able to capture this kind of horsepower to do what it is doing right now.”

        

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