10 shot group

mxgsfmdpx

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You didn’t answer any of the questions. There’s no gate keeping, you’re holding an untenable position.
What position is untenable? And your elitist “questions”, degrading other hunters doesn’t dignify any sort of response.

As far as why not bore sight versus having someone field verify your rifle, scope, and bullets you plan to hunt with…Someone with your “experience” should know the answer to that.

Would you rather hunt with a rifle that’s been field verified year after year and continues to kill year after year, or a rifle that’s been boresighted by a store? If your answer is the latter or you think that there is no “difference” between the two I’d love to hear why. I’ve had store “bore sight” job rifles brought to me for lessons/sight ins. It doesn’t usually bode well for first shots on target.
 
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However, in a hunting situation out west, how many times have guys on here had the opportunity to shoot more than 3 times? I have no idea what that looks like, but I'd bet the answer is closer to 3 than 5, 10, or 20.

If you're bench rest shooting or even more importantly taking out high value targets, your definitions of precision and accuracy requirements are certainly much higher.
To answer your question, several times (yes, out west). One particular example is when I took a friend pig hunting. I had my stock Tikka 300 WSM, with the stock 3 round mag. Between the 2 of us 8 shots were fired, rapidly from bolt action rifles. 7 pigs were killed. I fired 5 rounds, hitting one pig twice, my partner shot 3 rounds. The shooting lasted maybe one minute and in that time I ejected my magazine and replaced it with a loaded magazine for shots 4 and 5. In short on this one hunt, I killed 4 pigs my buddy killed 3, All shots were kill shots (heart, head or lungs).

My point here is not that we are superstars. My point here is that we have tons of trigger time, to the point that the process is automated. But then, when we sight in our rifles, we have very well established cones.
 

whaack

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I’m a hunter first and foremost. I want a cold bore shot to hit my POA. Every time.

I have a few rifles that are sub 1/2 MOA 3 shot and sub 3/4 MOA 5 shot. That’s more then accurate for my purposes.


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mxgsfmdpx

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Hobbyist shooting in real life outside in the real world. I’m definitely the weakest link. Bipod front & rear bag from the prone. Factory ammo, prefit barrel, 30-shot group on target at 100-yards.

I’ve got just under 800 rounds on this 6CM barrel that I’ve ran pretty hot, and I’ve noticed groups opening up a little bit compared to earlier in the barrel’s life. It was getting fairly mirage-y for the last row. Aggregate 30-shot group size is 1.085-MOA

View attachment 444686

Overlap In the order in which shots were made (started top left and proceeded left-to-right then top-to-bottom). Green Dot in each group is the aggregate center of the 30-shots. The red circle is the center of that particular group. By shot 6, I'm not gaining anything in terms of achieving zero. The difference is tiny, and most wouldn't be able to even resolve the difference. This also isn't specific to this barrel for me. This has been normal for me using various barrels and various types of factory ammo. Like I said in my first post in this thread, I'm not gaining anything after 7-shots in a single position in terms of achieving zero, and typically I could use fewer shots than 7.

View attachment 444687

Breakdown of shots
Median 3-shot group: 0.469 MOA
Median 4-shot group: 0.534 MOA
Median 5-shot group: 0.601 MOA
Median 10-shot group: 0.790 MOA
Median 20-shot group: 0.906 MOA
Aggregate 30-shot group: 1.085 MOA
View attachment 444689

Comparison of this 30-shot group data relative to the statistical table that was posted previously
View attachment 444690
The type of data we’re actually interested in. Thanks for sharing. Good shooting.
 

Macintosh

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The "Overlap in order" image with the red dot showing center of group in post 81 is by far the best piece of info in this entire thread in terms of illustrating exactly how the zero changes with more shots, in a way that it doesn't take a statistician to understand. It's pretty easy to see that in this example, after 5 or 6 shots the zero changes so little that it likely isn't significant for 99% of the people out there, even at what I consider very long range for hunting.

My question--and I think the point that Form is trying to make--is what does this "overlap in-order image" with the red dot showing center of group look like in a 2 or 2.5moa gun, rather than the .5-1moa gun used in the example? I don't own what I consider a 1moa gun, and neither do most of my hunting partners, so to me this question is much more relevant. Intuitively I think a less-consistent gun will need larger group-sizes to consistently show center of group for a true zero, but I think this image with the 2moa gun would show this in a way that everyone with an intellect like mine can understand.

Is this correct that it will take higher group sizes to get a precise "center of cone" zero when using a 2moa or 2.5moa gun than it will with a .5 or 1moa gun?
 

Harvey_NW

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What I said in the beginning stands- the chart and conversion factors generally only work with rifles that are shooting consistent high shot group sizes (15-30) in MOA or less. It does not work for the vast majority of rifles that are really 2 MOA guns.
Lots of “average” hunters don’t zero at all, unless hitting somewhere on paper counts as “zeroing”. Lots of average hunters don’t know what ammo their rifle is sighted in for, if they did. Lots of average hunters also have mixed ammo. Lots of average hunters just go with the boresight that the store did for them. Lots average hunters have 30-50% body fat, coronary disease, high BP, and diabetes and still kill deer from a stand- should we take their lead in health as well?
It's funny how people get so defensive and assume they're included in a generalized statement. @TK-421 that's not referencing YOU. The theoretical equation works for you and your shooting because you're a good shot and have precise consistent setups. We get it. It's the guys that go to the range and shoot a 3 shot .875" group on centers, and claim sub MOA. When in reality if they were to up that group number to 10, it's much more likely a 1.5 or 2 MOA result.

And the "average" hunter reference couldn't be more true. I've seen "tack driver" be referenced to a rifle that put 5 shots in a 3" group around a sharpie dot on a paper plate, and then it's typically "I have no idea how I missed at 350 yards dude, I was frickin DIALED in before season". All with a duplex reticle, capped turrets, and Kentucky windage..
 

Johnny Tyndall

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Is this correct that it will take higher group sizes to get a precise "center of cone" zero when using a 2moa or 2.5moa gun than it will with a .5 or 1moa gun?
From a statistical standpoint, this is correct. If 7 shots works for a 1 MOA gun*, it should be pretty straightforward to estimate how many are needed for a 2.5 MOA gun (for someone better at this stuff than me).

*assuming a consistent definition of what this means.
 

Flyrodr

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Oct 27, 2021
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OK, maybe I'm missing the point here. But, say I have a rifle that I go to the range with and shoot five shot groups with same ammo on 10 different days; 50 shots total. The groups are, again hypothetically, ranging between 0.5" and 1.0", and average 0.75". And they are centered around the point of aim.

Is the thinking that this rifle isn't yet "proven" to be sighted in correctly (POI = POA)? That the rifle can't be called a 0.75", or sub MOA, rifle? Or what exactly?

Is it that the rifle can't be called sub MOA without firing 10 or more shots, in one outing, with a group size of less than 1"?

I'm an old guy, and I can pretty "accurately" say that at some point, after firing a large number of rounds with a centerfire or even .22LR, the group size begins to expand.

Just asking. And thanks.
 

Macintosh

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Flyrodr, I'm not really participating except to follow and pull out what's useful for me, but as far as I can understand, there are two points that are more than simply hot air to me, which are highly inter-related:

1) to determine the minimum # of rounds in a group (or group of groups) that is required to realistically determine the size of the "cone" on that rifle/ammo/etc combination, so that if you randomly took any number of shots you would be more or less certain that 100% of them would land inside that circle. I want to use this to compare different ammunition, and also to extrapolate from this to know, all other things being equal, what is the range at which the rifle is capable of ALWAYS (not most of the time, but +/- 100% of the time) hitting a given target, and I want to be able to identify with as close to 100% certainty as possible when a miss or bad hit is my fault and cannot be the fault of the equipment.
and
2) to determine the minimum # of rounds required in any group to be able to say with confidence that the center of that group is indeed the center of the "cone" on that rifle so that I can be relatively certain I am truly making scope adjustments while zeroing the rifle onto the center of the "cone".
 
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Megalodon

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How does the stupid table work with this? Which 3 shot group do I use, the .318 or .776?? You can't take a single 3 shot group and extrapolate. That's dumb. This gun is probably pretty close to a true MOA gun, just so happens that because of chance one of those first 3 round groups was close to the max cone size. Bad luck if I'm only shooting one group.
 

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Macintosh

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Any reason not to do it with a .22? Im having trouble finding the right ammo for my cf rifles ahead of hunting season so going out and shooting 30 rounds groups isnt happening right now.
 

philos

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Threads like this are great for information and data sharing. How about we cut the BS childish attacks on one another out of it.
 

Alloy

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What is the elapsed time between shots on the larger groups i.e. 12 shots and above? I wonder how much a heated barrel plays into the group expansion.
 

Glendon Mullins

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Threads like this are great for information and data sharing. How about we cut the BS childish attacks on one another out of it.
Agree, there is some great ballistical (look I made up a word) information in this thread, people could learn from, however being childish when someone says they prefer 3 shot groups vs 5, 10, 7, 43, shot groups and u don't agree with them is , well, childish. lol

Let people shoot whatever groups they want to shoot and quit arguing about it and attacking each other, I see one person has already been banned for a week from this thread and right now it could very easily be 2-3 people if it continues. Get back on the right track guys
 
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manitou1

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I feel pretty good with a 5 shot, but I’m not confident until it can shoot similar groups with 10 shots.
Here’s a recent 12 shot group, the first 3 measured .116 12 shots ended up quite a bit larger.
Nobody likes a show off! 😁
 

OneShot

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Also, seems odd the consensus is to not count the “flyer”! Every time my guns stray from my advertised moa I can just count it as a flyer and throw it out?


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It’s like a mulligan. If you take a picture of you group, just put a dime over the “flyer”
 
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