2024 Cold Bore Challenge Q&A Thread

[Macintosh]

Personally, Id never take that challenge if I stood to lose anything, b/c Im shooting a 1.5moa-ish hunting rifle. Even if I called everything PERFECT a % of shots would land outside 1moa. And lets just say I aint perfect. Id venture to guess that 90%+ of the “sub-moa rifles” out there are not legit 1moa rifles in the first place (unless limited to small # of shots). If that was the point, it makes perfect sense. A 1” dot at 100 yards shows exactly the same thing—even a well-zeroed, legit sub-moa gun often puts one or two off or nearly off a 1” dot simply because being zeroed to the nearest click is rarely perfectly centered on the poa.

And thats before we even get to being perfectly zeroed, wind, npoa, etc.

Edit: Watching the cortina video he said he uses the 5” target to simulate a bad shot angle and/or brush obscuring the target. Ok, the point is perhaps fair (and perhaps not if many people wont take a badly compromised shot at longer range). Personally I think a realistic target size leaves more of a lasting mark on both gawkers like me and on participants, but I’ll do that challenge after I have a quarter-million subscribers on MY youtube channel!

 

[Macintosh]

The other point I’ll make with regard to target size, is that the area of a circle as it expands GREATLY affects the odds of hitting it. So in effect choosing a “slightly” smaller target as measured by only the diameter artificially reduces hit rate by a lot more than you’d expect.
Example:
The area of a 5” circle is about 20 sq inches.

An 8” circles area is 50 sq inches, there’s 150% increase in the amount of target to hit, and the odds of hitting it go up substantially.

A 10” circles’ area is 78 sq inches. That’s NOT “twice the size”, that’s a 290% increase in size from the 5” target. Again, odds of hitting it go up exponentially.

 

[solarshooter]

Yeah these are fair points. Running a 500yd shot in WEZ on a 5" circle with my system and calm wind I get a 15% hit rate! At 6" it's 21%, 8" 34%, 10" 48%, 12" 60%, 14" 71%, 16" 80%, 18" 87%.

So following along with the theme of this discussion, if the goal was to test MER for hunting, shouldn't we be using a hunting sized target? If so what size should that be?

 

[Justin Crossley]

Yeah these are fair points. Running a 500yd shot in WEZ on a 5" circle with my system and calm wind I get a 15% hit rate! At 6" it's 21%, 8" 34%, 10" 48%, 12" 60%, 14" 71%, 16" 80%, 18" 87%.

So following along with the theme of this discussion, if the goal was to test MER for hunting, shouldn't we be using a hunting sized target? If so what size should that be?

We use a 10" circle to represent big game vitals for Cold Bow and Cold Bore challenges.

 

[solarshooter]

We use a 10" circle to represent big game vitals for Cold Bow and Cold Bore challenges.

Yeah I guess my question was rhetorical, because earlier in this discussion folks were saying that's still smaller than vitals as a way of kind of justifying the low hit rates. Seems like if we want this to be a test of ideal MER for hunting, it should be an agreed upon vitals sized target.

Edit: Goal being that people come out of it with a no BS demonstrated hit rate on game sized targets. If there's debate on the size of the vitals, people might hit 50% but then tell themselves "I still would've hit on actual vitals, therefore my MER is still 600 (or whatever)".

 

[mlevimadden]

Yeah I guess my question was rhetorical, because earlier in this discussion folks were saying that's still smaller than vitals as a way of kind of justifying the low hit rates. Seems like if we want this to be a test of ideal MER for hunting, it should be an agreed upon vitals sized target.

Edit: Goal being that people come out of it with a no BS demonstrated hit rate on game sized targets. If there's debate on the size of the vitals, people might hit 50% but then tell themselves "I still would've hit on actual vitals, therefore my MER is still 600 (or whatever)".

Sure a 10” vitals target is very conservative if were talking about bull elk, and that’s what everyone is pointing to when trying to challenge the target size.

However, I would say 10” is a pretty accurate measurement if we’re talking whitetails, pronghorn, sheep, goat, and even some younger muley bucks and most does.

I know my personal MER is different on pronghorn than elk, and I think most hunters can draw that same conclusion.

 

[solarshooter]

I think most hunters can draw that same conclusion.

I do not share your confidence that most people can do that in an objective, accurate, quantified way, to be brutally honest. One common pitfall is people assume error grows linearly with range. They might miss a 10" plate by 1" at 450yds, say "oh well that still would've been a hit on a 12" deer, and for an 18" elk that means I can shoot 1.5x that far, or 675yds." That would be a very incorrect conclusion to draw.

 

[Macintosh]

Yeah these are fair points. Running a 500yd shot in WEZ on a 5" circle with my system and calm wind I get a 15% hit rate! At 6" it's 21%, 8" 34%, 10" 48%, 12" 60%, 14" 71%, 16" 80%, 18" 87%.

So following along with the theme of this discussion, if the goal was to test MER for hunting, shouldn't we be using a hunting sized target? If so what size should that be?

Exactly. Your wez calculations showing the increase in hit probability actually track much closer to the %increase in surface-area of the target, than they do with the % increase in linear diameter of the target.

And yes, what this says to me is that you really do get an artificially-low hit rate if you shrink the vitals smaller than they need to be. It also should give people pause when considering taking longer shots if the target area is smaller than normal due to an off-angle or a small window thru brush, etc.