Acceptable Es/Sd?

[HuntHarder]

I am curious what most of you guys consider good or acceptable Es/Sd? Trying to get a good baseline for where I should be at. Typically I look for an ES of 30 or less thru 5 shots. It has worked out, but wondering if I should strive for lower even tho it groups good.

 

[WKR]

Depends on what the loads purpose is to me. If we're talking hunting rifles, ES of 30ish and SD in the single digits is satisfactory in a 10 shot sample.
If I can get 20/5 I'm happy.

 

[tx_shooter]

First and foremost - how does it shoot? I have seen guys chase ES/ED but the rifle did not care for the bullet & speed combo. The rest of the conversation depends on the purpose as benchrest guys will chase the holy grail of single digits while hunters will usually be happy with low double digits and under 1 moa groups.

 

[Qholum37]

I am happy if I can get under 20 ES over 5 shots, 10 shots even better! Getting under 10 ES is crazy and I have found myself chasing those numbers less and less. I agree with what was said above, it depends on the intended purpose.

 

[HuntHarder]

I shoot targets and hunt. The occasional PRS shoot. I enjoy reloading but only shoot maybe 1000- 2000 rounds a year of CF. Sounds like i am in the ballpark of what I should be expecting. In my experience, it is very rare to find factory ammo that gets near 30 ES, yet guys don't reload and still shoot long range effectively. Just got me wondering where I was standing with my reloading.

 

[T_Widdy]

 

[waspocrew]

I’m happy if I can get the ES 25 and under for at least 10 rounds. That being said, I’ve had some loads shoots very well at distance with an ES of 40-50.

 

[Pescetism]

Depends on the use, but in general would prefer to see less than 25/10. However, I have a mild practice load that's 77.9/30.1 and 0.85-1.1 MOA at 100 yards for 5 shots. Under 300 yards I'm content with it but by 400 the inconsistency is problematic.

 

[Dmoua]

Single digit SD’s.

 

[huntnful]

Depends how far you intend to shoot the cartridge IMO. I've shot very acceptable groups at 800 yards with a 60ES for 20 shots rifle.

For the long range gun, I want the bullet powder combo to hold 30 ES for at least 10 shots. And even then, let the target tell you how much it really matters honestly. If a $600 chrono misses a read by 1% that's 25-30FPS, so in 20 shots, if it's off 1% in each direction one time, you may think you're load is junk, and on target it may have looked excellent. So I don't put a TON of weight into it.

 

[SDHNTR]

I’ve got some loads with a sub 20 es and 5-6 sd over 10 shots, and some with a 50-60 es and 15+ sd and I can’t tell any discernible difference in groups out to any range.

 

[Jebel]

Depends on your accuracy appetite. Put your load info into a ballistic calculator and look at the solution at your personal distance limit. Now change the velocity by 50 fps and look how much the solution changed at your distance. Decide if that’s acceptable or not.

Personally, I think an SD over 20 shots that’s better than 15 is good and better than 10 is great. I don’t typically look at ES, but that would be about 60 fps and 40 fps over 20 shots.

 

[Shortschaf]

Whatever ±target size at whatever distance you find acceptable is the answer

For me an ES of 50 is ±2.5 inches at 800 yards. Just over half MOA worth of spread. Therefore I basically pay no attention to it

 

[HuntHarder]

Thanks for the replies. Seems that single digit ES/sd really are not that important for the accuracy and distance I am expecting. I still think I will strive for 30ish ES, but maybe not get so hung up on it, if it is more than that.

 

[Article 4]

Depends on your accuracy appetite. Put your load info into a ballistic calculator and look at the solution at your personal distance limit. Now change the velocity by 50 fps and look how much the solution changed at your distance. Decide if that’s acceptable or not.

Personally, I think an SD over 20 shots that’s better than 15 is good and better than 10 is great. I don’t typically look at ES, but that would be about 60 fps and 40 fps over 20 shots.

Im with you, rarely look at extreme spread unless there is an outlier or some reason to.

Have had some amazing rifle with SDs of 3 and some with SDs of 19 - in a rifle pushing a bullet at 3100 an SD of 20-30 matters not.

 

[huntnful]

Just shot a 1/4 MOA 5 shot group at 600 yards with this load that produced a 37 ES over 15 shots.

 

[SDHNTR]

There’s some voodoo magic chit to ES/SD. I can use the same reloading practices and same types of dies and sometimes I get great numbers, sometimes I don’t. As long as it shoots acceptable groups, I try not to worry about it.

Except I do have one gun that drives me nuts. It shoots several loads into easy sub 1/2 Moa, but everything thru that barrel has massive spreads, like 80+. It bugs me, but even at that I don’t think I notice it on a target.

 

[wind gypsy]

Sub 60 ES, Sub 20 SD is good enough for any distance I should be shooting at game.

If you shoot enough rounds to get an ES number that means something, trying to keep it under 30 is a good way to have you chasing your tail.

 

[Rippey715]

Consistency is always better than just low numbers. Low and consistent numbers are the best. Somehow my last 6 batches have all had a SD of 7. Pretty stoked about that. I’ve even changed my velocity 3 times.

BUT how bad could your numbers be and still make hits?

I used a 6.5 CM with a 140 going 2700 as an example. Shooting at a 2 MOA, 8” square (.6 mil) target at 400yds you could have an ES of 200fps and still hit the target if you were aiming center. 2600 would be .3 low and 2800 would be .3 high. But anywhere in between would still hit a 8” square at 400yds. Crazy right. I offer this info because it can be so easy to fall into the trap of thinking ammo inconsistency causes missed shots. It does. But It’s far more likely that the shot was missed due to wobble zone, shooter fundamentals, other stressors. So basically, have faith in your ammo and work on those reps to have more faith in your shooting.

(You can do the above example for yourself in your ballistics solver by plugging in your bullet and velocity and then tweaking it up and down to figure out your minimum and maximum speed for a given target size and distance.)

 

[dreadi]

Numbers are nice to look at when comparing factory loads with my hand loads on the same chronograph however, I don't care to chase any of them. I only care about what I consider acceptable groups and hitting my target at whatever the distance is. Perhaps I'm just ignorant of how important the numbers are. One thing I do know, the animals don't care.