Seating depth - does it even matter?

[Packmansion]

Remind me after hunting season to shoot groups with my current seating depths, and then with the bullets .250 deeper. It’d be a good test. If something simply just doesn’t matter, test it at the extremes to find out.

That's not exactly how that works. Im going to do a legit test soon to put this shit to rest. The concept is simple but maybe 1% of Americans understand statistics. Most load development is fudds chasing noise in the data.

 

[huntnful]

That's not exactly how that works. Im going to do a legit test soon to put this shit to rest. The concept is simple but maybe 1% of Americans understand statistics. Most load development is fudds chasing noise in the data.

I’m not talking about small testing over small increments not having enough of a sample to draw a conclusion.

“Does seating depth matter” is different than “are we testing enough to actually know if small seating changes are making a difference”.

Testing to see if seating depth matters is pretty simple. If .010 shoots 1/3 the size of .250 off. Yes it matters.

It’s up to the individual to find out how much it matters to them, and to what extent they want to chase it IMO.

I hardly even touch seating depth. .010 off normally hammers plenty well in all my guns to not even mess with it.

Doesn’t mean seating depth doesn’t matter in general.

 

[pbroski]

Yes it can matter, but the difference is not as much as most people would like to think. Improvement is only about 20 - 25%, and not all load combinations show an improvement. It's not for everyone because it takes a lot of shooting to prove that small of a difference. That's also why some people think it doesn't matter. They aren't shooting enough to disprove it. It takes statistically significant sample sizes from multiple rifle/load combinations to come to a definite conclusion. Not many people are doing that much testing.