Would you rather?

[Idaho Brad]

Shoot factory loads that shoot .46 with an ES of 36
Or-
Hand load that shoots .71 with an ES of 2?
Or-
Hand load that shoots .63 with an ES of 6


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[Rock’N Tacos]

Follow up question - have those loads been validated past 100 yards? If so, I am pretty lazy and don’t particularly like handloading, so I would go with factory ammo.

 

[djauofd]

The further you shoot the lower SD is your friend. At 100 yds it doesn’t mater. But as you stretch out low sd’s have very small vertical dispersion. So the answer is how far you shoot will depend on what vertical dispersions are acceptable.


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[IrkedCitizen]

Any of them will work within practical ranges. I don't think many people are capable of shooting the difference

 

[logem]

How many shots were taken to establish your values for group Max Spread and Extreme velocity spread?

Your handloads' extreme velocity spreads are so low (2 and 6), that I suspect you may be examining a very small sample size.

 

[eric1115]

If those are 10 round groups, I would have zero problem shooting any of them out to any range. If they are 3 round groups, I would take a 1.2 MOA, 50 ES 10 round load over any of them. Sample size is king.

Edit to add: any of those might be better than the 1.2/50 load, but it's really hard to be confident that it is. There are almost certainly multiple 0.5/8FPS 3-round groups in any 1-ish MOA group.

 

[Mhahn2]

Try playing with seating depth on your hand load that has es of 2 I would be willing to bet if you run a chrono over 20 rounds that es jumps a bit. Either hand load would be my choice over factory ammo fluctuates too much from lot to lot. You won’t see much with es changing much until you’re out past 600 yards.

 

[codym]

What’s the point of the rifle. Hunting? PRS? NRL hunter? Plinking? I’m pretty sure if I find a factory load that shoots that good I can duplicate it in a handload to shoot that well with better sd’s and ES. What’s the SD? SD under 10 is pretty capable of most applications inside 1200 yards