Flyjunky
WKR
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2020
- Messages
- 1,549
Thanks for taking the time to write that, it's appreciated.I REALLY need to be working on the bedding for my light gun--I re-inlet the stock so the barreled action will sit a bit lower, but I did insert myself into this discussion......
Some background that will make my answers to your questions more meaningful. I found the 200 HYB load for the June match. I was shooting a 300 SAUM IMP. I had been shooting 215s but decided to test the 200s because shorter bullets often group better. In this case the 200s had about an inch less vertical than the 215s on the pre-match test (4" vs 5"). Calculated wind drift was about the same. The 215s NODE was at 2900 and the 200s NODE was 2980. Please don't try these loads in a hunting rifle. My heavy gun has a BAT M action and a 30" barrel.
For a match weekend, we shoot two light gun and two heavy gun groups each day. We compete for both group and score. During the June match, I shot the 62 grain load. All four of my heavy gun groups (10-shots groups at 1000 yds) were in the fives. I wound up first place in heavy gun both days. My score aggregate was 98 with 7Xs on Sat and 98.5 with 3Xs on Sun, on a 7" 10-ring and a 2.75" X-ring. While those are decent groups and scores, I and everyone else has shot smaller and scored higher (and worse). However, that was about as good as the conditions would allow.
I was pleased with how that load shot, so I tested it again for the July match. I don't have that test target, which is a long and humorous story. I shot the 62 grain load again in July. I wound up second overall on Sat and fell to 8th overall on Sunday. Group aggs were worse.
For the Aug match--or finals--I tested around that series again. I went from 62.0 to 61.9 grains for the match load. The Aug match is scored differently, and I wound up third overall in heavy gun over the two days. My 4 target agg was a 6.3. My groups were 4.351, 6.994, 6.366, and 7.478. I think that is pretty representative of how a well-tuned load will shoot in good to mediocre conditions.
Here is a picture of the June and Aug test ladders. I added a ruler to for scale. BTW, these are shot round robin style at the same POI at the same time to minize the effects of conditions. Meaning that on the June target, I shot one round at 61.8, 62.2, 62.2, 63.0; then repeated that sequence three more times. The bullets tips are colored and then we connect the dots. This method doesn't work well much inside 550 yds, but works great at 600 - 1000.
View attachment 497937
Some things jump out here. We look for overlap in these test loads. On the left (June) target, with a .4 grain spread on loads, 62.0 was in between the tightest overlap. On the right (Aug) target, with a .2 grain load spread, 61.9 was in between the tightest overlap. I know that .1 grains doesn't matter, but the 62.2 went out the top--perhaps because it was warmer temps in Aug or maybe the additional 200 rounds through the barrel had changed something. Regardless, 61.9 was the right call since I wound being only one wind call away from beating the 2022 IBS 1000 yd Shooter of the Year in heavy gun. Someone who is my friend, and without his help I wouldn't be anywhere nearly as competitive as I am.
BTW, at the 2021 IBS Nationals, I pulled .2 grains out of my heavy gun--then a 300 WSM shooting 215s, and went from winning one of my relays the first day to winning both relays the second and tightening my groups. Yeah I know, .2 grains doesn't make any difference........
To answer the second part of the first question, I did not shoot groups with other powder charges. 90% of the time, the load in between the two test charges with the least vertical in their overlap shoot the smallest groups. HOWEVER,...let's take the June target. Had I gone out on Saturday and shot groups like a "realistic field rifle", I would have tried 62.8 grains for Sunday. I have used that startegy before when I was struggling with a light gun (6BRA). Nothing was shooting great on test day, and the NODE I picked shot badly. So I swapped to a different load and cut my group sizes in half.
Something else to notice. Using the "realistic for field shooting" approach, I shot a 12-shot and a 15-shot group that are about 1.3 MOA over a .8 grain powder charge increments at 1000 yds. Given that bullets almost always shoot greater MOA as distance increases--I have seen this repeatedly and is one area of agreement I have with Mr Litz, these may well be 12 and 15 shot sub-moa groups at 100 yds.
Would I take that level of accuracy on a long range hunt? Absolutely! I have taken enough hunting rifles that shoot .5 to .7 MOA 3-shot groups at 100 yd rifles out to 1088 yds, and hit reasonably close to the center of the gong to know that is adequate for hunting. To be honest, we need to spending a whole lot more time learning how to read the wind than we do getting our sub-MOA hunting rifle to sub 1/2 MOA.
Now for BR, both long range and short range, EVERYTHING has to be as prefect as we can make it to be competitive. The rifle has to be chambered straight and the barrel has to be good. The stock inlet has to be straight and stress free. The scope can't have any reticle shift after firing. The front and rear rests need to be set up well and the rifle needs to track very well. The load has to be fine-tuned and constantly checked. You have to correctly read the wind and understand how temperature changes will affect your tune. You have to be dead consistent in how you handle the rifle.
That said, the statement that BR has "near zero functional use", though a common sentiment, is just wrong and completely misses the point. My apologies if that offends someone. I was a USAF pilot and a Major for 12 of my 24 years, and as such I struggle with my social filter. Statements like that are why we BR shooters rarely share our load tuning methods with non-BR shooters. We get tired of being told what we do doesn't make any difference or doesn't apply to anything else, when we know for a fact otherwise.
Without BR, we wouldn't have high accuracy bullets, we wouldn't have any idea how to clean our rifles, and we wouldn't know how to tune a load. We wouldn't have the excellent barrels that we have today either. Just about everything we have involving precision and accuracy stands mainly on the shoulders of BR shooters.
This is really beyond common sense. No one knows better what affects how a rifle shoots than a competitive BR shooter. We probably tried what ever the latest accuracy trend is well before anyone else thought of it. While the F-Class guys probably get the nod for wind reading, if you want your rifle to shoot it's best you'll talk to a BR shooter. We know how to find forgiving tunes that stay in tune longer than the high maintenance tunes we shoot often in BR. We know what parts of loading make the most difference and what doesn't. We are always experimenting with new methods, and the target is our report card.
Also, many if not most most BR shooter's don't only shoot BR. When I first started 1000 yd BR I was at the bottom for the first year. The second year I started to figure things out. That second year of BR I decided to stick my toe in NRA Highpower--they had their matches at the same range I was shooting BR. The HP guys gave me a hard time since I was a BR shooter. However, both matches I shot I finished mid pack. That was a lot better start than I had in BR.
I didn't stick with HP because it didn't have enough interest in it to put up with all the fuss. That's not to take anything away from HP shooters. Every formal shooting competition requires discipline and skill, and anyone who competes seriously will become a better marksman. I have become a much better field shot with my hunting rifles since becoming a competition shooter. BTW, lots of BR shooters hunt.
As to the way many apply statistical analysis to shooting. It's mostly wrong and leads to things like shooting 50-shot groups. Again, everything changes each time we pull the trigger. The barrel changes, the conditions change, and how we handle rifle changes (even though we try to be super consistent).
Anyone who has any real experience shooting paper at long range, like us "near zero functional use" 1000 yd BR shooters, know that it's difficult to keep a 10-shot group all in the same condition. Sometimes it's hard to keep a 5-shot group in the same condition. Generally, a 5-shot group tells us how accurate the rifle/load/shooter is and a 10-shot group tells us how good the conditions are. By the time we shoot enough rounds to satisfy the statisticians, our load needs tweaked, meaning what we just did is invalidated.
Much better than the statistics approach is the empirical analysis approach. We learn from what we did and apply it to what we are about to do. The statistics may tell us something isn't significant, the target often tells us otherwise. And no, there are nowhere near as many "1/4 minute all day" hunting rifles in real life as there are on the Internet........................
"The statistics may tell us something isn't significant, the target often tells us otherwise".....In talking with some other very accomplished long range hunters, their answers were exactly this, the paper doesn't lie.
Edit to add:
"There are 3 kinds of lies...lies, damned lies, and statistics" - Mark Twain
Last edited: