I t can be very hard to eliminate the one shot out of the group problems. Why? Because there can be several reasons why that is happening. Bad brass, scope ,front rest not set up right, bags not filled right, poor load, fouled barrel, badly wore barrel. The list goes on and on. Tominboise stated he was using crappy brass. WHY????? If you want to see consistency you have to get all your ducks in a row. It helps to be anal about what you are doing. If you know something in your set up is not as perfect as you can get it, replace, or change it. I anneal every time I reload my neck turned Lapua brass after every firing, and once in a while I find one that seats the bullet with more effort. I put these aside for a chronograph test. After shooting 5 rounds that seated harder I had a speed change as high as 50 FT per second, and 4 of the five were out side of previous group shot with the same seating pressure, which I do by feel. I do not have a seating gauge yet, but will soon.
I cant count how many times I was asked by another shooter why their not shooting well, and found a lot of things that were pretty obvious why they were not shooting well. Some not so obvious. Lots of little things can cause your flyers, and with out asking, and being able to go over' and go through their rifle, rest, and bag set up, loads, barrel condition as far as barrel wear, barrel fouling, etc etc etc. I had one shooter complaining about poor grouping with his 22-250. I asked how often he cleans his rifle which he has been shooting a lot, for the past 2 years. His answer.....I don"t clean it. Another said about every 200 or so rounds. Bore scoped em both. Both extremely copper, and carbon fouled. I have had many shooters tell me that their barrels are clean. Bore scoped. Yep you guessed it. Terribly fouled. From my many experiences it can be hard to be online with a shooter (s) trying to figure out why the guns are not shooting very well. Some issues are obvious. With some you just really don't know his or her set up's etc etc.
Bottom line is..... if you want to have your rifles shooting well, and with consistency you have to go through every thing you are doing, and using. Even then, I wish you good luck curing the flyers. I wish there was one thing that causes this problem. Lots of times it is more then one thing. Doug
If youll mark the brass on a flyer try it again and see if it does it next time. Sometimes youll have a bad pieceCrappy brass comment insofar as it's Winchester brass from some fired factory ammo as opposed to Lapua, Norma or some other high quality brand. I have been sorting by weight and runout to get my batches as consistent as they can be. I need to measure the bullet jump. I clean after every session (typically 20 rounds or so), using Butches Bore Shine and a jag, and Wipeout if necessary for the copper fouling.
I appreciate all the input - I have been reloading since 1972 but am always trying to learn and improve, since most of the loading I have been doing in that time has been for hunting cartridges in hunting rifles.
if you are comfortable with doing it, or even just temporarily as a test, lower the trigger weight for use on the bench. see if the flyers fly less far.... so to speak.I put it breaking at 3 lbs.
The thread starter, Tominboise, reveals this is a Savage, presumably with factory barrel: "This particular rifle I traded into and am playing with it to see how it can do. It is a Savage 110 243 Win, sitting in some sort of laminated target stock, full floated, blind magazine, sporter weight barrel."
If it's indeed a factory barrel, that may be the end of discussion. I had a Savage with factory .260 Rem barrel. Four plus a flyer (one flyer opening group to 0.7-0.9 inches at 100 yards) were almost constant with a few 3 and 2. Constant split groups.
I tried everything -- four different powders, 6 different bullets, different primers, turned necks, tried necking up .243 and necking down .308 Win Lapua, tried various seating depths. All to no avail. The gun just gave flyers.
Then I screwed off the factory barrel and screwed-on a prefit 6BR PacNor. Problem solved. The first measured group (rounds 15-19, 4 shots) made a ragged hole about 0.170" -- Witnessed. The gun never showed the tendency to toss flyers with the new barrel, and consistently shot in the twos. Here are NINE 3-Shot Groups at 100 yards with two different powders and various seating depths.
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So these days, when I see problems like the OP describes, I always ask: "Is this a factory barrel?" That may be the whole problem.
If there were 10 Forum Boss Commandments, one would be "don't waste time and money on an erratic factory barrel".