I just did some testing to compare 100 yard vs 1000 yard tuner settings. I tuned my rifle at 1000 yards with ladders for powder and seating (pc) and I never shot the rifle at anything other than 1000 yards. I also never changed my original powder charge or seating depth and the rifle now has 450 rds since initial testing. My original charge and seating gave me a 589-23X at a recent 1000yd fclass match during my last outing with tuner on 0 and some high winds.
Another shooter had mixed feelings tuning at distance and his results were not giving him confidence so he fell back into tuning at 100 and ended up pretty darn close to what he came up with during 1000 yard testing for powder charge and his seating depth test at 100 matched his 1000 yd testing.
For the sake of testing, I decided to go out of my way and check my load at 100 yards. This was difficult because I have not shot at 100 in years. The closest has always been 200 yards.
My first 2 rds at 100 we’re sighters (tuner at 0) and then 4 rds thru the same hole. I then moved to a fresh target and did a full tuner test. Tuner at 0 gave me 0 vertical but 3 rounds in a horizontal string. I tested from 0 to 18 hashes on my EC tuner. Setting 10,16 and 18 were the best.
At the end of 100 yard testing I decided to take what I learned back to 1000. At 1000 I tested settings 9,10,11,16,17,18,19, and 20. 11 looked decent, 18 and 19 were good, 20 went out of control. Then I figured I would split hashes and try 18.5 and that’s we’re things tightened significantly. I shot 10 rounds under 5” of vertical.
My conclusion is that a tuner setting at 100 does not entirely translate to being the best setting at 1000. Nor do I think you can set and forget unless you are constantly adjusting your seating depth or powder charge. I’ve also run into situations were the load is tuned so good that playing with the tuner made things worse.
Now, with my busy work schedule I do not have the time that some have to test or tinker with fine tuning weeks or even the day before a match to find that perfect combination of powder and seating depth. I am trying to stick with the charge and seating depth that did good initially and just mess with the tuner when vertical starts to get out of hand. I have attached a 100 yard target to get an idea of what the tuner does at 100. I will also post a pic of the 1000 yard tuner test target this weekend.
