Can any good shooter wring full precision from guns?

[David Bookstaber]

I've been assuming that any good shooter can take a gun to the limit of its precision. But wondering if anyone would like to validate that assumption or has contrary experience/evidence?

Put another way: If he is afforded every advantage, can a good shooter over a statistically significant course of fire match the precision the same gun would achieve locked in a machine rest with the same ammo? And by every advantage I mean:

• No wind. (Actually wind would be an advantage to the best LR shooters, so I'd stipulate conditions where wind would not significantly affect precision.)
• Shooter's preferred rest, whether bags, bipod, bench, prone, etc.
• Shooter's preferred optic -- e.g., competition scope for a rifle, magnified scope on precision handguns, red dot on polymer handguns.
• Shooter's preferred trigger.

And, if you think the answer is no because all but the most practiced shooters occasionally pull one, also allow for called fliers (before impact can be seen by shooter) to exclude shots where the shooter knows he did something wrong.

I like to think I have some experience with some of the more precise guns available, but I've never had the chance to lock one in a rest to verify its mechanical precision excluding any shooter-related error.

I guess I should also try to qualify "good shooter" as one who gets regular trigger time, can get behind the trigger without the reticle moving, and knows when he has a flinch.

 

[bheadboy]

from my experience, at Sierra, in their testing range, the following exist on earlier visits

300yd tunnel - no wind
actions locked in custom device - universal action used in many cambering
barrels custom, - used in universal action
some factory actions that have been trued with bbls changed per need
scopes mounted on action
scopes sighted the triggers electrical actuated (may not be now)

all loading done per test in the firing room, extreme care to be exact in all steps of loading

to reflect on your question i think this is somewhat of a reverse thought, as the extreme care to replicate each shot by the rifle, trigger, sighting holding of the rifle, wind- is covered, also each loaded round is carefully assembled

the purpose of these test is to proof the quality of production, prepare data for loading recommendations and determine the very best combination of their bullets and a give caliber in that very special rifle.

again these results are only a basis for the cartridge as the rifle they use is not yours, i don't think the individual shooter no matter how experienced will ever CONSTANTLY achieve perfection.

Bob

 

[NateHaler]

I've been assuming that any good shooter can take a gun to the limit of its precision. But wondering if anyone would like to validate that assumption or has contrary experience/evidence?

This ASSumption ;D is no more valid than the notion that any good driver could take a car to the limit of its performance. In other words, it's invalid.

 

[WyleWD]

I've been assuming that any good shooter can take a gun to the limit of its precision.

In reply to your question in the subject line, No. An exceptional shooter & reloader can reach full precision more often than a "good" shooter but still not every shot, every time, every day. I have seen good and exceptional shooters that have been limited by a poorly smithed rifle too.

In reply to one of your opening sentences.... A very reputable smith and shooter once said.... a bow or a rifle generally will perform to a high level of accuracy...... but when you hang a person on the end of it...... it is a totally different ballgame. Attitudes, physical differences, moods, skeletal differences.... all affect consistent accuracy. Personally, I tend to agree with him. JMHO, I don't think "any" good shooter can consistently shoot at the limit of a firearm's precision given that the firearm is properly smithed. WD

 

[Keith Glasscock]

Simply, No.

You could take 20 of the best shooters in the world and give them equal equipment (not really possible) and one would win the match.

 

[Toby Bradshaw]

In the unlimited class in short range benchrest, it is perfectly legal to shoot a bag gun instead of a rail gun. And once in awhile a bag gun will win, especially in quickly switching conditions or if the bag gun happens to have a great barrel, great bullets, and great tune. But day in and day out the smart money is on the rail gun. At the very least, a rail gun is much better in mirage.

So the answer to the OP's original question (Can a good shooter equal or better a machine rest under ideal conditions?), the answer is "No" (most of the time).

 

[David Bookstaber]

Thanks for the answers so far.

Let me clarify the original question: It should have been "given a gun and ammo lot." I.e., I didn't want to bring load skill or customization of loads to a gun into the equation.

TobyBradshaw's post probably provides the best material to answer the question I meant to ask, and it leads to this follow-up: In unlimited short-range benchrest How much worse is the bag shooter on average than the rail-mounted gun? (Again, if it's possible I'd like to remove wind and mirage from the equation, so disregard extreme condition matches.) E.g., are the bag guns typically shooting groups double the size of the rail guns, or just 10% wider? Or is that the bag guns occasionally throw a flier and the rail guns don't?


If it were possible the experiment that would answer this question (and for which maybe we can make an educated guess at the results) is the following: Take a cohort of shooters and put them on an indoor range behind the same benchrest rifle and load lot. Assume the load and gun are reasonably precise, so in the machine rest it shoots a mean radius of, say, .1MOA. How would "good" shooters do? Do you think they'd all print groups in the range of .18-.22MOA? Or would you see their mean radius ranging from .10-.40MOA depending on the shooter and the day? And what if we limit it to "world-class" shooters, would that change the answer? (Remember, there's no wind, and it's not their gun or load, though they can adjust the stock, trigger, and rests to their liking.)

 

[Toby Bradshaw]

http://www.angelfire.com/ma3/max357/houston.html

 

[Lapua40X]

... can a good shooter over a statistically significant course of fire match the precision the same gun would achieve locked in a machine rest with the same ammo? And by every advantage I mean
And, if you think the answer is no because all but the most practiced shooters occasionally pull one, also allow for called fliers (before impact can be seen by shooter) to exclude shots where the shooter knows he did something wrong.

The reason the answer is "no" is that the number of variables with the mechanical device are vastly fewer than the number of variables faced by the "good shooter". When the rifle is mounted in a mechanical device the only things that change, shot to shot, are the barrel temperature, progressive fouling, and ammo quality control for consistency. (OK, somebody may find another that I missed - but you get the idea )
When the "good shooter" shoulders the rifle the list of variables is far more complex. If the "good shooter" is sharp enough to call a flinch or other obvious error in performance that's wonderful; but it's not enough. Load on the bipod, shoulder positioning/contact/pressure etc., cheek weld consistency, eye relief consistency, body position relative to the direction of aim, reticle placement on target as it varies over distance, and a host of other factors that produce results that, when the target is reviewed after the fact, raise the question "how the heck did that one get away?" should be evidence enough.

 

[David Bookstaber]

http://www.angelfire.com/ma3/max357/houston.html

I've read that before and it's part of the inspiration for this question, although I'm not sure it provides much towards an answer other than the part where Virgil says, "In the warehouse I could fire three groups in any rifle and tell you if that rifle was going to shoot really well," which I understood to mean that under the ideal conditions of the warehouse all good shooters get the same results from any gun.

@Lapua40X: I'm asserting that a "good" shooter is one who knows how to dial out parallax and bench or shoulder a gun in such a way that he locks down those variables. E.g., he knows that if he's on a bipod he has to load it the same way for each shot, and that if he's resting on the stock that his cheekweld has to be consistent. If practiced shooters who think they've controlled those variables can't actually lock them down consistently then yes, the answer to my question must be "no." But if the only evidence that those are an issue is taken from the occasional flier on open ranges under less than ideal conditions that's less satisfying -- un-called fliers could be wind or bad ammo, and if we could see them with the gun in a machine rest at the same rate then we wouldn't penalize a shooter for producing them. (Which I guess is sort of what you get from shooting competitions: Everyone shoots under the same conditions, and the best shooter is a lower bound on the achievable accuracy given the conditions. So how much variation do we see between shooters in bench or supported prone competitions on calm days with no mirage? Not the best answer, because there's so much gaming in the equipment and reloading, but again at least it's a lower bound on an answer to the question.)

 

[Toby Bradshaw]

In unlimited short-range benchrest How much worse is the bag shooter on average than the rail-mounted gun?

If you really want to know, dig up the 4-gun results from a bunch of tournaments and calculate this ratio for every individual competitor:

unlimited (or heavy bench in IBS) grand agg / HV grand agg

Then calculate the average of this ratio for all shooters combined (or maybe everyone in the Top 10 or Top 20).

If the average ratio is smaller than about 1.3, then the UL/HB rail guns are globally superior to the bag guns. The reason that the ratio is about 1.3 (instead of 1.0) is that UL/HB shoot 10-shot groups, which (in theory) are about 1.3 times larger than 5-shot groups (http://www.the-long-family.com/Group%20size%20statistical%20analysis.pdf).

 

[Lapua40X]

Well, dbooksta, rhetorical issues like these are always open to conjecture. You'll get opinions here, but no solid reliable data that will stand the test of anything greater than superficial statistical analysis.
I wish you well .....

 

[David Bookstaber]

In unlimited short-range benchrest How much worse is the bag shooter on average than the rail-mounted gun?

If you really want to know, dig up the 4-gun results from a bunch of tournaments and calculate this ratio for every individual competitor:

I would like to do this analysis. NBRSA results are scattered, and I didn't realize they had 4-gun matches: Are tournaments like this really featuring over a hundred individual shooters who bring and shoot four different classes including unlimited? If that's correct then a single match should provide all the stats I need to answer that question!

 

[David Bookstaber]

Well, dbooksta, rhetorical issues like these are always open to conjecture. You'll get opinions here, but no solid reliable data that will stand the test of anything greater than superficial statistical analysis.

Those opinions are still appreciated, since chances are I'm not going to get to conduct my ideal test! (So far everyone seems to lean towards the "no" answer, and I've just been trying to make sure I stated the question correctly.)

In particular if I could get contact info for anyone who shot at the "Houston Warehouse" it sounds like they may be able to provide a good answer.

 

[David Bookstaber]

OK, I parsed the results for the 2009 NBRSA Nationals into the attached spreadsheet. The adjustment factor for extreme spread between 5- and 10-shot groups (1.238) was taken from here.

Averaging the performance of the top 82 competitors we can make the following inferences:
[list type=decimal]
[*]At 100 yards precision on the LV, SP, and Unlimited guns is statistically indistinguishable. Precision on the HV guns is marginally, but meaningfully, worse.
[*]At 200 yards each bench class is statistically different. In order of decreasing accuracy: SP, LV, HV. (Isn't that the opposite order of precision we would expect?) Unlimited is statistically equivalent to the LV precision.
[*]Groups at 200 yards are almost as tight as groups at 100 yards! This observation makes me doubt the reported data, since it suggests shooters are almost twice as precise at the longer distance.
[/list]

Can anybody familiar with this sport offer theories or clarifications that might illuminate these counter-intuitive results?

 

[TonyR]

No way to correct those results for varying conditions. You might try the same comparison with record aggs for each rifle type and distance. When I did that for other reasons, the differences were surprisingly small. I was particularly impressed with how well shooters off of bags did compared railguns.

 

[Toby Bradshaw]

Groups at 200 yards are almost as tight as groups at 100 yards! This observation makes me doubt the reported data, since it suggests shooters are almost twice as precise at the longer distance

The range agg at 200 is divided by 2 before calculating the grand agg. If you looked at individual matches you would see that measured group sizes at 200 yards are twice (or a little more than twice) as large as at 100, usually. But that doesn't affect your analysis.

There's no reason to think that there would be any difference between SP and LV, since nearly everybody is shooting the same rifle in both events. Many ALSO use the same rifle for HV. A lot depends on the conditions for each class. You'd have to look at a lot of 4-gun events to deal with that issue statistically.

And it looks to me like the rails still are better than the bag guns overall. And even though the fudge factor conversion between 5- and 10-shot groups is included as it should have been, in the real world I think any shooter will tell you that there is a lot more to go wrong in a 10-shot group, if for no other reason than you are more likely to be required to shoot in more different conditions. Unfortunately (for your analysis), relatively few unlimited/heavy bench rifles events are 5-shot.

Nice work!

 

[David Bookstaber]

Ah ha -- that solves question #3!

Good point on the 5- vs 10-shot group. At competition are the rail gun strings fired significantly more quickly than the bagged guns, thus reducing their susceptibility to condition changes?

Obviously the rail- vs bag-gun comparison goes to the original question. If these scores are indicative then at least nationally there are scores of shooters who are able to shoot a rifle without introducing any dispersion, since they're grouping competitively with rail guns. Except that the record doesn't show how many of those unlimited scores were from true rail guns vs competitors shooting their bag guns for the unlimited category.

It would also be nice to know which guns and distances were shot under the same conditions. E.g., if HV were shot on a different day with worse conditions that would explain that anomaly.

What are typical muzzle velocities for these matches? With that we could estimate how much wind could impact results at these short ranges.

 

[Toby Bradshaw]

Typical point blank BR MVs are in the 3200-3400ft/sec range, BC in the 0.2xx range. Anyone who has shot well in competitive BR will tell you that they are holding in different places for many if not most shots -- conditions are rarely constant enough to allow holding in the same place for every shot of every group. Condition reading and holding off is what separates the winners from the trigger pullers.

A bag gun can be shot just as quickly as a rail gun, but shooting a bag gun quickly (and well) takes more skill.

 

[David Bookstaber]

Interesting, I'll run the windage sensitivities tomorrow.

Are these statements as applicable for the 100-200yard range? Obviously I'm unfamiliar with the sport, but I do recall reading once that at least some top benchrest shooters wait for calm/stable conditions and then try to get off the full string as fast as possible, and that 1 shot per second is not an unusual rate of fire.

If conditions are still a factor at short range is the dispersion of groups predominantly along the horizontal axis? (I assume stdev of muzzle velocities is near or in single digits, and there are no other primary factors contributing to vertical spread.)