Evaluating precision of your rifle

[Dub]

I assume you have tried a bunch of different bullets, jumps, etc?

still working through all that but yes. So far I have tried 69gr SMKs, 69gr Nosler CC, 70 gr Nosler RDF and 50 gr Hornady Amax. still sorting through various seating depths. Mostly using Varget, IMR4895, and CFE223

 

[KY_Windage]

It's a pain. I went through many hours and a lot of expense with a Tikka only to finally give up. It is now in line to be rebarreled.

 

[Homerange]

It's a pain. I went through many hours and a lot of expense with a Tikka only to finally give up. It is now in line to be rebarreled.

Never seen one that wouldn't shoot well with the loads it was built for.
What Cal and what are you feeding it on ?
Oh, and based on hard experience don't discount your scope doesn't have a role to play in this.

 

[dgeesaman]

25 shot groups would be waste of barrel unless maybe your shooting 25 shot groups at a match. If you think 25 is better than 5 I guess 100 shot group would really be the answer? Makes no sense to me. Of course if you shoot a 2000 shot group you might have the true dispersion of that particular barrel What say you? Or you could just go to some matches and then you will find the true percision of your rifle with the guy on the trigger in the available condition. That's really where the rubber meets the road.

A statistician devoted to statistical significance tuned his rifle before going to a match.

Just kidding of course he never got to the match. He had no barrel left.

 

[K22]

Of course we all want one hole groups or as close as can get. To achieve that most of the time you have to do a lot of load development and testing. If you like bench shooting and testing then go for it. There are a myriad of combinations to test. I had a friend (he passed last year) that loved this type of shooting. He didn't hunt or compete, just like to find that perfect group. I witness him shoot some amazing groups in the .1 and .2's. That's great if that's your thing - but it would drive me insane.

My approach is different, not better just different. First I establish a standard for the application of the rifle. For example, I strive of .5 moa precision in my varmint and predator rifles. I can tolerate .75 especially for predator applications. Once I hit a five shot group that delivers that level of precision, I shoot a couple of verification groups. If those groups are close to this standard I'm good to go. Now it's time to start shooting off the sticks and see what I can do under field conditions.

For my big game rifles, the vital area is much more generous so I can tolerate less precision at the distances I normally have opportunities - typically 200 or under yards. I strive for a 1 moa but can tolerate 1.5 moa, even 2.0 moa. In practice most of my big game rifle are well under 1 moa with minimum load development. Again, I spent my range time and reloading components money on practicing off the sticks striving to become a better practical / field shooter. Beside being a lot more fun, at least for me, this give me realist idea my true capabilities in the field.

Because I now only shoot 3 calibers, 223 Rem, 243 Win, and 308 Win, I'm so familiar with the load combo's that work that it doesn't take much load development when I get a new rifle. The exception has been the 8" twist 223 Rem's. All my prior experience was with 12" twists in this caliber. But it didn't take too long to get some good loads for these 8" twist rifles, even with 55 grain bullets - I just had to slow down the velocity and bingo, I started getting groups in the .4's and 5's. The 60 Vmax's even shot better.

That's my approach for what ever it's worth.

 

[KY_Windage]

Never seen one that wouldn't shoot well with the loads it was built for.
What Cal and what are you feeding it on ?
Oh, and based on hard experience don't discount your scope doesn't have a role to play in this.

It is a 7-08. I have fed it prolly 10 different bullets, including expensive match bullets, and tried a couple of different very reliable scopes (Trijicon and NXS).

Funny thing is, I was out of state when I got it and I bought a box of Hornady reduced recoil ammo, 120 gr. SST's, air, and it shot half-minute with those. But Hornady does not sell that bullet (I couldn't believe they would put one in ammo and not sell it, but that was the case). I tried like the devil to replicate it with other 120-gr bullets at that ammo's stated velocity but could never come close.

 

[KY_Windage]

My approach is different, not better just different. First I establish a standard for the application of the rifle. For example, I strive of .5 moa precision in my varmint and predator rifles. I can tolerate .75 especially for predator applications. Once I hit a five shot group that delivers that level of precision, I shoot a couple of verification groups.

I don't think you're nearly OC enough for this group.

 

[K22]

I don't think you're nearly OC enough for this group.

Not sure what you mean - senior brain isn't so quick on the up take anymore.

How are things in KY? Took my Army basic at Fort Campbell in 1970 - beautiful state.

 

[KY_Windage]

Not sure what you mean - senior brain isn't so quick on the up take anymore.

How are things in KY? Took my Army basic at Fort Campbell in 1970 - beautiful state.

OC = Obsessive/Compulsive.

Never been to Kentucky. "Kentucky windage" is my favorite way to shoot, that's all.

 

[Hohn]

25 shot groups would be waste of barrel unless maybe your shooting 25 shot groups at a match. If you think 25 is better than 5 I guess 100 shot group would really be the answer? Makes no sense to me. Of course if you shoot a 2000 shot group you might have the true dispersion of that particular barrel What say you? Or you could just go to some matches and then you will find the true percision of your rifle with the guy on the trigger in the available condition. That's really where the rubber meets the road.

Of course 2000 shots would be better, as far as confidence goes.Your reductio ad absurdum is not compelling.

Like all the rest of life, it's a tradeoff with costs and benefits. You decide how confident you need to be and how much you're willing to pay for it.

 

[Homerange]

It is a 7-08. I have fed it prolly 10 different bullets, including expensive match bullets, and tried a couple of different very reliable scopes (Trijicon and NXS).

Funny thing is, I was out of state when I got it and I bought a box of Hornady reduced recoil ammo, 120 gr. SST's, air, and it shot half-minute with those. But Hornady does not sell that bullet (I couldn't believe they would put one in ammo and not sell it, but that was the case). I tried like the devil to replicate it with other 120-gr bullets at that ammo's stated velocity but could never come close.

Ok, have you tried the KISS method?

Let me recite what I did with an unknown and very suspect Rem 780 in 7mm08. Suspect in that it had been traded in with apparently a ring bulged barrel and some smith had shorten it an inch and recrowned it. Horizontally strung factory 140's until we discovered the action screws were loose.
Anyways....
Range pickup brass (same brand and lot) with basic prep, a moderate load of Varget and the cheapest 120gr projectiles at my local supplier which happened to be Hornady Varmint #2810, a flat base spire point lead tip. With basically zero load development it put 3 shots just touching for a sub 1/2 MOA group.
A short time later I had a call to say there was a mob of deer in a paddock some 6 miles from me and grabbed this rifle and new loads as I had confidence in them. Long story short, 2 fell to this load at 180 and 250yds and for each the projectile terminal performance was excellent.

Wanting to push things out further I got some Nosler Ballistic Tips in 120gr and immediately found them harder to tune .....yet another unfinished project !

Sometimes a KISS principle pays off.

 

[INTJ]

The downfall of this method is that you are moving the POA/POI within your sample. A 5x5 is not nearly as instructive as a single 25-shot group all shot to the same POA.

When we speak of precision, we really mean what is our statistical confidence that our points of impact will fall within some distance from the point of aim. The military uses the Circular Error Probable idea as the circle that will contain 50% of the points. It's a circle that represents the median error from the point of aim.


As a shooter there are two ways to use the interrelation of confidence and group size. You can either fix the confidence first and then assess group size to that confidence level. Or you can fix a size reference first, then assess the confidence in those terms. But here's the key thing: WITHOUT BOTH DEFINED YOU CANNOT COMPARE.

The reason I took up midrange shooting was because I wanted real data on the actual precision of my rifle and loads. On an NRA target of known scoring rings, I can easily know this data. If I shoot a 200-14x on a sling face, I know with a 20 shot sample that 14/20 are ~sub-moa, so this is 80% confidence. A higher score might take me up to 88% or 92% confidence as X count rises. And in this case, it was 100% confidence of sub-two MOA. But that's only a sample size of 20 shots. Unless you are agg 600 with regularity, you don't have that 100% confidence in reality.

The more difficult method would be to calculate the size of the rings that would contain 90% or 95% or 50% of your shots, or whatever it is you want to use for reference. Either way is valid because it contains both the essential elements of confidence value and error value (group size).

I'm fairly certain that at one point or another, almost everyone on this board as fired a particularly satisfying bughole in the 2s or less. But, given enough shots and attempts, ANY RIFLE can and will do this. It just might take several thousand groups for one to do it or a single attempt for a very excellent rifle.

This is why group size is not only part of the picture, but it's probably the less important part. Without sample size and demonstrated confidence values, the group sizes themselves are next to meaningless. This is why those who point to a single five shot (or worse, three shot) group as demonstrating a rifle's capability are kidding themselves first, and us second.

The problem with a 25 shot group is you can't shoot them all in the same condition. Not a big deal at 200 yds but a huge deal at 1000 yds. Because of that, I consider the average of four five-shot groups shot on different days to be more indicative of the rifle's ability.

 

[johara1]

Remington 700 SS 5R 223 24" BBl

Bed it, and put a good trigger in it also change the scope would be my first ways to go.... jim

 

[Dub]

Bed it, and put a good trigger in it also change the scope would be my first ways to go.... jim

I put it in a Bell and Carlson competition stock, but have not bedded it yet. I have a Timney Calvin Elite trigger in it, set at 1LB. It now has a NF Competition 15-55 scope on it that I changed to from the Vortex 6-24x50. So I have covered most of those bases with little change in results. I may bed it but I have my doubts that it will shoot good even at that. Thank you for the suggestions.

 

[johara1]

Did you look in the barrel with a bore scope to see if anything is wrong.... jim

 

[Dub]

Did you look in the barrel with a bore scope to see if anything is wrong.... jim

I do not have a bore scope

 

[diego-ted]

When I first started shooting, to tell if a rifle could shoot I shot the first 20 to 40 rounds with FGMM ammo, if the rifle could not shoot with that ammo, then I started to check what was wrong with the rifle because that ammo at 100 yards was always money? Just my experience back then?

Diego

 

[dgeesaman]

I do not have a bore scope

You should buy a Teslong. It costs as much as a couple of tuning sessions.

 

[epc308]

My first *real* center fire made every trip to the range with me for several years. When I was on my game, it would consistently place 5 into 5/8-3/4". I had a master target that went behind a fresh one. I shot that rifle clean, dirty, still, windy, cold, hot, from the bench and field positions, basically every condition I might expect. Single, clean bore first shot to 5 shot rapid groups, days I shot well and some not so good. Over 100 rounds into that target with the overall group about 1 3/4", if memory serves. I felt that was very representative of what I could expect of myself and that rifle on any given day, and that gave me confidence that was priceless.

 

[JEFFPPC]

A statistician devoted to statistical significance tuned his rifle before going to a match.

Just kidding of course he never got to the match. He had no barrel left.

I read this post and laughed, funny stuff. However my buddy who is a statistician convinced me I could get to the sweet spot of a barrel with 2 shot groups before shooting larger shot groups about 6 years ago. Been doing it ever since. Actually very simple, if the first 2 aren't tiny, extra shots won't shrink it.I hate consuming the barrel when it doesn't count.