Horizontal and vertical spread

[rifle48]

If you have a spread in your group size which is it better to have horizontal or vertical ?

 

[Keith Glasscock]

I try for Round groups. If I can't get that, I try not to accept horizontal stringing. It makes wind calls too difficult.

 

[JohnKielly]

In his benchrest book, Tony Boyer speaks of tuning with a whisker of vertical in his load. I read that to mean that if the tune changes it will only change the element that you control with your normal hold, not the one that's confused by wind change.

Then again, like Keith, I like uniform groups.

 

[bsumoba]

I go for round groups as well.

that being said, when I drop a point to vertical, I get much more pissy because I probably made a good wind call. But, if it is a waterline 9, it's hard to tell if it was my load or the wind and I could chalk it up to a bad wind call. Lol.

 

[noload]

I am deciding weather to stay with a horizontal string load. This was my 1st test at 600yds, the barrel only had 36 rounds in it when I started the test. I shot about 7, 4-5 shot groups ,all groups were under 4.75". 1 group of (5) caught my eye, it had only a 1/4" verticle, was a straight line 2.75" long.( shows me that the velocity was the same on all ( 5) .The wind was light and away from me, I am wondering if it would have been a nice group if not for the wind causing the string or was it me on the rear bag...or is it just one of those loads that only want to string horizontal??? I will go at it again with some slight changes to that load. The other loads had plenty of verticle to them, except for another horiz. string not so pretty. I think may be a little more jam will roundout the group.