Many great points last couple of days. I enjoy being my own D.O.D. searching out combinations. There’s hardware and there’s software, the “software” being my wind reading, level of motivation, and physical comfort and focus sufficient to never think, let’s just hurry up and finish this string.
That aspect of shooting can overcome small hardware handicaps, in average and high wind. In no wind, the truth is none of us are relying on wind calling skills. Hamilton could certainly beat some drivers with a very slightly slower and looser car. The worst of the 20 could move up with Hamilton’s Mercedes. There is convergence and overlap. F1 team Mercedes both outspends (by 100’s of $M) others and is regarded to have the best driver in his generation.
This weekend, we saw some very good 1000 yard LR finishes with, maybe not because, a newish, very fine, high(est) BC bullet was on the line. For myself, I do know it made a difference in wedging between those two particular shooters in the 1,000 yard two day V2 Finale agg., and two of the four guys using that bullet soundly beat me, and the higher, just about all the others, and in the main agg, all, as well.
Still a major hardware game, but that’s not to say that a good 1/4 of the rifles on the line could not win, because I think that decent sized fraction could. Just a quality rifle goes a long way. I have seen malfunction substitutions work fine at the very top, and also been the stranger to a rifle and it’s not a major impediment to buckle down and shoot a stranger’s, when a great gun. I’d say more like only 5% of the shooters at a big match have, on those days, the wind skills at peak, to realistically win, and then, of that select group, half of those will by luck of draw have a weather hurdle, and then yes, finally wind reading alone decides that top end shake out.
While XTR is likely right on about .284’s constituting 60% of Open with their milder barrel and powder consumption, they aren’t close to 60% of the top 10 finishers anymore, at multi-day LR. (No issue there, as going to “win” is fine, but if that’s the only acceptable outcome, a short lived activity - and when .284 places high, tip hat.) Everyone kept their .284’s, and still uses them at times, especially midrange, but It seems to me that for big wind the 300 WSM is the up-level choice of the .284’s guys that pursued pure accuracy, and the 7 saum variants are the up-level choice of the .284’s guys that pushed BC.