Typical Mean Radius for Hunting Rifles?

[K22]

IMO, hunting performance is closely tied to range performance in an important way. Hunting performance is worse than range performance. There is a YouTube video making the rounds of a guy taking an elk with a 30-30 at 300 yds. IMO, he got lucky as (IMO) that's way out past the accuracy limit of the gun. Range testing helps us understand that.

In similar manner, it makes no sense to me to practice 200 yd shots in field positions even with a scoped 30-30. Again, (IMO) that's pushing that system beyonds it accuracy potential.


I generally think of a 10" vital region for deer but agree largely with what you've written here to a point. I too have heard many old timers say the same thing about 30-30 lever guns. "The gun will take deer out to 200 yards if I do my part." But, I discount the "real world experiences" which are anecdotal stories about successes with misses explained away as being the shooter's fault. Off the bench, my gun exceeds a 4" R95 at somewhere near 130 yds, which means beyond that, no matter how good of a shot you are, you can't have high confidence on staying on your 8" plate. Which is to say, I think the old timers aren't right.

Reversing Whelen's famous quote, in this thread, I'm only interested in the accuracy of the gun & ammo system. It's the outer bounds of what I, as a hunter, can aspire to with that system. And, it's a way to consider the pros and cons of different systems.

I'll not belabor the point. I've asked if people have or can point to MR values for hunting rifles based on 10 or more shots. I think the answer is "no" which is fine.

As I said, I never hunted with a 30-30. I can only relate to my father's very successful experience which was for the most part in heavy cover shooting where the distances were short, under 150 yards. My uncles also were very successful using 270 Win and 30 06 bolt rifle. I could guarantee you that if you asked them about "mean radius" they would have no idea what you are talking about but their freezers where normally full of venison.

I hunted deer for 50+ years using a variety of bolt action caliber rifles. Mostly the 243 Win and 308 Win. Both performed outstandingly well but I never shot a buck beyond 185 yards. It isn't "rocket science". The hardest part of deer hunting in my experience if finding a "shootable buck".

 

[JFrank]

I admit to not reading every post on this thread, but I have a question for @Pinnah , are you testing your load development off hand or by way of a steady front rest or bi pod ?
We tune hunting rifles here and never look st mean radius over twenty rounds. I’m unfamiliar with that practice.

 

[Mr. B]

Since no one ever answered the original question, I'll give it a go. I have a 270 Winchester rifle that I consider pretty accurate. I recently did some load development for 4 different seating depths with Hornady 140 grain btsp. I shot 5 shot groups over the course of 3 days (2 shots the first day 1 shot the second day and 2 shots the third day). The Mean Radius of my best group was .44 and the extreme spread of the group was 1.1 inches.
For the worst group the Mean Radius was .629 and the extreme spread was 1.630 inches. The best group was .05 off the lands and the worst group was .130 off the lands.

 

[Webster]

Can anybody point me to a collection of data on the accuracy of different hunting rifles based on mean radius based on 10 or more shots (preferably 20 or more) taken in aggregate to allow for adequate cooling between every shot or 2 or 3?

Thanks to the work by Brian Litz as popularized by a variety of blogs, podcasts and the like (https://precisionrifleblog.com/2020/12/12/measuring-group-size-statistics-for-shooters/) I’ve come to believe that:

1. Individual groups of 3-5 shots don’t provide reliable information (other than the occasional “the combination is terrible and can be excluded”),
2. Groups of 10 or more (preferably 20 or more) provide much more significant (and predictive) information, and
3. Mean radius provides more information than traditional “group size” (aka extreme spread).

As a hunter who wants a very high assurance that my gun is capable of hitting the vitals, mean radius is very helpful in that it can be used to calculate the R95 for a group, which is the radius from the group center that will hold 95% of the shots taken. This combined with the bullet’s trajectory can help me judge the confidence I have at shooting at different distances.

My problem is that mean radius is a new (to me) concept and I’ve not been able to find a listing results for other hunting rifles to help me determine how good or terrible my guns are.

Here are two examples. This is my .223 Varmint gun. A 20 shot string fired at a steady slow fire rate.
View attachment 1528286


And here is my Winchester 94 in 32 WSP. 20 shots fired as a series of 7 different 3-shot strings (last string was 2 shots) allowing 20 minutes for the gun to cool off in-between. Accurate enough for the brush but…

View attachment 1528288

I would consider all the groups bad and not worth evaluating. All you need is small round groups, no math.