did some quick practice drills today. from standing as fast as i could, i went prone and fired one round at the 2.5" head on a reduced IPSC (slightly oblique) at 295 yards, then one round at the 6" head of a full size IPSC at 428 yards, then one round at a 1.75" wide ruler at 352 yards.
my timer battery was dead so I'm just guessing it took about 8 seconds to fire the 3 rounds. it felt slow, though my goal was 6 seconds.
i did this exercise 3 times, so 9 rounds fired total. the first time i aimed at the triangle instead of the ruler so there's one round there (barely, due to bad wind call) and 2 on the ruler , and i missed my first shot on the 428yd head (i assume also due to same bad wind call, but i might have forgotten to hold up the 1 mil i needed).
anyways, the point of this is.... in early October I drove with some friends Elk hunting. my box of ammo rode on a wooden trailer with broken springs through OK, TX, to Albuquerque, then north, and when i got into the mountains of colorado, my box of ammo looked like this: with an obvious lack of neck tension allowing many of the bullets to vibrate down into the case.
so this is the ammo I used for the drills above. I simply pulled the bullets with my finger back into the neck and stuck them in the magazine, then shot them.
so i just think this is funny because earlier this week i spent $149 for a sinclair/wilsonLE seater die with a micrometer that measures to .0005", when obviously my finger-seating probably left a .200 or more variance in depth, and they were still able to hold a sub MOA target and a 1/2 MOA target.
i think in certain circumstances, seating depth matters. but i just don't see the results others seem to when i read all the reports of load development. other than the fact that i'm using lighter neck tension than most people, i'm curious what others are doing that makes one bullet depth shoot different than another.
for all i know, when i slammed the bolt forward, the bullet pushed back into the case again.
my timer battery was dead so I'm just guessing it took about 8 seconds to fire the 3 rounds. it felt slow, though my goal was 6 seconds.
i did this exercise 3 times, so 9 rounds fired total. the first time i aimed at the triangle instead of the ruler so there's one round there (barely, due to bad wind call) and 2 on the ruler , and i missed my first shot on the 428yd head (i assume also due to same bad wind call, but i might have forgotten to hold up the 1 mil i needed).
anyways, the point of this is.... in early October I drove with some friends Elk hunting. my box of ammo rode on a wooden trailer with broken springs through OK, TX, to Albuquerque, then north, and when i got into the mountains of colorado, my box of ammo looked like this: with an obvious lack of neck tension allowing many of the bullets to vibrate down into the case.
so this is the ammo I used for the drills above. I simply pulled the bullets with my finger back into the neck and stuck them in the magazine, then shot them.
so i just think this is funny because earlier this week i spent $149 for a sinclair/wilsonLE seater die with a micrometer that measures to .0005", when obviously my finger-seating probably left a .200 or more variance in depth, and they were still able to hold a sub MOA target and a 1/2 MOA target.
i think in certain circumstances, seating depth matters. but i just don't see the results others seem to when i read all the reports of load development. other than the fact that i'm using lighter neck tension than most people, i'm curious what others are doing that makes one bullet depth shoot different than another.
for all i know, when i slammed the bolt forward, the bullet pushed back into the case again.