No master marksman here, just a middle of the road shooter where rifles are concerned. But for the first 30 years or so of my shooting history, for every rifle I shot, it was (please excuse the expression) "hit or miss". For the longest time, I always thought it was either me or the firearm (more likely me). Then about 6 years ago, when ammo first started getting scarce, I vowed to start reloading for every firearm I owned. Initial results were not much of an improvement and about as often, worse result than with factory loads, until I invested in a copy of Bryan Litz's "Applied Ballistics for Long Range Shooting", and took the time to read up on what BC's, twist rates, and stability factors really meant for a given caliber at specific velocities. You can even skip all of that, and go straight to the back half of the book, where, for .224, .243, .25, .264, .270, .284, .308, and, .338, Litz has carefully measured and tested, on the range and not relying on manufacturer's specs, hundreds of bullets, including Berger, Nosler, Hornady, Sierra, Lapua, and several others, and documenting bullet performance at various velocities.
And then -- Sheezam!!! -- using Litz's data, "hit or miss" soon changed to just picking the specific bullet that he says will stabilize optimally for the calibers, conditions, and velocities I shoot to start with, and the results from doing so have been consistently better accuracy. It's really not that hard, but, yes, it is a pretty much "rocket science".
And if you don't reload, then you can still look up the bullet of the factory load your thinking about buying and then seeing if it's likely the optimal choice for your firearm. There are loads for sale out there on the shelf that can be reliably predicted to NOT shoot well in a given firearm, with a just a bit of attention to details It also less expensive than just trying a bunch of different ammo to see which works best.
Bryan's data have been pretty much spot on for what seem to be the optimal loads in my rifles -- .223 Rem, .243 Win, 6.5x55 SE, 7 mm RemMag and 308 Win for each rifle's twist, which, by the way, its easy enough to measure, if like me, you didn't know for sure to start with. And while over-stabilizaton is possibly better than under-stabilization, neither is optimal for putting bullets into the bull. Since the linear velocity of a bullet decays faster than the angular velocity imparted by the rifles twist, even if the bullet doesn't disintegrate, gyroscopic over stabilization can mean that the bullet keeps a "nose up" attitude down range instead of spinning in the axis of the arc of the trajectory, so over stabilization, at least in theory, would tend to adversely affect long range accuracy more than short range accuracy.
The point is well made that bullet accuracy trumps bullet weight. But accuracy is much more than a function of just the bullet's weight, so, it follows that sometimes lighter bullets still shoot better than heavier bullets, even at faster twists. But sometimes that can be the result of having picked the wrong heavier bullet more so than just the right lighter bullet.
Checked the zero of my Sightron scoped CZ-527 Varmint, 223 Rem 1/9' twist, 24 inch barrel just this afternoon. Off front and rear bags at 200 yards, 7 rounds of SMK 69 gr, 25.3 Varget, CCI BR-4 primers, Lapua brass. Chrony says: 2873, 2898, 2873, 2867, 2913, 2917, 2898.
Come on. I didn't see your post. Sorry. Don't be so touchy about it.
