I did notice that in some of my 5 shot groups I'm pretty tight except every now and then I have a wild shot, many times way outside of the other 4 shots. Any thoughts on why I get a "flier" from time to time?
One thing to check on your scope to see if the wild shot may be due to optics. Set your rifle up in bags so that it is still and will hold on the targets bull. Then without touching it look through the scope and slowly move your head a little up, then down, then left then right. If the + stays put on the bull your good, but if it wanders around any little bit that could easily be your issue.
All scopes will have this to some minor degree, but some will show it way more than others, even with high dollar models. It is called parallax. If you do a web search on "Rifle Scope Parallax" you will find several good explanations of it and how to cure some of it. I have had a couple of scopes which it was so pronounced that I simply sent them back or sold them off. Usually I try and look this over at the store before I buy them or I purchase ones with the adjustable objective, as they best suite most of my uses.
As for your loads. As mentioned up above, I usually start off with my loads set to a length which will fit and function from the magazine. This is mainly due to me hunting with my rifles and not shooting for target. If I were target shooting only well I would set them up somewhere around .030" back from the lands and go from there. Once I found a suitable grouping load I would work it in or shorter first depending on what I saw as a result. I have simply not had much luck with loads and pressure by creeping up on the lands.
For powders, a ton of folks use the 4350'ish burn rates and are fine with them. Me personally, I like RL-22 or slower. Actually I pretty much only burn RL-22 in mine and have for a LONG time. I purchased the rifle in 88 or 89, and for the first year I played with loads. In the second year I was able to find some of the 115gr Nosler Partitions, and along with RL-22 my search was over. We did change things up a couple of years back when NOsler came out with the 110gr Accubond. I changed nothing other than the bullet and found they also shot into one hole groups at 200yds. In fact with the first three shots, we had to ride out to the target to actually see that they had all gone through the same hole.
My set up for loading these is a bit different. I found that years ago, the Nosler 100gr BT would shoot like that set to a base to tip lenght of 3.250". Well I was loading up some of the 115's one day and forgot to reset the seating stem for them. As a result, I seated them to the same depth as those 100's were. Same song differnt bullet, they simply wore out a hole in the target. So since that time, I have had a 100gr loaded into a dummy round and crimped to set my dies with. Nothing else was needed, and the groups have stayed consistent ever since.
So instead of the medium powders you might give some of the slower ones a try, especially RL-22 if you can get your hands on some. For 20yrs now that has been my main powder to load my 25 with, and it works well with bullets ranging from 110 up thru 120.
