Is a 100yd indoor test meaningful?

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Are some of you trying to tell me that a load that shoots the best at 100yds might not be the best at 200yds? I can't see it.
Parisite, that's exactly what I'm saying, well, more or less. Over the years I've seen it happen with a handful of rifles I've loaded for. Not all, but some- they each have their own personality. For example, in this situation I can get an awesome load at 100 that is OK at 200 & blows up at 300+. If however I tweak the load to be optimal at 200 or 300 it tends to hold at 300+. I tend to see this more with secant ogive bullets than I do with tangent ogive bullets, but not exclusively.

I shoot mostly targets, but also game.
 
In my experience a rifle with a fast twist barrel has not stabilized at 100 or 200 yards. Sometimes you need 400 yds to see it settle down. Might be why most of your benchrest shooters use 16 to 18 twist barrels at 100 and 200 yards.
 
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I think operator error plays a role. But my 200 yard groups aren't noticeably larger than the 100 yard groups.
it never even crossed my (narrow) mind but i bet what vern says below could make that entirely plausible as well.
Most likely his scope is parallax adjusted for 200 yards, which means there is some aiming error at 100 yards, but not at 200.
 
case in point above:
times when i feel most poised to give someone a lesson or advice on a subject is most often when unexpectedly the tables are turned and i become student.
 
My question is for the OP.

Do you reload or are you using store bought ammo?
I have a Savage 10BA (.308) that shoots below 0.5 MOA when I do my part using my reloads.
I've seen a few others shoot the same model rifle in the 1.25 MOA range with store bought ammo.

If Savage was able to get 0.7" with whatever their standard test ammo is you should be able to improve on that with meticulous reloading.
When I say meticulous reloading I'm talking about using top shelf components and meticulous brass preparation techniques to get the most uniform ammunition.
There are also articles on the net on how fine tuning the torque of your action screws can improve group size.
 
I can see scope parallax explaining some of it, now that I think about it the two worst offenders I had were wearing hunting scopes that are not parallax adjustable. However, that doesn't explain why I could modify the load & improve the results?
 
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