JFrank
Member
In all reality if the farthest a guys looking to shoot is100 yards or minute of deer then none of this matters, just shoot the small one and not worry about it moving it changing. Or just buy off the shelf ammunition.
Why define the edge of a node? Because we want repeatability and tomorrow the weather will be different and altitude may be different and when that tiny group isn’t tiny any more and not hitting the same spot we can know what happened and how to correct it.
An excellent lesson for all of us. Thank you for your input.The same here. Components, barrel life and time.
And to take your thoughts a step further, make sure you're chasing the right goal. For instance when I competed in silhouette and midrange, reloading to get small groups was a supporting or intermediate goal, not the endstate. The ultimate goal was to win or at least place in matches.
To accomplish that, small groups just wasn't enough, time and ammo spent behind the rifle practicing was actually a bigger requirement. I never performed poorly in that type of match due to an extra .25" in group size, just as I've never lost an animal hunting due to an extra .5" group.
I have done poorly due to lack of practice. One of the guys I shot with was a load/group junky. Every time we shot together he'd be working on a new load. I on the other hand got a reliable sub-MOA load and called it "good to go", my time was then spent shooting from positions and practicing for matches, whether it was with my match rifle or a .22LR. End result, in 2 years I'm a master class shooter and he's still in AA chasing the perfect load.
Everything has an opportunity cost associated with it, time at the reloading bench, plus time/components testing loads is time/components not spent practicing.
What is the matter with the 69.6 load? You basically have one raged hole with one very close flyer.
I do not shoot steel, b.when it does what you want it to do and you are satisfied with it. some handloaders just keep refining and refining and never stop is my understanding. I really just shoot steel targets, so - my expectations are not super high.
The reason I started reloading was because my .222 Rem Mag (Remington 700-bought in 1969) would not shoot the only factory made ammo available (Remington (and Peters) 55 grain loads worth beans so I had to experiment with several different loads to find what it would shoot and ended up with two-BLC-2 and IMR 4895 behind a Sierra 53 grain hollow point. I stuck with the BLC-2. Lots of dead ground hogs with that load.In all reality if the farthest a guys looking to shoot is100 yards or minute of deer then none of this matters, just shoot the small one and not worry about it moving it changing. Or just buy off the shelf ammunition.
some handloaders just keep refining and refining and never stop