Better Groups at Distance

[John Klingenberg]

"Too many mind"

 

[AaronSkipDavidson]

I think we should all start shooting groups with more shots. A three shot group means very little, seven shots is a minimum number of rounds to quantify a rifles performance. I suspect even with our shooter errors you would see better parity close and far.

 

[DJ Fergus]

Paralax can and will cause this. You can't trust the markings on the focus knob. You must physically/visually check for paralax. Some scopes are worse than others & scopes being too close to you can make paralax error multiply. Some people complain about scopes that you have to be behind perfectly to see thru with out seeing the black ring around the edges, but honestly, those scopes that makes you have perfect alignment will reduce chances of paralax being induced.

 

[RYEWSKY25284]

Glad you posted this. The bullet doesn't settle down , it is human error. Litz went on to determine that at longer distances your are more focused on a smaller target therefore you are shrinking down your groups.

They powering down your scope when shooting at 100 yards , if you focus on a smaller target you will see your groups shrink at 100 like you would aiming at the same target sitting at 300 yards.

I used to think the same way, then Frank Galil at Snipershide schooled me, hard!

aim big, miss big

 

[73driver]

I have seen this with several rifles. Shoot groups at 100 yards and then at 300 yards and the 300 yard groups are better. One 30-06 in particular would shoot 1.25 groups at 100 and 2.5 at 300 and other similar results with several other rifles. Hey paper don't lie, I was happy with my 300 yard shooting. Just figured that it was what it was and accepted that my rifles were good out to distance.

 

[DJ Fergus]

I have seen this with several rifles. Shoot groups at 100 yards and then at 300 yards and the 300 yard groups are better. One 30-06 in particular would shoot 1.25 groups at 100 and 2.5 at 300 and other similar results with several other rifles. Hey paper don't lie, I was happy with my 300 yard shooting. Just figured that it was what it was and accepted that my rifles were good out to distance.

I don't even care what my group size is at 100 yards. Some of my rifles I don't even know cause I've only shot them @ 300 & beyond. I can't tell you the last time I killed an animal at less than 300 yards.

 

[blvette75]

In my experience, the better the optics and the other conditions being controlled the groups are consistent. I quit shooting rifles for about 20-23 years or so. My Savage 300 win mag was historically about a 1 MOA rifle, then I put a better scope on it, pillar bedded the stock, timney trigger, David Tubbs fire-lap the barrel, clamp on muzzle brake, limb-savers but pad. All of these improvements the rifle shot progressively better groups, but not much better than consistently below an MOA. It wasn't until one day that I hit all five shots of my group in a horizontal line at 200 yards about a 3/4-1 inch group, that I realized I had to back off on my magnification and just have some fun as I realized the rifle was better than me. After that just practiced some dry fires and now I consistently shoot the rifle about 1/2 to 5/8 MOA to 300 yards, closest range besides to 100 yard in door. Recently found my old hand loads from about 25-30 years ago rifle shot just about through the same hole about a 1/4-3/8" groups not quite a ragged hole. I had thought my problems were this and that but just needed to relax back off the magnification and just have fun. I am sure the improvements all helped but you probably have a really good set up and are probably trying to hard at 100 yards.

 

[Chuck32571]

Guns and Ammo just had an article about boat tail bullets not stabilizing until about the 300 yard mark, while flat base bullets stay stable right out of the barrel to 400 yards.

 

[Capt RB]

90% of the group is the Indian shooting it. If you feel something is needed to shoot better you will be right once you add it to your system. That's the key to shooting. It's a mental game. The best example I can give is the story of the Farr trophy. Accurate Shooter did a story recently about it. Read it then reread it

 

[DSheetz]

My shooting is for called coyote and a lot of them are shot at 50 yards to less then 100 yards with the first cold bore shot so I mostly think about what kind of first shot I make at 100 yards . I zero for 100 yards and will check what a cold bore shot will be like out to 500 yards and in-between . I enjoy shooting at longer ranges but still don't shoot very many rounds at a time at longer ranges as my main concern is what the first round does .

 

[Capt RB]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324222518_A_Coning_Theory_of_Bullet_Motions

 

[Tangent]

Which one do you guys think represents reality?

 

[corsteve]

if u shoot one hole groups at 100 then should be the same farther out give or take wind an shooter

 

[Canadian Bushman]

I did a fair bit of testing with this on a shoot through target and talked some with Bryan Litz while he was really testing this pretty hard.

I agree with litz that non linear dispersion is actually quite rare and what is commonly thought to be non linear dispersion is usually a result of...

1.) Parallax errors
Scopes generally are easier to remove parallax the further out you go. Some are not capable of being completely

2.) Aimpoints
Generally we aim smaller at further targets than we do at closer targets. Also there are some psychological components here.

I also agree that actual non linear dispersion typically occurs from outside influence such as wind and bullet instability. Even in the case of bullet instability, typically dispersion is still linear minus a few outliers.


Before Litz proposed this test i was a firm believer in bullets "settling down."