Hornady at it again

[Oak_Leaf]

You're absolutely correct. They didn't directly say it. They sugar coated it and danced around that meaning or that there's such a minuscule gain they aren't worth it.

If I had to speculate on why Hornady did this particular podcast, I would say it's because they may have been looking into the idea of getting into the tuner market, and commissioned a research study to see what they were getting into. And tens of thousands of dollars later, this is the data they ended up with [so far]. This podcast may just be trying to soften up the target customer and set expectations before release. Or, they may be trying to tell their target customer why they won't ever release one. Or, they may just be trying to up their technical image by saying hey we're smart too and here's our data. Heck, they might even be pulling a Madonna and going with there's no such thing as bad press. Who knows. For me, it was just another technical meeting

 

[victor3ranger]

With respect, in their latest Podcast neither Seth, Jayden, Miles nor Jeff Siewert ever said that the EC Tuner Brake was a "gimmick". What they did say was that across limited testing with 3 different rifles/cartridges (with statistically valid sample sizes by the way) that they cannot 100% confirm that tuners effectively and CONSISTENTLY correct all the other randomized variables/errors going on behind the tuner when the shot breaks.

After you spelled it out for me I agree

 

[FireFlyFishing]

If I had to speculate on why Hornady did this particular podcast, I would say it's because they may have been looking into the idea of getting into the tuner market, and commissioned a research study to see what they were getting into. And tens of thousands of dollars later, this is the data they ended up with [so far]. This podcast may just be trying to soften up the target customer and set expectations before release. Or, they may be trying to tell their target customer why they won't ever release one. Or, they may just be trying to up their technical image by saying hey we're smart too and here's our data. Heck, they might even be pulling a Madonna and going with there's no such thing as bad press. Who knows. For me, it was just another technical meeting

I don't disagree!

 

[Deputy819]

After you spelled it out for me I agree

Cool, brother! Yeah, as @TheGuyUpHigh200 said this was a fairly "technical" podcast and you kinda had to clear the forest away to see the trees.

 

[hereinaz]

I agree with the above, having listened to the podcast with this thread in mind, they just said they didn't see it in the fee rifles they tested. Their rifles, cartridges, ammo, and barrels really didn't seem to benefit.

In the scientific world, that's barely a start to prove or disprove whether tuners work.

I was convinced OCW worked, until I saw what Satterlee did, then I got lazy and just loaded up a good shooting combo and went to town shooting.

Seems like Hornady with their podcasts have justified my laziness, lol.

I knew statistics from business classes, how and why they work, but just went along with the "tests" from the internet cause they were what I found.

It was impossible, like I was blinded from seeing that 3 and 5 shot groups were not representative of the gun as a whole, and kept trying to figure out the "flyers", when they were just part of the natural dispersion.

I have been thinking about why the 3 shot phenomenon exists and why it is so hard to discuss. I mean, statistics are not easy to understand, so that's part of it. But, there is something even more powerful at work in the mind.

I call it the three shot slot machine. Maybe someone else has made the comparison, but so was listening to a podcast on behavioral/psychological science and it hit me.

I see shooters who live by their three shot groups, my gun is .25 moa if I do my part, like gamblers at a slot machine. If you believe there is anything significant about a three shot group, every group is like dropping a quarter into a slot machine and hoping for three of a kind.

A good gun will deliver more 3 of a kind in the statistical slot machine, but that doesn't mean it is a .25 gun. If it does a lot of them, then yeah it's a good gun for sure, but aggregating them means it's probably more like a .5 moa gun.

It's why the 1 moa three shot group guarantee is a joke from major manufacturers and why the .5 moa guarantee does mean what you think it means from some custom or high end makers too.

Play the slot rifle long enough and you'll win. I seriously think that is one reason three shot groups mean so much to some shooters. They are addicted to the pleasure our brain puts out to random awards of a slot machine or other gambling.

I seriously picture some people on the reloading bench and on the shooting bench just as addicted to the slot machine aspect of the shot dispersion.

They act so much like a person sitting at the slot machine. They are convinced that their little groups with three rounds mean something and something they did produced it. Our brains literally are programmed to crave solving problems like that.

It's why you get irrational resistance as soon as you say shoot a 20 or 30 shot group and tell me about it. "But, I have seen it!"

Or, why someone will spend hours and hundreds or thousands of dollars and dozens of hours on multiple loading variations with 3 or 5 shot groups, but they can't see how spending less money to test 30 shots will tell them things.

The brain craves the random slot machine type payouts. We aren't even aware of it.

Tuners are part of the same loading process.

It doesn't mean that tuners don't work or that meticulous loading doesn't work.

But, it does mean that those who question it are rebutted in large part by irrational or insignificant statistical analysis, which comes from a human/biological basis that creates a burning belief in it, even though it is false or unquantifiable.

It is why many people are offended when they are asked for verifiable and repeatable proof. It violates the irrational basis of a deep subconscious programming based on the pleasure of the act of shooting a small three shot group.

The brain doesn't like 5 shot groups, because it can break the pleasure from the 3 shot slot. But, it is still few enough shots that we can sneak in a small group, and "call a flyer". Beyond 5, we all know that we are going to get one or more that sooner or later that does not touch the rest of the group.

Shooting for 30 eventually shows that the flyers are just some of the natural dispersion.

We can't get the slot machine like pleasure from 10 and 30 round groups because statistically speaking, it would be like drawing only hearts from a deck. You could make a few three card draws of only red cards. But, the odds of pulling 10 of only red are significantly reduced. Being rare ruins the brains pleasure because there are too many failures that the brain has to endure.

 

[FEENIX]

People bicker about tuners like my kids bicker about nothing. Use them, or, don't use them.

Yep!

 

[59FLH]

Back in the 90's I had a .243 Win with the B.O.S.S muzzle device. I think my setting was 3.1 and it shot very small 3 -5 shot groups. Twist the device above 4 or below 2 and the group sizes got considerably larger. It was the one and only rifle I ever owned with a muzzle break, I hated it.

Did it work, yes, was it needed, no I removed it put on a thread protector and got the rifle to shoot small groups without it, but the barrel was short and ugly with the graduations and the rifle was replaced with a BDL.

 

[victor3ranger]

I agree with the above, having listened to the podcast with this thread in mind, they just said they didn't see it in the fee rifles they tested. Their rifles, cartridges, ammo, and barrels really didn't seem to benefit.

In the scientific world, that's barely a start to prove or disprove whether tuners work.

I was convinced OCW worked, until I saw what Satterlee did, then I got lazy and just loaded up a good shooting combo and went to town shooting.

Seems like Hornady with their podcasts have justified my laziness, lol.

I knew statistics from business classes, how and why they work, but just went along with the "tests" from the internet cause they were what I found.

It was impossible, like I was blinded from seeing that 3 and 5 shot groups were not representative of the gun as a whole, and kept trying to figure out the "flyers", when they were just part of the natural dispersion.

I have been thinking about why the 3 shot phenomenon exists and why it is so hard to discuss. I mean, statistics are not easy to understand, so that's part of it. But, there is something even more powerful at work in the mind.

I call it the three shot slot machine. Maybe someone else has made the comparison, but so was listening to a podcast on behavioral/psychological science and it hit me.

I see shooters who live by their three shot groups, my gun is .25 moa if I do my part, like gamblers at a slot machine. If you believe there is anything significant about a three shot group, every group is like dropping a quarter into a slot machine and hoping for three of a kind.

A good gun will deliver more 3 of a kind in the statistical slot machine, but that doesn't mean it is a .25 gun. If it does a lot of them, then yeah it's a good gun for sure, but aggregating them means it's probably more like a .5 moa gun.

It's why the 1 moa three shot group guarantee is a joke from major manufacturers and why the .5 moa guarantee does mean what you think it means from some custom or high end makers too.

Play the slot rifle long enough and you'll win. I seriously think that is one reason three shot groups mean so much to some shooters. They are addicted to the pleasure our brain puts out to random awards of a slot machine or other gambling.

I seriously picture some people on the reloading bench and on the shooting bench just as addicted to the slot machine aspect of the shot dispersion.

They act so much like a person sitting at the slot machine. They are convinced that their little groups with three rounds mean something and something they did produced it. Our brains literally are programmed to crave solving problems like that.

It's why you get irrational resistance as soon as you say shoot a 20 or 30 shot group and tell me about it. "But, I have seen it!"

Or, why someone will spend hours and hundreds or thousands of dollars and dozens of hours on multiple loading variations with 3 or 5 shot groups, but they can't see how spending less money to test 30 shots will tell them things.

The brain craves the random slot machine type payouts. We aren't even aware of it.

Tuners are part of the same loading process.

It doesn't mean that tuners don't work or that meticulous loading doesn't work.

But, it does mean that those who question it are rebutted in large part by irrational or insignificant statistical analysis, which comes from a human/biological basis that creates a burning belief in it, even though it is false or unquantifiable.

It is why many people are offended when they are asked for verifiable and repeatable proof. It violates the irrational basis of a deep subconscious programming based on the pleasure of the act of shooting a small three shot group.

The brain doesn't like 5 shot groups, because it can break the pleasure from the 3 shot slot. But, it is still few enough shots that we can sneak in a small group, and "call a flyer". Beyond 5, we all know that we are going to get one or more that sooner or later that does not touch the rest of the group.

Shooting for 30 eventually shows that the flyers are just some of the natural dispersion.

We can't get the slot machine like pleasure from 10 and 30 round groups because statistically speaking, it would be like drawing only hearts from a deck. You could make a few three card draws of only red cards. But, the odds of pulling 10 of only red are significantly reduced. Being rare ruins the brains pleasure because there are too many failures that the brain has to endure.

I am by no means a competition shooter so my main concern is having a rifle that can have a reliable 3 shot group that is repeatable for hunting.
If I can't take out my target with 3 shots then I can't shoot

 

[entoptics]

I am by no means a competition shooter so my main concern is having a rifle that can have a reliable 3 shot group that is repeatable for hunting.
If I can't take out my target with 3 shots then I can't shoot

This is used as justification in every 3 shot group debate, but is actually just the opposite and justification for larger groups, and the reason is right there in your post..."Repeatable".

By definition, that's a 6 shot group at minimum (and I'd hope at least 15 before you grab your jerky and lace up your boots).

The "3 shots are all I'll ever shoot at game" crowd are still shooting 6 or 9 or 18 or 24 shot groups, but doing it on multiple targets. That's fine, but it can make the results harder to interpret.

More importantly, it also leaves a lot more room for the mistake of subjectively interpreting a statistically meaningless sub-sample of your repeats as "good" or "bad" and thus disregarding data.

 

[victor3ranger]

This is used as justification in every 3 shot group debate, but is actually just the opposite and justification for larger groups, and the reason is right there in your post..."Repeatable".

By definition, that's a 6 shot group at minimum (and I'd hope at least 15 before you grab your jerky and lace up your boots).

The "3 shots are all I'll ever shoot at game" crowd are still shooting 6 or 9 or 18 or 24 shot groups, but doing it on multiple targets. That's fine, but it can make the results harder to interpret.

More importantly, it also leaves a lot more room for the mistake of subjectively interpreting a statistically meaningless sub-sample of your repeats as "good" or "bad" and thus disregarding data.

So you are saying that after I work my load up to the point that I can put a 3-5 shot group almost in the same hole, let it sit for a couple of hours or even days, shoot another 3-5 shot group with the exact same results, that isn't good?

With that type of reasoning I should have spent more time at the range overseas than going out on missions trusting that I had prepared my rifle for combat. I would have to tell you that the enemy probably really wished that my rifle didn't shoot so well

 

[Oak_Leaf]

I am by no means a competition shooter so my main concern is having a rifle that can have a reliable 3 shot group that is repeatable for hunting.
If I can't take out my target with 3 shots then I can't shoot

I think what the poster was saying is that there's a difference between a reliable 3 shot group accuracy, i.e groups center to the same poi each time, and someone who determines reliable accuracy based on a few 3 shot groups.

An example would be you shoot several 3-shot groups; while each group may vary in size a little, the group center remains roughly the same, so that if you shoot a 20 shot aggregate group, you may see the aggregate group size get a little bigger than your 3-shot sample, but for the most part it still stays centered at your original poa.

That's in contrast to someone who goes out and shoots 3-shot groups, and while their group size might vary a little from group to group, the group center moves around the poa. In the latter, an aggregate group may end up being much larger than expected, and may not end up centered on the original zero of the scope. Because they use too small a sample size to zero the scope for the inherent accuracy of that rifle. More accurate rifles need fewer shots to zero poa to poi, less accurate rifles need higher shot counts. That's the whole point of calling out low sample sizes, is that some rifles simply don't shoot the smaller aggregate group sizes that the owner thinks they do. Meaning, that .5 moa rifle, might actually be a 1.0 moa rifle over many shots, and as it actually counts in the field on an animal.

I have a buddy that is convinced his factory 22-250 is tack driver, because a long time ago, he snuck out onto the 600 line and put 4 shots into a 3" group. Since then he hasn't been able to repeat that accuracy at distance and it drives him bonkers. At 300 yd, his 3-4 shot group centers randomly move around the target dot, though each individual group is usually .3-.7 moa, occasionally 1.0+ moa. If you overlay his groups, they make a neat 1.5-ish moa circle. Sadly, because the group poi's move around the dot, he deemed it must be a bad scope, so the scope got sent back to XXX for repair, and they found no fault, and he wasn't happy. He swore to never buy another XXX brand scope. Changed the rings, same thing. He simply refuses to accept that it's a 1.5 moa rifle at distance, and he's judging the thing based on too small a sample. Just plain madness.

But the point is that people can do the same nonsense with tuners if they shoot small sample sizes and maybe refuse to accept that their rifle isn't as accurate and precise as they think it is.

This is a bit of an extreme example, but I have a lever gun that I've been trying to get LVR powder to work. I have no illusions that this is some sort of tack driver. When I was zeroing at 100, this is what I got shooting 3-shot groups. The 3-shot groups were actually shot over several different sessions, cold barrel each shot, all within maybe a 10* temp range, loads temp soaked for a least an hour. I have the aggregate group marked with green sharpie. The average 3-shot group is probably 2", but the aggregate is around 3.5"-4.0". 1) The scope is good. 2) It prints the same aggregate with a clean bore. 3) And I finally abandoned this powder.

 

[entoptics]

So you are saying that after I work my load up to the point that I can put a 3-5 shot group almost in the same hole, let it sit for a couple of hours or even days, shoot another 3-5 shot group with the exact same results, that isn't good?

With that type of reasoning I should have spent more time at the range overseas than going out on missions trusting that I had prepared my rifle for combat. I would have to tell you that the enemy probably really wished that my rifle didn't shoot so well

No, I'm glad you're shooting a minimum of 6-10 shot groups, and based on your claimed results, not subjectively interpreting sub-sample results.

It is a bit puzzling that you seem to be advocating for 3 shot groups, despite not using that method yourself though.

 

[victor3ranger]

I think what the poster was saying is that there's a difference between a reliable 3 shot group accuracy, i.e groups center to the same poi each time, and someone who determines reliable accuracy based on a few 3 shot groups.

An example would be you shoot several 3-shot groups; while each group may vary in size a little, the group center remains roughly the same, so that if you shoot a 20 shot aggregate group, you may see the aggregate group size get a little bigger than your 3-shot sample, but for the most part it still stays centered at your original poa.

That's in contrast to someone who goes out and shoots 3-shot groups, and while their group size might vary a little from group to group, the group center moves around the poa. In the latter, an aggregate group may end up being much larger than expected, and may not end up centered on the original zero of the scope. Because they use too small a sample size to zero the scope for the inherent accuracy of that rifle. More accurate rifles need fewer shots to zero poa to poi, less accurate rifles need higher shot counts. That's the whole point of calling out low sample sizes, is that some rifles simply don't shoot the smaller aggregate group sizes that the owner thinks they do. Meaning, that .5 moa rifle, might actually be a 1.0 moa rifle over many shots, and as it actually counts in the field on an animal.

I have a buddy that is convinced his factory 22-250 is tack driver, because a long time ago, he snuck out onto the 600 line and put 4 shots into a 3" group. Since then he hasn't been able to repeat that accuracy at distance and it drives him bonkers. At 300 yd, his 3-4 shot group centers randomly move around the target dot, though each individual group is usually .3-.7 moa, occasionally 1.0+ moa. If you overlay his groups, they make a neat 1.5-ish moa circle. Sadly, because the group poi's move around the dot, he deemed it must be a bad scope, so the scope got sent back to XXX for repair, and they found no fault, and he wasn't happy. He swore to never buy another XXX brand scope. Changed the rings, same thing. He simply refuses to accept that it's a 1.5 moa rifle at distance, and he's judging the thing based on too small a sample. Just plain madness.

But the point is that people can do the same nonsense with tuners if they shoot small sample sizes and maybe refuse to accept that their rifle isn't as accurate and precise as they think it is.

This is a bit of an extreme example, but I have a lever gun that I've been trying to get LVR powder to work. I have no illusions that this is some sort of tack driver. When I was zeroing at 100, this is what I got shooting 3-shot groups. The 3-shot groups were actually shot over several different sessions, cold barrel each shot, all within maybe a 10* temp range, loads temp soaked for a least an hour. I have the aggregate group marked with green sharpie. The average 3-shot group is probably 2", but the aggregate is around 3.5"-4.0". 1) The scope is good. 2) It prints the same aggregate with a clean bore. 3) And I finally abandoned this powder.

View attachment 535399

I agree with you 100%

 

[hereinaz]

So you are saying that after I work my load up to the point that I can put a 3-5 shot group almost in the same hole, let it sit for a couple of hours or even days, shoot another 3-5 shot group with the exact same results, that isn't good?

With that type of reasoning I should have spent more time at the range overseas than going out on missions trusting that I had prepared my rifle for combat. I would have to tell you that the enemy probably really wished that my rifle didn't shoot so well

That's not exactly what you said first…

A single three shot group, is three shots. A few 3-5 shot groups is something entirely different.

And, when someone shoots a bunch of 3 shots groups that all are inside a 1" dot then of course it is a killing rifle.

That is different than someone tweaking their loads based on 3 or 5 shot groups because one of them is smaller and than the other.