27 February, 2011 - Range Day and Shooter Mod

Decided today would (foolishly) be a good day to shoot.  It was supposed to be in the 40's today but it was closer to 25*F with a pretty stiff wind over my back.  Having said that, there are WORSE days to shoot, I was out in January when the temperature was right around 0*F and calm, sadly that was a better day.  Anyway, I appear to be getting better, or my loads appear to be shooting better.  Not sure which it is.  The past three range trips I've been using the following formula for my loads:

Federal Brass (yeah, yeah)
CCI 200 Primers
43.4 grains of Hodgdon Varget
Sierra 168 grain Match King Bullets
Over All Length of 2.815"

Shoots pretty well.  As I posted in the first post, it shot a 10 shot group of 1" edge to edge, which translates to less than seven tenths of an inch center to center.  Today was no exception.  I shot my best "Palma" target today.    Lets take a look at those targets shall we?

On the 13th of February:

On the 20th of February:

And finally today:

Of course, 37-5x is pretty good shooting out of a factory barreled, factory actioned, factory trigger weighted Remington 700 using handloads and an aluminum bedded stock.  I'm sure with a bit better conditions, and a better rear bag, these groups would tighten up significantly due to shooter experience.  

I also shot an 11 shot group today.  One of the targets got one of it's "3-X" targets turned into an 11 shot group.  Size?  1.052" edge to edge!

Not too bad if I don't say so myself!  I'm sure you are all wondering why I'm choosing roughly 10 round groups for group sizing.  Well, it is one thing to say I have a .308 3 shot group, which is not too bad, but is it really representative of the rifle's capabilities or is there an element of luck involved?  Obviously a 5 shot group is the de facto standard for group sizing, but once again, are 5 shots really enough to get a fair estimate of the grouping capability of a rifle?  Certainly better than 3 shots.  Ten shots goes a long way to showing the capabilities of the rifle in the hands of a shooter as it gives you more data points.  This is akin to only chronoing 3 shots in a load rather than 5.  Can you really draw a safe average from the three velocities?  I don't think so!  Besides, it's far better feeling to take 10 shots and have them all be right around 1" edge to edge than it is to have 5 shots in 1" edge to edge because the chances of shooter error are greater.  For the most part, I will be sticking to 10 round groupings and leaving the 5 and 3 round groups to others who chose to use that as their standard.