2025 100 yard .22LR discussion thread

Last week it was too windy in my area for shooting at 100. This morning it was better so I went out for my fifth range trip of the season. I was testing Center X today, all from the same lot.

Over the chronograph it is very good. Of the four boxes I shot, two had an ES values in the mid-20 fps range with SD figures in the mid-5s. The largest ES was 30 fps. By chrony numbers alone this ammo should shoot well, but that's not necessarily how it works out. It certainly didn't today.

One of the targets was interesting for its illustration of how ammo MV doesn't always relate to POI. The example shown below is not affected, at least not significantly, by any of the intermittent breezes that occurred.

The ten shots had a spread of 1058.3 fps to 1079.8 fps, and ES of 21.5 fps. The round with the lowest POI was not nearly the slowest of the ten, with six rounds being slower.

This group was not unique in the MV/POI inconsistency. The inconsistent relationship between MV and POI is seen frequently. Fortunately some lots are better than others. It also happens at 50 yards but is much more obvious at 100.


 
Conditions were good for 100 yard .22LR shooting this morning. I had a different rifle and shot some of the same CX referred to previously as well as some Midas +.

The problem of an irregular relationship between MV and POI can happen with any grade of ammo, even Midas. Below is an example that shows little if any effect of wind. The ten shots had a relatively small ES of just over 13 fps, but the vertical spread was about 1.75".

When ammo behaves this way it's impossible for the shooter to mitigate the results. There's nothing that can be done to prevent it.

 
grauhanen said:
Conditions were good for 100 yard .22LR shooting this morning. I had a different rifle and shot some of the same CX referred to previously as well as some Midas +.

The problem of an irregular relationship between MV and POI can happen with any grade of ammo, even Midas. Below is an example that shows little if any effect of wind. The ten shots had a relatively small ES of just over 13 fps, but the vertical spread was about 1.75".

When ammo behaves this way it's impossible for the shooter to mitigate the results. There's nothing that can be done to prevent it.

Click to expand...
You can use a suitable tuner.
 
Well, your idea of a suitable tuner might differ from mine. Where the shots hit and the velocities you've listed do not jive with a rifle that has a good tune for that distance. I suspect the barrel might be near a direction change, which isn't good. It would be interesting to run such a target through my tune correlation program to see how shot elevation and muzzle velocity actually relate to each other. That requires matching up each hole and muzzle velocity figure for all shots, though. Or as many shots as possible, anyway. Did you keep track of all shots, or just the handful you've already indicated? The more, the better. When I'm testing this I use practice ARA targets with one shot per bull so keeping track of hole/velocity is easier. But as long as you've got a lot of holes matched with velocities it doesn't matter. And that'll tell you rather definitively whether or not the barrel is moving in a fashion that approaches the ideal or not. Not like the target isn't already telling you that it probably isn't, though. But having some data that can actually help you pin down what the problem likely is certainly doesn't hurt.
 
Shorty, not counting foulers, I track all the shots I take at 100 yards. Unlike an optical chronograph, the new, small Doppler chronies are literally seconds to set up. I use a preprinted scoring sheet (a facsimile of the target itself) to plot POI and MV. Of course it's not always possible to know exactly where each round in a ten shot group goes -- for example some may go in previous holes or you just don't see it with certainty. But if I need to know I can view a video record (it takes little time and effort to put a camera on a tripod and place it near the targets).

As a general observation, shooters often assume that the match ammo rounds for which they've paid well will go where they should -- if only mother nature or shooter error or rifle shortcoming were not at fault. To be sure, wind is not always easily accounted for or the absence of air movement as real as flags might suggest. Shooters do screw up, and it is not impossible that otherwise good rifles sometimes have random behaviours that interfere with what should happen.

But it seems incontrovertible that with wind, shooter error, and unknown rifle problems aside, .22LR match ammo is not so perfect that all rounds will go where MV alone predicts.

From this morning another example -- this with another rifle shooting Center X.



The same rifle, shooting the same ammo (same lot, same box), not 15 minutes earlier, shot the group shown below.

 
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