3 shot groups

[Dogleg]

Yes im aware. My point is if you're talking about hunting the level of accuracy required is not sufficient to justify the level of autism present in precision shooting disciplines. 3 round groups, while not ideal could hardly be called "useless" in the context of zeroing a hunting rifle.

Not useless at all for zeroing a hunting rifle. It can’t be because millions of people have done it, and the trend shows no signs of abating anytime soon. It is, to use a technical term, “good enough”. There is such a thing as good enough, and it also applies to accuracy of hunting rifles. If you can group “good enough” at the longest range, or even farther than you’d shoot in the field thats good enough too. It doesn’t take a super accurate rifle before any misses or poor hits aren’t the gun’s fault. Improvements on “good enough” might not be a real world improvement..

It changes a lot if the goal is to prove the load A shoots better than load B, but not as well as load C. A 3 shot group is teetering on useless for that. Not totally useless, because its still better than nothing. Trouble is its not much better than nothing as a predictive tool.

 

[todbartell]

If you call your rifle "zero'd" off a single 3 shot group, your actual zero could be off by 1MOA or more, depends on the precision of the rifle/ammo setup. A fantastic shooting rifle won't be off as far as one that shoots buckshot patterns