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

 

[DGY]

I think most people that shout 3 shot groups actually shoot more than just a 3 shot group at least most of not all people I know as hunters will shoot more than a 3 shot group, usually more like a box of ammo worth of shooting before a hunt.

 

[todbartell]

Probably the biggest disservice people do to them selves is shooting 3 shots of this and 3 shots of that during handload development... a panel of charge weights or seating depths, and when reviewing the targets they 100% believe the variations in group size is solely due to the change in powder or seating depth. We've all done it. Time to smarten up!

 

[DGY]

I just loaded 223 Remington 55gn vmax 10 with varget and 10 with h335, I’m hoping to go shoot them tomorrow and see if it work out for me to give me a starting point.

 

[apexanimal]

Most (>50%)

Dogleg means shoot one round per day into the same target. 365 round group would be excellent info LOL

i understand what he meant, the thing is that isnt a 365 round group, its 365 1 round groups. Its the exact same as shooting 10 3 round groups and claiming that is the same as shooting a 30 round group. Hence my point of illustrating how all of the (valid) criticisms of the 3 round group apply equally or moreso to this "cold bore group but not a group" theory. Both yes provide some data, better than nothing. But this concept is not remotely actually scientific. Multiple variables changing outside of your control simultaneously that you cannot possibly account for over long periods of time is not conducive to a scientific experiment which is essentially what the pursuit of accuracy on the level being discussed is. The number of variables that change when you wait a full day between shots is so high that any resulting pattern cannot, by definition, be called a group at all.