There is one other variable to throw into the equasion as well.
It isn't nearly as bad, now that manufacturing principles and use of a Juenke guage is common to check jacket concentricity.
Back in the day, a four inch group out of any hunting rifle at 100yds was acceptable to both manufacturers and hunters. If you had a rifle that would shoot consistent two inch groups, you had a real gem.
Today, things have changed. Many of those old rifles we used were well capable of MOA and even sub MOA groups. The biggest problem was the components the ammo was put together with.
Relatively inconsistent powders, primers and bullets.
It wasn't at all uncommon to find up to 5 grains varience in bullet weights, especially with bulk lots.
The weights weren't really an issue though. Inconsistent ignition was the worst. Many powders, were also inconsistent in burn rates, sometimes dramatically so.
The next biggest problem was bullet jacket concentricity.
Most bullet manufacturers were plagued with problems keeping jacket thicknesses the same all over the jacket. They had some very tedious ways to measure an unswaged jacket and likely just didn't do it often enough.
For us accuracy freaks, we either swaged our own or bought custom swaged bullets made up with J4 jackets and cores we cut ourselves.
Some of us even went so far as to use copper tubeing , which we swaged for concentricity, before assembling the bullet. This of course meant open bases. There was some advantage to open bases. Especially when the bullets were going to be used in the milsurps so many of us hunted with at the time.
Today, just about any primers off the shelf are consistent igniters from round to round. The powders are also consistent burners. Most bullet jackets are very concentric and of consistent thickness throughout. This makes for far better accuracy right from the start.
It is no longer worth while to swage our own bullets. It costs almost as much as most bullets available off the shelf. Sometimes, the quality isn't as good as the commercial stuff.
To blame a particular load for inaccuracy today, may hold some water but for the most part, when you start to get consistent groups from a bullet and just can't seem to shrink them anymore, there are other issues at play.
Many people immediately blame the rifle, bedding, scope etc. Most often, it's just a matter of consistent components. Especially primers and bullet jackets.
Well, mr Bearhunter, you and I are not singing from the same hymn book on these issues!
The one inch group at 100 yards was the holey grail of shooting since,at least, prior to WW2. It was seldom shot, but always tried for. But, the average shooter didn't get a scope sight until at least the 1950s and more likely into the 1960s.
How many 1 MOA groups are shot today with iron sights?
I did considerable shooting before I actually made a five shot, one inch group at 100 yards. But I have often said on these posts that I bought a new Husqvarna in 30-06 in 1949 and installed a Lyman 48 aperature sight and the rifle came with an excellent front post. This was great for hunting, plus I won, or came near the top, in quite the odd shooting match I entered with it.
Later, I installed a low power variable scope on it and replaced the trigger with a custom trigger. Low and behold! It shot the magical 5 shot, 1 inch group at 100 yards with180 grain bullets that CIL made in the 1960s!
I once weighed each bullet in a box of 130 grain 270 bullets, made by CIL in the 1950s. I made a horizontal graph, with 130 grain mark in the centre and each side was divided off in 10 segments of 1/10 grain, until a mark at full grain under on one end and full grain over on the other end. I have that graph in front of me now.
24 of the 50 bullets were within 1/10th under and 1/10 over, the 130 weight.
No bullet was more than one grain, high or low.
Only 4 were lighter than 5/10 under and only 2 were heavier than 2/10 over.
In general, I don't think the components are any better now, than they were 60, or more, years ago, with the exception of match, or bench rest grade, made now. I don't think a bullet a hunter would use is any better today, regarding accuracy.
Herters, in their day made a great variety of bullets, with the cheapest selling for about a third, of what their best bullets sold for. I still have a box of their cheapest, 130 grain 270 bullets with the price of $3.30, for 100, still marked on the box. On my last test of them, less than 6 months ago, five of them went just a bit over the magic one inch.
The old standby powders that have been around forever, are, I think without doubt, the same now as they were right after WW2. I still have some war surplus H4831. If someone nearby, with an accurate rifle adapted for that type of powder would do it, I would give them some of my old WW2 surplus H4831 to load into five cases and they could load five with modern H4831, to compare them. The offer stands.
And primers? In his Rifle and Shotgun book, Jack O'connor talks about the high quality primers that Federal made for the US Military, during WW2. And remember, In WW2 some aircraft used machine guns that fired through the propellor, the gun being geared to the engine, so a bullet always went through a gap, to miss the blade. And yes, some Canadian made 303 cartridges were made to shoot through the propellor. Did those primers have to be reliable, or what?
And while I'm at it, I will state that I think factory loaded ammunition, from even before WW2, was on the average, just as accurate as run of the mill factory ammunition loaded today.
Whew! Sorry Bearhunter, but I just had to state my piece.
