This is the experience of myself and shooters better than myself. The reliable mechanics of a high quality rifle make a significant difference on match day, but the overall group size is ammo dependent and reliably bigger than the core real nice group.
Which .22LR shoots better? How can you know?
- Thread starter grauhanen
- Start date
Thanks. Anschutz must be a decent make. I'll have to try to find one.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
Lol...
- Location
- Nova Scotia
There are just some guns, even experience shooters will get outshot by a newbie with the best equipment. I mean if you are using an adjustable rest and rear bag, there isn't much input needed by the shooter if using a Like a Anschutz BR50.
I say that because alot of tight group shooters have hair triggers. I know I got the heaviest Anschutz trigger in my group of people I know, excluding the 190s. I though 8 Oz was light, some have even lighter. You get used to light triggers, when you goto heavy, honestly you are not gonna do as well. I tried a 54 with like way less than 8 Oz trigger, then went and shot a stock CIL 190 and the first shot was out of the bull by 1/4" as the trigger was heavy.
I even run into this problem. My Annie has a 8oz trigger and say if I switch to my 10/22 with bx trigger at 3# it takes me awhile to get used to the trigger.
coleman1495
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Whitecourt
Question is: Does the accuracy tests provide the same results every time?
IME, the same box of ammo in the same rifle can provide substantially different results day to day.
IME, the same box of ammo in the same rifle can provide substantially different results day to day.
Unfortunately, your experience is shared by many other rimfire shooters.
I feel this is in large part due to the ammo and how much it can vary with QC within the same lot. Unless you are using a top grade of Lapua or Eley (or similar) AND test various lots in hopes of finding a good one, you are dealing with fall down grades of 'match' ammo which can vary wildly within that batch.
Having sorted and tested a number of lots of SK rifle match over the years, it almost seems that it is a combination of various 'batches' in the same lot. Sometimes, great... sometimes, crap. And since the ammo itself can vary within the lot, you can easily get a 'good' box vs a 'bad' box.
At the extreme, you can shoot a superb group, followed by a shotgun pattern using ammo 2 rows away in the same tray. You are not nuts, there is really nothing wrong with your setup and rifle. The ammo varies that much and there is really no way to sort it out.
The lower the grade (cheaper the price), the wider this dispersion (or variation in QC).
To truly know what the ammo potential is, keep all the targets shot over various days and just overlap them. What you will see is a core of impacts and then 'rings' or secondary patterns of flyers. It helps if you are looking at a hundred or two of shots. This is the 'best' club grade ammo.
The really bad stuff will just have a wide and disperse group with no core, no real anything.... just a big group of impacts.... and it will be a large group.
This is why I question when someone says they always shoot (or average) 1" groups at 100yds with club grade ammo. The ammo just isn't that good.... want to really know how good or bad a batch of ammo is, push the distance towards 200yds. Now those flyers may be feet away from expected. Real easy to see them now.
Jerry
PS... also note that temp has a big impact on ammo too. If one day is +18C.. and the next is 5C, you can get wildly different results.
Since it is impossible to shoot the same box of ammo twice (once shot rounds can't be shot again because they are destroyed), the result is that different rounds must be used. It is precisely the fact that they are different rounds that accounts for different results day to day. Even in the same lot of match ammo, rounds are not uniformly the same.
The closest we can get to seeing two different results from the very same rounds of ammo is when testing facility results at 50 and 100 meters are compared. Here through the use of electronic scoring it's possible to see what the ammo does at at both distances. This shows that the rate at which ten shot groups disperse between 50 and 100 varies from lot-to-lot, even round-to-round and rifle-to-rifle. (An alternative would be using some kind of shoot through targets but that can be awkward.}
Some lots (and some boxes within lots) are better or worse than others. And it also shows that some rifles are better than others for long distance shooting even if they all shoot equally at shorter distances.
The problem of quality control in making .22LR match ammo is indeed challenging. When the production runs are initiated, they are carefully attended, with all manner of QC measures performed. Despite this, ammo quality can vary considerably. So what's the problem? Not enough quality control? Perhaps.
When a lot of top tier match ammo doesn't perform like it is top tier ammo, it offers shooters a glimpse into the ammo grading process. To illustrate with an example, I still have boxes of X-Act, Lapua's top grade of ammo, that has exhibited a Jekyll and Hyde personality. I was gifted a box of this ammo and the first half box I shot had poor results. The second half had outstanding results. Later when I chronographed several boxes the ES varied from something in the 30 fps range to over 70 fps. Clearly this was an X-Act lot that had a good side and a bad one.
What happened to explain these strange characteristics? Clearly, Lapua didn't test this ammo very much, if at all. Yet it was still packaged and sold as X-Act. Perhaps it was destined to become X-Act because of it's place in the production run. (A single run produces X-Act, Midas +, and Center X.) More on this if anyone is interested.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's not so much as inattention to quality control that results in match ammo lots that vary in performance as in the nature of the beast. It's very difficult to make good and uniformly consistent .22LR match ammo. All .22LR match ammos are like this no matter who makes it -- whether it's Lapua, Eley, or RWS. The really good and consistent lots, the ones with almost all rounds having nearly uniform behaviour, are always few and far between. Despite advances in technology, match ammo has always been without performance guarantees.
Most lots of top tier grades of match ammo can be expected to be good, with some but relatively few flyers, the ones that have unexpected POIs. If they didn't, shooters wouldn't want them.
The trouble is that too often, more often than the odds suggest is reasonable, we in Canada don't seem to get our fair share of those good shooting lots of top tier ammo. That might help explain the one lot of X-Act I've tested (I now have a few more lots). It would also help explain the lots of Midas + I've tested in recent years. Not one of them was especially good. All were characterized by some boxes that were better than others. I can speculate as to how we end up with ammo that doesn't seem to be as good as it should be, but that's another topic.
When a lot of top tier match ammo doesn't perform like it is top tier ammo, it offers shooters a glimpse into the ammo grading process. To illustrate with an example, I still have boxes of X-Act, Lapua's top grade of ammo, that has exhibited a Jekyll and Hyde personality. I was gifted a box of this ammo and the first half box I shot had poor results. The second half had outstanding results. Later when I chronographed several boxes the ES varied from something in the 30 fps range to over 70 fps. Clearly this was an X-Act lot that had a good side and a bad one.
What happened to explain these strange characteristics? Clearly, Lapua didn't test this ammo very much, if at all. Yet it was still packaged and sold as X-Act. Perhaps it was destined to become X-Act because of it's place in the production run. (A single run produces X-Act, Midas +, and Center X.) More on this if anyone is interested.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's not so much as inattention to quality control that results in match ammo lots that vary in performance as in the nature of the beast. It's very difficult to make good and uniformly consistent .22LR match ammo. All .22LR match ammos are like this no matter who makes it -- whether it's Lapua, Eley, or RWS. The really good and consistent lots, the ones with almost all rounds having nearly uniform behaviour, are always few and far between. Despite advances in technology, match ammo has always been without performance guarantees.
Most lots of top tier grades of match ammo can be expected to be good, with some but relatively few flyers, the ones that have unexpected POIs. If they didn't, shooters wouldn't want them.
The trouble is that too often, more often than the odds suggest is reasonable, we in Canada don't seem to get our fair share of those good shooting lots of top tier ammo. That might help explain the one lot of X-Act I've tested (I now have a few more lots). It would also help explain the lots of Midas + I've tested in recent years. Not one of them was especially good. All were characterized by some boxes that were better than others. I can speculate as to how we end up with ammo that doesn't seem to be as good as it should be, but that's another topic.
Can’t add much to what’s already been said. IMO if you buy a higher end Anschutz or Vudoo for example you already have the best of the best. That’s not to say a particular Cz could not do as well as either of them also. It’s all a matter of finding the right synergy between rifle and ammo and particular lot of ammo. To really split hairs you would have to test in an indoor facility possibly with a machine rest. Years ago I had a membership at an indoor range that had a 50 yard rifle range. I shot some amazing groups with my Anschutz 1411 and my BRNO 452 sporter, the Anschutz did better but the BRNO was not far behind. I was never able to match some of those groups when shooting outdoors. The lightest breeze made a difference and not for the better.
The original question of “ Is it possible to figure out if one of them shoots better than the others?” The answer to that question is certainly more complex than originally considered. Having recently begun an experiment to lot-test various ammo in various guns, I have a few thoughts. The experiment included 8 high end guns (Vudoo’s, Anschutz’s, customized Sako’s and CZ’s), 8 different lots of SK-LR, multiple different lots of Lapua CX (I’ve not yet completed the CX testing) and one lot of ELEY 10X. The testing consisted of shooting approximately 10 @ 5 shot groups at 60m.
I won’t detail all the steps I used to get good consistent data but to address another comment on this post, I used the same scope on each rifle because that variable was relatively easy to control. I’m doing my best but I understand that there are multiple variables that are difficult to control and some variables that are impossible to control. (I liked a previous comment regarding not being able to shoot the exact pieces of ammo more than once through different guns to describe ammo variation within lots).
The bottom line is “No”, I won’t be able to determine (with certainty) which gun is the most accurate within the parameters of the test. I have begun to form a picture of which guns shoot my tested ammo better than others. In the end, I hope to have a good idea about which guns like which ammo lot best. I will have an aggregate ranking of the guns performance in the form of “average group size” of all ammo tested. To verify the data, I plan to run my results through Mini-tab when the testing is completed. For those who may not know, Mini-tab is a statistical analysis program. My hunch, based on what I’m seeing so far, is that there will not be enough separation of data in the top rifles and ammo lots to be statistically significant (95% Confidence Interval) to make a definitive claim of which rifle is “best”.
However, and this came as a complete surprise, I certainly found out which rifle shot the poorest (based on the ammo tested so far)…and no statistical analysis was required!
I won’t detail all the steps I used to get good consistent data but to address another comment on this post, I used the same scope on each rifle because that variable was relatively easy to control. I’m doing my best but I understand that there are multiple variables that are difficult to control and some variables that are impossible to control. (I liked a previous comment regarding not being able to shoot the exact pieces of ammo more than once through different guns to describe ammo variation within lots).
The bottom line is “No”, I won’t be able to determine (with certainty) which gun is the most accurate within the parameters of the test. I have begun to form a picture of which guns shoot my tested ammo better than others. In the end, I hope to have a good idea about which guns like which ammo lot best. I will have an aggregate ranking of the guns performance in the form of “average group size” of all ammo tested. To verify the data, I plan to run my results through Mini-tab when the testing is completed. For those who may not know, Mini-tab is a statistical analysis program. My hunch, based on what I’m seeing so far, is that there will not be enough separation of data in the top rifles and ammo lots to be statistically significant (95% Confidence Interval) to make a definitive claim of which rifle is “best”.
However, and this came as a complete surprise, I certainly found out which rifle shot the poorest (based on the ammo tested so far)…and no statistical analysis was required!
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After re reading the OP, and all the other great posts, it seems the question could be simplified to,
Is it possible to compare the accuracy of two accurate rimfire rifles that are both able to shoot better then the ammo available for testing?
I should have seen where this thread was going after reading all the Tuner threads.....
Is it possible to compare the accuracy of two accurate rimfire rifles that are both able to shoot better then the ammo available for testing?
I should have seen where this thread was going after reading all the Tuner threads.....
After re reading the OP, and all the other great posts, it seems the question could be simplified to,
Is it possible to compare the accuracy of two accurate rimfire rifles that are both able to shoot better then the ammo available for testing?
I should have seen where this thread was going after reading all the Tuner threads.....
I'm not sure it is. I went to our indoor range with my two anschutz yesterday, and nine different types of 22 ammo. Ran them all through both guns. The Eley and Federal Target grouped well in both. Two surprises were Remington "Golden Bullet" bulk pack ammo and Aguilla. Both grouped as well as the federal. Not quite as well as the Eley. But there are so many variables, including the ammo lots, that I think it would be difficult to claim "this is the best 22 ammo". All I can truly say, is that these brands of ammo worked best in these rifles on this date. - dan
After re reading the OP, and all the other great posts, it seems the question could be simplified to,
Is it possible to compare the accuracy of two accurate rimfire rifles that are both able to shoot better then the ammo available for testing?
I should have seen where this thread was going after reading all the Tuner threads.....
I think the answer to your simplified question is still the same. Two rifles which are both more accurate than the ammo tested will give you an answer of “No”…not possible to determine best rifle accuracy when ammo quality (ammo consistency) is the limiting factor. It would be like accuracy testing various lots of ammo through one rifle in a 100km/hr variable wind. The wind is the limiting factor and accuracy data is worthless.
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If the nature of the ammo is to have random flyers that are hard to predict, it becomes difficult to ever get to a long term universal conclusion as to which accurate rifle is more accurate, beyond the last groups shot.
I asked this hypothetical question for several reasons.
Many shooters not well acquainted with many of the challenges of shooting rimfire often ask about how well one rifle or another will shoot. This is seen in many rimfire forums, sometimes this one too. The question is understandable. Guys want to get the best rifle they can. As may be apparent with this thread, it's not always easy to say what rifle shoots better than others, or whether a potential buyer should get this rifle or that.
Recognizing how difficult it really is to reliably compare two or more rifles is an important step. It's up there with understanding that the often-repeated wisdom of "find the brand of ammo your rifle likes" is about as useful as shooting for score in a gale force wind.
Many shooters, myself included, have tried to make decisions about how a rifle shoots based on unreliable methods. I've taken rifles to the range and evaluated them, often with a top tier variety of match ammo, only to decide that it wasn't up to the standards I had in mind. When the conclusion was that the rifle was not "good enough" it was very likely wrong. I didn't understand it then. (Even if a shooter uses the same scope on different rifles when he compares them, he can't possibly know what influence if any the scope itself had on the results. If anyone gets better results with one suitable and appropriate scope than with another, it would require a heckuva good explanation of how it was known to be true.)
Many shooters not well acquainted with many of the challenges of shooting rimfire often ask about how well one rifle or another will shoot. This is seen in many rimfire forums, sometimes this one too. The question is understandable. Guys want to get the best rifle they can. As may be apparent with this thread, it's not always easy to say what rifle shoots better than others, or whether a potential buyer should get this rifle or that.
Recognizing how difficult it really is to reliably compare two or more rifles is an important step. It's up there with understanding that the often-repeated wisdom of "find the brand of ammo your rifle likes" is about as useful as shooting for score in a gale force wind.
Many shooters, myself included, have tried to make decisions about how a rifle shoots based on unreliable methods. I've taken rifles to the range and evaluated them, often with a top tier variety of match ammo, only to decide that it wasn't up to the standards I had in mind. When the conclusion was that the rifle was not "good enough" it was very likely wrong. I didn't understand it then. (Even if a shooter uses the same scope on different rifles when he compares them, he can't possibly know what influence if any the scope itself had on the results. If anyone gets better results with one suitable and appropriate scope than with another, it would require a heckuva good explanation of how it was known to be true.)
Shooters often get a rifle that really ought to be a good shooter. If they decide in a short time that it's not, it's quite obvious that the assessment was premature. The thinking is that if it didn't shoot well with Midas or Center X or Tenex the rifle isn't good enough. Here the ammo is the yardstick. But too often it's a lousy yardstick.
Part of the problem is that too many shooters and too many forum readers take information and claims without enough caution. Frequently results are posted and many readers assume that this is how the rifle that shot them regularly shoots. I've shot enough to know that most of the time there's nothing "regular" about results, especially really good ones.
When you see great results by typical forums posters those results are usually not typical. Don't expect any rifle to do that regularly -- unless it's a very good rifle with very good, consistent ammo (and the shooter is accomplished at reading wind flags). Rifles like that are not very hard to find, but the ammo certainly is.
It's not easy or straightforward to assess two or more "good" rifles. But it can't be done dependably without comparing a considerable amount of data. That's the only way to overcome the anomalies, the flyers and outliers, that are a frequent part of the ammo supply, even when it's top tier ammo. On the other hand, when a .22LR firearm is a very mediocre one that's not intended to be competitive with good quality rimfire rifles, it's usually easy to figure it out.
Part of the problem is that too many shooters and too many forum readers take information and claims without enough caution. Frequently results are posted and many readers assume that this is how the rifle that shot them regularly shoots. I've shot enough to know that most of the time there's nothing "regular" about results, especially really good ones.
When you see great results by typical forums posters those results are usually not typical. Don't expect any rifle to do that regularly -- unless it's a very good rifle with very good, consistent ammo (and the shooter is accomplished at reading wind flags). Rifles like that are not very hard to find, but the ammo certainly is.
It's not easy or straightforward to assess two or more "good" rifles. But it can't be done dependably without comparing a considerable amount of data. That's the only way to overcome the anomalies, the flyers and outliers, that are a frequent part of the ammo supply, even when it's top tier ammo. On the other hand, when a .22LR firearm is a very mediocre one that's not intended to be competitive with good quality rimfire rifles, it's usually easy to figure it out.
It makes sense that differentiating the accuracy of 2 good target rifles is way harder then culling obvious bad shooters among the more typical .22lr rifles that most plinkers shoot with.... but the real take away for me from this hypothetical thought exercise is the idea that even the best of the best rim fire ammo is still the issue when your going after that last bit of accuracy and looking for repeatable results.
I'm happy if a rim fire guns that shoot better then most with cheaper ammo..... Not much caviar in my ammo box....
Indeed. That should be the real takeaway for everyone. With what we get, the ammo can't be a reliable yardstick with which to measure a rifle.
