Which would be the best load/group.

[I Dont Care About You]

I disagree.

I have been shooting handguns for over 20 years. I came home with some IPSC plaques and medals as a youth. I shoot PPC and came 3rd place Marksman twice at the provincials and only shot the provincals 4 times. Sunday I tied for 2nd at a pistol shoot. I consider myself a decent handgun shooter. I honestly have no idea for the different results when I reversed shooting my load development. I was using a 5" pistol in a Hera arms CPE, with a stock and bipod with a RDS.

I load for the best accuracy as alot of my shooting is done at 25yards. Because the provincals majority of the points are at that range. So you want accurate rounds. I don't just want to make noise as that's a waste of money if it's in accurate.

Think master class ppc shooters using run of the mill ammo? They're shooting 1490+/1500 and that's out to 50 yards. They're tuning the ammo to be the most consistent.

But nobody should take reloading advice from you as you basically just said. Who cares if reloads are accurate as long as they meet velocity you want and feed reliability.

LOL you are free to disagree.

I have been shooting handguns for over 35 years and have loads of IPSC trophies and plaques on my shooting room walls.

What does a dynamic sport like IPSC have to do with the mechanical accuracy of a handgun? Nada or close to nada anyway. There are a dozen factors more important to producing A-zones than the accuracy of the ammo. Velocity is important because it affects trajectory and thus POI relative to the sights and it creates a power factor that competitors must meet.

Think I'm full of it? Then take your favourite, most accurate ammo and go shoot five 5-shot groups with it. Then take the worst ammo you have and do the same thing. I guarantee the average accuracy for both, within the standard deviation, will put both loads in the same general realm, with a bunch of overlap.

A single 5-shot group says nothing about the accuracy potential of an ammo load. You are making determinations about the outright accuracy of a load based on essentially zero information. You'd have just as much luck by WAGing.

IF you shoot rifles for accuracy then you would also know that ammo consistency is not a determinant of accuracy. At long range it can help reduce vertical stringing, but that's not very relevant for handgun ammo.

 

[I Dont Care About You]

I load for accuracy all the time. Well worth developing an accurate load for any handguns. I have multiple handguns that are capable of an inch at 100 meters. I have a 1911 that has a load worked out to shoot 100 m. We constantly shoot for groups at our club so you need to work up loads to make sure they are accurate. Accuracy counts big time.

If you are capable of producing a 1" group at 100 yds with an iron sighted handgun, then you are an exception shot. 99% of handgun shooters are not capable of anything even close to that. I'd suggest 99% couldn't produce a 10" group at that distance.

Contender pistols with scopes shot off the bench. 22 Hornet and 221 Fireball are the only two I have done it with so far. It took a lot of trying different loads to find what worked. Multiple powders, bullets and primers tried.

That is really not, in any way, comparable to a typical handgun is it?

 

[dearslayer]

Because the vast majority of people can't shoot a handgun for accuracy ... nor do we really need to. Groups likely get better as you get into the shooting string because the shooter adapts to the recoil. Or they may get worse as the shooter begins to flinch.

Regardless, a single series of groups tells you 100% of nothing. Shooting off bags puts you and the gun in a configuration you will never normally shoot in, and that is gonna affect whatever group size you may be able to create. Kind of a long way of saying, that its all pointless.

For a handgun, the best load is the one that gives you the velocity you are looking for and feeds 100%. Nobody tests handgun ammo for accuracy because its a giant waste of time and ammo and as Okay Shooter noted, the results aren't exactly consistent.

So I thought that shooting off the bags was just a way of eliminating or minimizing the shooter error from the start. If I shot free hand I'd really have no way to know if the loads were crap or if my shooting is crap. Is this not correct? For instance if I shoot off the bags well at least I know I'm a steady as I could be as opposed to free hand and the gun moving all over the place ( exaggerated to make a point ).

 

[OkayShooter]

LOL you are free to disagree.

I have been shooting handguns for over 35 years and have loads of IPSC trophies and plaques on my shooting room walls.

What does a dynamic sport like IPSC have to do with the mechanical accuracy of a handgun? Nada or close to nada anyway. There are a dozen factors more important to producing A-zones than the accuracy of the ammo. Velocity is important because it affects trajectory and thus POI relative to the sights and it creates a power factor that competitors must meet.

Think I'm full of it? Then take your favourite, most accurate ammo and go shoot five 5-shot groups with it. Then take the worst ammo you have and do the same thing. I guarantee the average accuracy for both, within the standard deviation, will put both loads in the same general realm, with a bunch of overlap.

A single 5-shot group says nothing about the accuracy potential of an ammo load. You are making determinations about the outright accuracy of a load based on essentially zero information. You'd have just as much luck by WAGing.

IF you shoot rifles for accuracy then you would also know that ammo consistency is not a determinant of accuracy. At long range it can help reduce vertical stringing, but that's not very relevant for handgun ammo.

You expect with a username like yours, people will listen to you? Esp when you keep making claims that most cannot shoot handguns. If you making those claims put up some targets that you shot.

 

[Snider shooter]

So I thought that shooting off the bags was just a way of eliminating or minimizing the shooter error from the start. If I shot free hand I'd really have no way to know if the loads were crap or if my shooting is crap. Is this not correct? For instance if I shoot off the bags well at least I know I'm a steady as I could be as opposed to free hand and the gun moving all over the place ( exaggerated to make a point ).

You are correct. I know one fellow who does all his testing with a Ransom rest. Eliminates all human error. I another friend tests different 22 ammunition out with a rest. He lets me know which ammo works better in his 22 pistols and it has saved me a lot of hassle. One of his top 3 or 4 brands always work in my 22 pistols well. Cuts my testing way down.
Some people are just happy to hit the paper. I like seeing small groups.Keep trying different loads and keep practicing, groups will improve.

 

[OkayShooter]

So I thought that shooting off the bags was just a way of eliminating or minimizing the shooter error from the start. If I shot free hand I'd really have no way to know if the loads were crap or if my shooting is crap. Is this not correct? For instance if I shoot off the bags well at least I know I'm a steady as I could be as opposed to free hand and the gun moving all over the place ( exaggerated to make a point ).

Don't listen to him. Just load up more and re do the tests. If you see some with potential, focus on those and get a avg going. Those targets you use are more for sighting in rifles. Try ones like Graderite uses or a B-8 NRA.

Nothing wrong with bagging it. Like you said, it's much more steady than free handing.

 

[I Dont Care About You]

So I thought that shooting off the bags was just a way of eliminating or minimizing the shooter error from the start. If I shot free hand I'd really have no way to know if the loads were crap or if my shooting is crap. Is this not correct? For instance if I shoot off the bags well at least I know I'm a steady as I could be as opposed to free hand and the gun moving all over the place ( exaggerated to make a point ).

The recoil impulse and how you, the holder, move with the recoil is a big part of the accuracy of a firearm. Shooting off a bag puts you in a completely different stance etc compared to shooting offhand.

 

[I Dont Care About You]

You expect with a username like yours, people will listen to you? Esp when you keep making claims that most cannot shoot handguns. If you making those claims put up some targets that you shot.

No, I really don't care. Everyone here is an adult and is free to make their own choices, including what info or advice they want to listen to. People are absolutely free to ignore anything I have to say, and that doesn't cause me any pain whatsoever.

I don't load handgun ammo for accuracy, nor am I overly concerned with the accuracy of any particular load because I know that my gun and shooting skills and stance and eyesight etc are all WAY MORE important to connecting a shot than the mechanical accuracy of the ammo. THIS is the point I'm trying to make .... which is clearly being lost on you?

If I am entirely full of sh!t then go shoot 5 or more groups of your best ammo and 5 or more groups or your worst ammo and see how they compare. If I'm wrong, one ammo will show a clear and statistically significant improvement over the other. Then you can come back and announce to everyone that I am full of it.

Years ago I got hold of a cartridge runout gauge and spent a bunch of time sorting my centre fire rifle ammo into little piles of good, better, best and crap. I shot all the sorted piles of ammo to see how they would group. Then at the end of day I had the pile of total crap ammo, with the most runout. Rather than pull all that ammo, I decided to shoot it, as a control, to demonstrate how crap it really was. When the crap ammo produced groups that were just as good as the best ammo, I realized that sorting rounds for runout was a total waste of time for me. Either I wasn't good enough or my rifle wasn't good enough to make any kind of different on the target. I chucked that runout gauge into the garbage and have never checked runout again.

 

[I Dont Care About You]

You are correct. I know one fellow who does all his testing with a Ransom rest. Eliminates all human error. I another friend tests different 22 ammunition out with a rest. He lets me know which ammo works better in his 22 pistols and it has saved me a lot of hassle. One of his top 3 or 4 brands always work in my 22 pistols well. Cuts my testing way down.
Some people are just happy to hit the paper. I like seeing small groups.Keep trying different loads and keep practicing, groups will improve.

A Ransom Rest is nothing at all like shooting the thing by hand while using a sandbag or what have you for support. A Ransom Rest is absolutely the best way to test a handgun-ammo combination.

When it comes to 22 rimfire ammo, accuracy is highly gun dependent. There is no "best" ammo. What works in one gun may not work well in another. Back in the day, I purchased many different kinds of ammo and even tracked boxes by lot number. Then after testing all of them I went out and bought a case of the exact ammo and lot number that had worked the best in my rifle.

 

[Lead hammer]

Do the load testing with a bag if you want. It mostly just keeps the gun steady, it will recoil up and back some. Having said that, I do not test that way.
Absolutely test different centerfire and rimfire loads for accuracy, there is a difference. Do 10 round batches then confirm several times. Why anyone would want to not load for accuracy is ridiculous. Print out a B8 target, and write your results on it to compare your notes.