Thread: What is "ES"

As a barrel heats up, speed will vary no matter how good your 1 shot ES is.😆
How much depends on your barrel and how anal you are at reloading your ammo.

I have tested 5 rnds over a half hour period and it was pretty good.
As said above low ES does not mean you will have good accuracy.

But as my rifle is a hunting rifle primarily and with shooting the odd bit of steel for shits n giggles I only see benifit in testing mine over time, cold bore.

I keep records or if I am lazy the V3 has all my strings recorded.

If your reloading practice is sound and you have a low ES over say 10 shots there is no reason not to assume it will be the same throughout.
If your a hunter shooting conventional ranges as long as it is under 100 fps it won't be an issue.

4 things that have improved my ES the most are weigh sorting, annealing, graphite and HBN coating my projectiles.
I sacrifice a bit of velocity by coating my projectiles but it's only a click or 2 on the dial at the end of the day.




Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

As already stated low ES doesn't guarantee a good group, conversely high ES doesn't necessarily give a bad group, well at 100yds at any rate. High ES will certainly affect vertical though at extreme ranges but for hunting purposes/ranges is not a problem. Bought my first box of factory ammo for many years, mainly to get the brass, and the ES was extremely shite up around 50fps, but the accuracy was shite also - Win 223.

The groups shot below were with my 6.5x47L (yeh the bottom 2 shots hardly qualifies as a group), 130gr Bergers, RL15. ES for 6 shots was high, nudging 30fps. Fired the first 2 shots and then adjusted up 2.5MOA and fired the last 4. Shot quickly, well at the speed I would normally shoot under F Class rifle range conditions. Decided to not use it as a long range load but to do a bit more development. Hopefully can reduce the ES but on the flipside the size of the group may grow.

Originally Posted by zimmer

Fired the first 2 shots and then adjusted up 2.5MOA and fired the last 4.

Just out of curiosity, why did you adjust 2.5MOA, and not 1.25?

Originally Posted by chalkeye

Just out of curiosity, why did you adjust 2.5MOA, and not 1.25?

My guess, 200 zero

Originally Posted by chalkeye

Just out of curiosity, why did you adjust 2.5MOA, and not 1.25?

I adjusted to put the group where it ended up on purpose, just to have a different set of holes in a different place on the same target face.
It was also a quick check at the time to see if my scope dialled correctly although that was secondary.

I was group shooting/load developing, not zeroing in. if I had been zeroing in I would have adjusted both elevation and windage to smack the guts outa it.

When group shooting there is no point blowing the centre out of your aiming mark as your group progresses.
You end up loosing your nice clean aiming mark.

That particular target is absolutely perfect for the centre of the scope reticle on that rifle (Sightron SIII Target Dot).