Thread: Causes of accuracy in a rifle

The interesting thing would be define accuracy and in what context and shooting discipline and or distance.

From my experience the most important thing is confidence in the setup and your ability. Your ability plays a big roll. Its easy to sit on a bench and master the art of shooting groups, but to be accurate in a hunting environment or even some other disciplines you need to get your ass of the bench seat. The ability to be accurate and savvy enough to tick the fundamentals in different situations requires practice. Stock design, grip and how the rifle is rested also plays a role here.

You also need to have a very good understanding of how weather affects the internal and external ballistics of your setup and more importantly how to compensate for them or reduce the influence. Short distances with high BC bullets helps, but the best marksmen I know are all good wind readers.

You need a barrel twist that stabilizes the bullet and clean and constant bullet exist all centered around the crown.

The next thing would be internal ballistics. A top notch rifle will most likely increase/assist with a wider accuracy node, but a top notch rifle will no be accurate with inconsisant ammo that doesn't shoots to one of the nodes. For long distance shooting you will be more accurate with a load that produces small SD or ES velocities ( reducing vertical) compared to a load that shoots small groups with a high ES/SD. The ideal would be one hole groups with very low ES/SD, but this is not always possible. This is where chamber and the metal work come in.

You need a barrel that is able to provide constant surface for the bullet to travel against. Inconsistencies and especially buildup of copper and carbon. Some barrels provide a larger shot count in which they are able to deliver it, while others don't. Throat erosion in fire cracking (shot out barrel) contributes to these inconsistencies and thus accuracy challenges.

Cutting the rope short here, most of us aren't able to constantly utilize our rifle, even factory rifles, to their full accuracy potential. I sometimes think we chasing all these small little gains in the hope that it will make us better marksman, but we aren't willing to put in the practice.