Thread: 3 shot groups are useless!

Originally Posted by Tentman

Some further interesting results. Shot today in nice conditions. A different rifle, newly assembled using a Zermatt arms Origin action, a Savage 223 barrel reamed to 22 Creedmoor by Greg at Custom guns and the result shoehorned into a Bregara stock - this is a work in progress!

I'd already tried the barrel in a Savage action enough to establish a safe max load and to get the feeling it was a pretty good shooter.

Load is 75 gn Hornady ELDMs in front of 2209 in reformed Norma y.5 CM cases.

The rifle was zeroed with some old rounds then after quite a lengthy period a 3 shot group was fired
Attachment 253714

Not too bad eh?

So left rifle to cool then fired a further 3 shot group on top of the old one. Came out like this

Attachment 253715

Process repeated with this final result
Attachment 253716

Not to shabby.

But what is the big picture here
Attachment 253717

So a overall group of the tiniest smidge over MOA. But whats mist important? To me its the variabce in POI of each 3 shot group, proving out Gimps assertion (in his other thread) that zeroing on the basis ov a 3 shot group is a faught exercise!

I don’t want to derail this thread , but would like to throw something out there .
Once the Rifles capability has been tested by shooting multiple groups of at least 10 shots , then the shooter’s capabilities should be tested in my opinion.
On another thread here I did a test where I broke my position between each shot , test was performed prone with bipod and rear bag , but I stood up and picked up the Rifle and rear bag between each shot .
The resulting group was at least 1/3 bigger if not more than what I can achieve by just laying down and shooting with minimal movement between shots .
I believe it is essential to fine tune your Rifle/Ammo combo , but once that is done all attention should shift to fine tuning your own technique and ability to build a repeatable position/ platform time and time again.
The point of impact shifts shown above I believe are greatly influenced by shooter setup and can’t all be blamed on the Rifles capability.
You have to decide what it is your actually testing and plan and execute the test accordingly.