Thread: 3 shot groups are useless!

Gidday Guys - following on from recent discussions/threads - a little more fuel for the fire.

Here are some 3 shot groups from today with the Bergara B14 223 I'm currently playing with. Last time I tried a 10 shot group (in this thread https://www.nzhuntingandshooting.co....ng-out-104458/ ) it ran at 1.4MOA, not bad but I felt both the load and shooting could be improved. So I changed brass from Hornady to some Lapua that came once fired from the old bulk FMJ stuff that was about years ago. Still not "top notch" brass but better (maybe) than Hornardy! I also added a cheekpiece and bag rider to the rifle and shot from a bipod rather than front rest to see if I could improve the shooting.



I started with a 5 shot group with the same load as before, Hornardy 73s with 23.5 2206H at 58.7mm OAL. Bugger me it seemed to throw a cold bore shot, not something this rifle usually does, could also have been me getting into the new way the rifle feels with cheekpiece and bag rider.

Then we have a seating depth test, this isn't looking for the smallest group, rather I trying to identify a node for point of impact and velocity.

Disregarding the above does anyone see the problem here - the average of the 3 shot groups is 0.76 MOA, quite respectable UNTIl you compare it with the rifle's 10 shot group average - which is closer to 1.5 MOA!

And that's why I call bullshit when people say their rifle shoots "sub moa" (often claiming "its shooting 0.5") on the basis of one or two 3 shot groups.