1971 made Winchester 70 in .270 Win. Barrel free floated, screws torqued, barrel cleaned, Swarovski rifle scope. 3 foulers, this is the second volley of 3 rounds.

Winchester virgin brass
CCI-200
H-4831 SC
150 gr Nosler Accubond LR



The barrel was completely Cooled off. Mirage straight up. A flagging ribbon on the 200 uard target board was laying down.




Test them farther than 100 yards. If you can, and if you're going to need to shoot it farther than 100 yards, in the future.

The problem is the 150 LR AB bullet. It's barely stable in a 1:10" twist barrel. That bullet is also often under sized. I gave up on that bullet in my 270 Win after multiple range trips with it.

I warned him. He wanted to use them anyway.

Flatten those primers. That’ll fix it!

Twas a joke

Guess my Henry Long ranger 308W does OK then. 185yds (googled) at a paper plats, 2 in the lower left. Pulled the top right one. Sitting in a cheap plastic patio chair. 2500+ fps, 168 Amax, LC07 brass, H4895.

What?

Is the idea that bullets deviate more at longer distance (i.e. a 1 moa group at 100yd becomes >1 moa farther)? Brian Litz strongly disputes this.

The more likely scenario is that a single 3rd group barely captures any of the statistical variance in a load.

I was wondering stability too. Sure wish my 270 had a little more twist.

Litz certainly knows his way around better than most and I’ve heard his argument on this, but a high ES and SD can print ok at 100 yards and look like crap at 500+. At least in the vertical. Although that erratic group is a horizontal string.

Sub 1 MOA became almost 2 MOA at twice the distance. The pics are there for you to see.

The idea is to tune the load that works best with the barrel harmonics. 200 yards and greater is going to give you more reliable information.

I may be wrong, its been a while since I read it, but I recall thinking Litz disputed groups getting better at distance, and would pay money to anybody that could prove it.

The theory of the big bullets needing some RPMs to get stable. Chad says he's seen it. I've also seen it. So I am in disagreement with Litz on that one.

200 gr ELD-X from a 300 Win Mag for example. 1/2 MOA at 200 yards, 1 MOA at 100 yards. So, it shoots 1" at both distances.

I’m not saying it’s not true, but that’s one I’d have to see to believe.

I know it seems odd, but it has happened several times, across different cartridges. One was also a 7mm-08 1:8 loaded with 168 Bergers.

Maybe ALL of that is due to barrel harmonics. They're using tuners in competition for a reason.

I gave up testing loads at 100 yards several years ago because I saw so many loads that looked great at 100 were actually dogs at 200. I test everything at 200 these days.

I think that *maybe* the recipe I come up with gives up a little at 100 yards due to harmonics. I don't know that, and frankly don't care one way or the other so I'm not going to do a lot of loading and shooting to prove it for myself. I figure I can afford to give up a little bit of MOA at 100 to gain a little bit of MOA at 200 for hunting purposes.

Agreed.

99% of the time I'm also running these rigs out to 800 yards. After 200 yard load development, hitting every hundred to 800 is no problem. And 99% of the time I hit every steel in only one shot.

Several shooters claim the 'going to sleep' at longer range, never seen it myself. I'm sure there are bad bullets but my experience it's the shooter not the equipmant. My only example is stock dpmsAR10 308 carbine - with a drop in trigger. Steel is 200 yds in a sunflower field sitting between dove hunts, other is 35F prone with bi-pod. 168gr cast @ 2400, both targets. Scope is old Nikon with the circles below the cross. Centered the 3rd circle for the 200yrd one. First time shooting 200. Lower shots are friend tryng it. Big one is old from his 300 win mag.

Until someone can explain how a bullet changes its path between 100 and 200 I’m out on this theory. You shoot through a piece of paper at a 100 into a target at 200 and show me a reduced moa and I’m sold. I’ll take your word for it,but you gotta show the proof. My rifle will shoot sub .4s at 500 but they’re tighter than that at 100 because I can’t get my ES and SD down lower, or maybe that’s all it will do.

It doesn't change its path. It all has to do with the exact position of the muzzle (IOW, where it's pointed) in its vibration cycle at the time the bullet exits the muzzle.

I mean that's still an angular deviation, meaning if it's 1 MOA at 200 then it's 1 MOA at 100.

I'll once again point out that people just don't shoot big enough sample sizes to really evaluate group sizes. That's way more reasonable than bullets curving in flight and converging towards your bullseye at 200 yards and beyond.

True if your assumptions hold up, but they do not.

They ALL curve in flight, and they may or may NOT converge on a POI depending on velocity variations and barrel harmonics.

People may not shoot big enough sample sizes when developing loads to really know what they've got, but there is no deficiency of sample size in competition. Tuners work, and they work for the reasons I've laid out. Hop on Erik Cortina's Youtube channel and tell him otherwise. Talk to John Meyers and tell him otherwise.

How many sheets of paper fit in a 3" 3 ring binder? Every sheet of paper is the load development for a rifle.

That's my sample size.

Regardless of tuner or not, what I'm getting at is if you solve the "harmonics" problem at 100, you have also solved it at 200, 300, and beyond. This is because variation due to harmonics would express itself at all distances, because it is no longer affecting the bullet once it leaves the muzzle. If the bullet leaves while the barrel is whipping upwards, for example, that angular variation would be seen at all distances.

It is not a sufficient explanation of how bullets could have a wider (in terms of angle) cone of fire at closer distances than long.

What Litz said in his class was actually the opposite of what y’all seem to be discussing.

His research was showing that groups couldn’t get smaller at distance due to bullets going to “sleep” which was proposed by many. Ex. A 1 MOA load at 100 can’t be a 1/2 MOA at 200 yds.

When the 150 LRAB came out Litz actually used it as an example of its advertised BC was not achievable unless you went to a faster twist barrel than was currently available on the market and that it was only marginally stable. Your rifle may be a button rifled barrrel and thus twist rate may be slightly slower than advertised

Slightly OT but I recently read somewhere that barrel whip is not just up and down like I assumed, but is spiral similar to the rifling. My assumption was based on one slow motion camera from the side and never viewing another angle. If this is true so much for the dwell at the top theory.

I'll also point out here that what JG is saying here is basically counter to what guys who ladder test promote, if I understand it right. Isn't the whole thing "only look at vertical dispersion because you can't control horizontal dispersion due to wind"? If that's the case, then shouldn't we be completely disregarding that there's 3.75" of horizontal dispersion, and only focusing on and celebrating the fact that this is a sub MOA group at 200 as measured by vertical dispersion? Harmonics problem solved, yes?

Other than it being a no wind situation, yes. I think people use the “bad horizontal was the wind” a bit too much and at 200 yards that would be some serious wind.

Look again. It is sub MOA at 100 yards, probably 1/2, I didn't measure it.

It is 1 MOA vertically, at 200 yards.

100% of the ladder tests I've performed gave me good data. I do it when I am in a combination that I have never loaded before. It is unnecessary if I've loaded that combination before, so I go straight to shooting groups at 200 yards.

Here is the best load it shot, with the same components, only a higher powder charge.



This was in the same session, within an hour of the first group, due to barrel cooling. The horizontal is less than the vertical.

I went one more charge even hotter, and the horizontal dispersion showed back up. The highest charge I shot, the rifle was not happy with it.

IF the pressure curve, barrel time, and velocity is exactly the same from shot to shot, that would be true.

What I'm saying is that the barrel's movement is independent of distance. It does not know that you are shooting at a farther distance and decide to shoot smaller groups.

The barrel's movement is not the only factor influencing the bullet's path.

I think that the gravity vector must have something to do with how the barrel vibrates. I won't even venture into THAT weedpatch, I don't have the chops to prove it one way or another. What I DO know, though, is that tuners work. I also know that you can't just find the sweet spot for shooting a certain load at a given distance and then be effective indefinitely. Environmental conditions changing requires tweaking the tuner.

No one understands tuners better than John Meyers. Erik Cortina made a very interesting video with him a while back where John reveals a little of his knowledge. It's very interesting because he talks about how he got sucked into competition and how he achieved success. He's told me basically the same story in person.

The point of this whole thread is the load was probably dispersing, but it was not seen at 100 yards. It took 200 yards for it to show up.

Most of the time, you get a good tight shooting load at 200 yards, go back to 100, and it holds the group size relative to distance. .6 MOA at 200 is .6 MOA, or less, at 100. Most of the time...

I've seen a 100-yard MOA load shoot like crap at 200 myself and I bet many of us here have seen the same thing. Maybe we can't explain it...maybe none of us know why. But we've seen it.

Who can explain a 0.100" group at 200 yards or even 100 yards knowing that barrels vibrate and whip around in the first place? And we know that 0.100" is not even that close to the world record.

With a normal (not benchrest) gun and ammo?

Do you want to argue that benchrest guns are immune to the vibration phenomena that sporter weight rifles are subject to?

That's a level of accuracy that I've never cared to, or had the time to pursue. Maybe when .05" is the difference between a gold medal and nothing it's something that matters? I just think people are heavily invested in defending something they've spent money on (or are selling, in Erik's case), and I would rank the supposed benefit of a tuner somewhere around 20th in a list of variables I would prioritize in the pursuit of accuracy.

To me it reeks of vudoo ballistics to go online and see some guys say "when the temperature drops make sure to move your tuner out,"but then other guys say that "it depends on who you talk to." A lack of consistency and predictability immediately throws it into the bucket of "normal statistical variation" in my mind.

I'd pull my hair out if I was having to balance what tuner setting I needed with a 15fps change, but the temperature dropped, but then that also changed my POI, so on. That might be why I don't shoot benchrest.

Me? I just use quality components, pick a velocity and shoot lil groups.

In the end my own approach to what I do is the same as yours.

I don't want to measure ogives, I don't want to spend thousands on a scale capable of dropping charges within 0.01 grains, I don't want to spend thousands on building a rifle and constantly be rebarreling it for the next match, and I don't want to spend thousands traveling to compete nor do I care to dedicate my life to that pursuit (and if you don't, you will not win because there are guys out there who ARE driven to dedicate their lives to it). I just wanted (past tense because I'm now way more focused on just hunting hogs) to use off-the-shelf stuff and see what could be done with it. On the side, due to curiosity I also wanted to learn the "why"s and having access to people like MIke Plaxco (RIP), Mike Stinnett, John Meyers, and a few others who are willing to share a little knowledge has afforded me the opportunity to learn from others' experience. That has satisfied a lot of my inquisitiveness in a much more economical manner.

So tell me...have you not ever developed a load at 100 yards that fell apart at 200?

I watched NASA vid that demonstrates the barrel whip effect really well. They used a slug of H2O in a pipe but effect is the same. The 'nodes' vary along the length of the barrel. The 'pipe' expands and contracts with the nodes and 'supports' change the nodes. I've never done a ladder test but I don't compete either. Pick components, fps and load.

WUT?

Not really. I spend a fair amount of rounds developing a single load at 100 and I'm well aware of its true accuracy before I take it out to distance.

But like I said, with a good enough gun, good enough components, and a good reloading process, I'm basically picking a velocity and then just verifying dope out at range.