SCJ429 not just old guys. I know a young bloke who is on track to win championships, both in fullbore and service. He literally formed a brand new club for his uni - do you know how hard it is to do that, in this age of political correctness? He's an absolute freak, one of the most naturally talented shooters i've seen in a long time. And he has literally
never shot a gun across a rest, in his
entire life. I'm not saying that's me (far
far from it, I too like shooting bugholes from time to time, the science behind it is truly motivating), but I'm just throwing this out there, for perspective.
SCJ429 wrote:I have to wonder if the old buggers are trying to put you off your game. They are saying "I don't do any load development and look how well I shoot, so you don't need to do any." Then they go home and batch their projectiles and neck turn their cases.
Sure, the serious fullbore guys do this, but that's at the point end of the spectrum. It's a bell curve, all but the very best cannot realise such precision. So for the rest of us, it's overwhelmingly technique error. That pretty well goes without saying. So overwhemlingly it's not at the the forefront of casual competitors shooters brains - so long as the gun and load is grouping "well enough" to match their skill level / grade, they are focusing on technique.
SCJ429 wrote:I have used some as issued Lee Enfields and Mauser 98 that struggle to shoot five inch groups with Army issued ammo. If you add aiming errors and environmental factors into positional shooting, you will have some pretty poor results. Everyone would agree that there is an advantage in shooting a rifle that can shoot 1/2 inch groups over one that shoots five inches. The 1/2 inch grouping rifle will produce better scores all other things being equal.
It is near enough impossible to hold sub-moa with service rifle sights. You've got to remember, for service rifle details, you are often shooting for hits, rather than scored. Even when you
are scored during a deliberate, the 5 ring is a fair bit bigger than 1 minute of angle, so if your gun can genuinely hold a 2-3" group at 100m, that's
more than enough to win comps, if
you can.
Yes we've been over this before, and I acknowledge that my opinion on the matter is widely criticised around these parts. Heck, I'm expecting various "personalities" to pop up and shoot me down saying that not optimising handloads just "makes no sense". My point is, your hanloading effort should match your application, otherwise it's just wasted effort.
Long and short of it, for hunting or casual positional plinking (my idea of "fun"), if my gun can put them into an inch, then the combo of load and gun is basically performing "better" than I am, out there in the practical shooting world, with improvised stances.