'See What Ammo It Likes' mythbusting

[animalpest]

A old timer once said to me; "I've figured out the secret formula to all my rifles. It's... <DRUMROLL> ... 100% case fill".

It's worked for me, to this day, in all my rifles, ranging from my service rifles, through to sporters, through to my target rifles.

Any service rifle should be grouping into 3moa at worst at 300m, preferably 2moa, otherwise you are just wasting your time.

I would think a lot of rifles and shooters - let alone service rifles - would struggle to get groups of 2 moa at 300m?

[in2anity]

I would think a lot of rifles and shooters - let alone service rifles - would struggle to get groups of 2 moa at 300m?

I’m taking out the wind - but absolutely. Especially antiquated designs, running cheap ammo. That’s exactly my point. You have to do the work to achieve the better accuracy, flip the lemons, search for the diamonds. They are out there.

But match grade projies, case fill, uniform necks and tuned jump (probably in that order of importance) will bring the goods.

[animalpest]

I would think a lot of rifles and shooters - let alone service rifles - would struggle to get groups of 2 moa at 300m?

I’m taking out the wind - but absolutely. Especially antiquated designs, running cheap ammo. That’s exactly my point. You have to do the work to achieve the better accuracy, flip the lemons, search for the diamonds. They are out there.

But match grade projies, case fill, uniform necks and tuned jump (probably in that order of importance) will bring the goods.

Absolutely

[bladeracer]

I would think a lot of rifles and shooters - let alone service rifles - would struggle to get groups of 2 moa at 300m?

I confirmed zero on the .223 six weeks ago. Fired a sighter at 100m, made a scope adjustment to give me a 250m zero, then fired two rounds that were 23.5mm apart and 70mm high, then fired three rounds at 260m that grouped right on 50mm and were 30mm low. One minute at 260m is 75.6mm. I wasn't shooting groups so don't know what it would've actually grouped if I'd fired five round groups, but I was pretty happy with that, more than adequate to head-shoot most things. That was off the bonnet of the ute with the 55gn SGK on 26.5gn of AR2206H at 2.290", very cheap shooting.

[Vince24]

A old timer once said to me; "I've figured out the secret formula to all my rifles. It's... <DRUMROLL> ... 100% case fill".

It's worked for me, to this day, in all my rifles, ranging from my service rifles, through to sporters, through to my target rifles.

Any service rifle should be grouping into 3moa at worst at 300m, preferably 2moa, otherwise you are just wasting your time.

In2anity, you can't be serious.

I am sure that your science of load development for military rifles goes beyond the simple act of stuffing a case with powder till it overflows.

1) get a 100% case fill - without blowing up your brain - in most old military calibres (other than 308W) means using a huge quantity of a very slow powder.

2) It is well known by now that this is the recipe for accelerated barrel wear (and probably the rest of the rifle too). If we are talking about a service rifle lucky enough to still have its original barrel, this is almost a crime - it is our duty to preserve those old weapons for the future, so let's keep the hot loads for the Howa/Tikka and the like.

3) A 100% case fill is also going to generate heavy recoil - which is going to make most shooters shoot less well. And honestly don't tell me you enjoy shooting a lightweight 1903 stuffed with 62 grains of 2209. While that rifle can be a pleasure to shoot with e.g. 48 grains of 2206H behind the same 150 grain projectile - and still very accurate.

4) I don't even talk about the longevity of your cases - I guess that 's a choice

5) From my experience of doing load developments, I haven't noticed that the hottest loads were always the best. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And sometimes the hottest load can be just barely better than a much milder load, not making it worth the pain for military shoots.

6) Military competitions are shot with no rest in various positions - I think working on your shooting technique will yield more results that punishing yourself with 48 grains of 2209 behind your SMK in your SMLE when 40 grains of 2208 may do the same job,in a much more enjoyable manner.

7) France have a very competitive and regulated national competion for military style rifles. Sometimes a (suspiciously well prepared lol ) M1 Garand make it to a podium - I can guarantee that that Garand does not run on a 60 grain load because an M1 can't handle this. Granted it's only shot at 200m but what groups at 200m will group at 300 yards.

By the way, 3 MOA at 300 yards, isn't it like a 25cm circle?
I am new to military comps and I wouldn't say it's easy to group 10 shots in that circle with military sights from the prone position, but recently I have grouped 7 out of 10 in that circle (and a case not filled at all!) with the 3 outside of the group being clearly shooter mistakes. I am working on this and hopefully I can improve (need to get a good sling ), still without putting 60 grains in my 30-06 round!

[Bello]

HI mate

Congrats on your rifle purchase. The 30-06 is a capable rifle for deer.
I agree with trying different bullets in your rifle to see what groups/shoots well in your rifle.
Before you purchase this ammunition to try, get a bit of advice from your local gun shop, from other shooters etc about the projectile that's in the ammunition you are buying.

When I say this, I mean that the weight and construction of the projectile is important and should match the species of game you are targeting at a given distance. This I believe is very important.

Reloading.
I reload as I like to. When asked this question, I try and steer hunters away from reloading. My logic is, if on any given hunting trip you only shoot a hand full of bullets, why bother spending lots of money on reloading gear and cases, powders, projectiles, primers etc etc which are currently hard to find. Unless you are planning on shooting lots and lots of rounds, just buy loaded ammo and save yourself the time and effort.
In my experience, reloading can produce more accurate ammo tuned for a specific rifle.
Factory ammo is accurate enough for deer.

[bladeracer]

100% case fill means full of powder _without compression_, it doesn't mean filling the case to the top and seating the bullet, that is well over 100% case fill, and can still be good (110% case fill would indicate 10% compression of the powder volume). I have found that compressed loads can often give better consistency of burn so I consider "compressed to be good". My .204 load I actually fill to overflow (30gn of AR2206H), then hold the bullet on top of the pile of powder, and seat it. I haven't measured the percentage of compression with this load but it shoots extremely well with zero pressure signs. If I could fit more powder in there I would've continued load development as it just grouped better and better as I increased the charge, and I'm still well short of pressure signs.

In my milsurps I almost always use AR2206H, definitely not a slow rifle powder. In a few milsurp loads I use other powders like BM8208, AR2208 and AR2209, but mostly by far AR2206H, a fast rifle powder.

100% case fill doesn't automatically give more recoil, or burn the throat out, it depends on the density of the powder, which you clearly understand from your point 6. For example, a full case of Trailboss in the 7mm-08 is probably only 15gn, but I can fit 52.1gn of AR2206H in the same case. If I used W748 I could probably get 60-70gn of powder in there, which would be disastrous. With a long bullet that seats well below the neck I can be happy to see powder up to the neck as it gives good compression, with shorter bullets that barely seat below the neck I like to see the powder inside the neck to give some compression. I do agree that you are likely to get more throat wear burning larger charges of powder, another reason I prefer AR2206 generally.

I definitely agree about not chasing velocity, especially in milsurps. I don't even want to run them at the pressures they used to run at when they were in service. My "target" is to load to 90% of the muzzle energy of the original load, this gives more than enough recoil to get the "feel" of shooting full-power loads without working the rifle hard. My .303 load of 38gn of AR2206H behind 174gn jacketed bullets at 3.050" is technically ADI's listed maximum load, but gives me that 90% energy figure with excellent case life and zero pressure signs.

I can't comment on the M1 Rifle specifically, but my neighbour shoots a Remington 700 ADL and wanted to be able to reload to the same performance as the factory .30-06 he'd been using for deer. Ideally I would've wanted to chrono his factory load in my rifle to duplicate it but we couldn't get any, that's why he wanted to reload. I don't recall what the ammo was but it was a 180gn soft-point bullet at 2700fps - from memory he told me the ammo and I chased up the spec, I doubt he had ever chronoed it. So I "worked up" a load for my M1903-A3 of 56gn of AR2209 at 3.258", which gave me an average of 2701fps. He brought his rifle around and tried it and was very happy with the result, though it only made 2582fps in his rifle. These loads are certainly "stout" and if I were going to shoot them a lot I'd work them up with AR2206H instead as they'd only use around 46gn of powder. His ADL was also 116fps slower than mine with my Berry's Copper-Plated 150gn 1750fps load.

Now, when I say "I worked up a load" for it, I had previously (seven days after I got the rifle) loaded ten rounds with the 178gn BTSP on 57gn of AR2209 at 3.385", again the only load I tested with the bullet, and it shot very well, so that is basically my "precision" load for this rifle - I didn't bother with any further development of it. It was in 2018 and I probably wrote the details on the target and photographed it as I didn't record the velocity or group sizes in the logbook, and don't have access to those photos now. To settle so quickly I would assume it grouped very well for me. Now, "working up a load" for my mate's rifle consisted simply of analysing a variety of data and calculating that 56gn of AR2209 should get me close to 2700fps, so I loaded ten rounds. I fired the ten rounds for a group over the chronograph in my M1903-A3 and it gave me an average of 2701fps and a 50m 42mm group (open sights off a bag). ES was high at 71fps (2566fps to 2737fps, but the highest and lowest were slightly anomalous, the middle eight rounds only had an ES of 42fps so I felt the load was just fine for deer shooting (my mate couldn't recall ever shooting a deer further than 100m). I also didn't record his (scoped) group sizes in the log, only his velocities, but it was no worse than the factory ammo he'd been using for years, so we did no further development of the load.

For competition shooting, unless you are knocking down big lumps of steel, you don't need velocity to ring gongs or punch paper. Velocity can be useful for beating wind, but a couple hundred fps makes very little difference. The 168gn ELDM for example at 1000m in a 10mph wind has about 2700mm drift at 2750fps and 3000mm drift at 2550fps. I can't see that small a difference causing a win.

One-minute at 300yd is 80mm, so 3MoA is a 240mm group.

A old timer once said to me; "I've figured out the secret formula to all my rifles. It's... <DRUMROLL> ... 100% case fill".

It's worked for me, to this day, in all my rifles, ranging from my service rifles, through to sporters, through to my target rifles.

Any service rifle should be grouping into 3moa at worst at 300m, preferably 2moa, otherwise you are just wasting your time.

In2anity, you can't be serious.

I am sure that your science of load development for military rifles goes beyond the simple act of stuffing a case with powder till it overflows.

1) get a 100% case fill - without blowing up your brain - in most old military calibres (other than 308W) means using a huge quantity of a very slow powder.

2) It is well known by now that this is the recipe for accelerated barrel wear (and probably the rest of the rifle too). If we are talking about a service rifle lucky enough to still have its original barrel, this is almost a crime - it is our duty to preserve those old weapons for the future, so let's keep the hot loads for the Howa/Tikka and the like.

3) A 100% case fill is also going to generate heavy recoil - which is going to make most shooters shoot less well. And honestly don't tell me you enjoy shooting a lightweight 1903 stuffed with 62 grains of 2209. While that rifle can be a pleasure to shoot with e.g. 48 grains of 2206H behind the same 150 grain projectile - and still very accurate.

4) I don't even talk about the longevity of your cases - I guess that 's a choice

5) From my experience of doing load developments, I haven't noticed that the hottest loads were always the best. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And sometimes the hottest load can be just barely better than a much milder load, not making it worth the pain for military shoots.

6) Military competitions are shot with no rest in various positions - I think working on your shooting technique will yield more results that punishing yourself with 48 grains of 2209 behind your SMK in your SMLE when 40 grains of 2208 may do the same job,in a much more enjoyable manner.

7) France have a very competitive and regulated national competion for military style rifles. Sometimes a (suspiciously well prepared lol ) M1 Garand make it to a podium - I can guarantee that that Garand does not run on a 60 grain load because an M1 can't handle this. Granted it's only shot at 200m but what groups at 200m will group at 300 yards.

By the way, 3 MOA at 300 yards, isn't it like a 25cm circle?
I am new to military comps and I wouldn't say it's easy to group 10 shots in that circle with military sights from the prone position, but recently I have grouped 7 out of 10 in that circle (and a case not filled at all!) with the 3 outside of the group being clearly shooter mistakes. I am working on this and hopefully I can improve (need to get a good sling ), still without putting 60 grains in my 30-06 round!

[in2anity]

In2anity, you can't be serious...

Vince24, I am being serious, and a little tongue in cheek at the same time...

Obviously the "100% case fill" quote is a sweeping generalisation that cannot always be achieved, especially in archaic milsurp cases in obscure actions. But I largely stand by the claim, especially in the forerunner actions like the No4/Springfield/Swede/m17.

OF COURSE, by 100% fill I still mean from a listed load... just right down the slow/least-dense end! This means for example using AR2209 in a SMLE or perhaps AR2213 in a Springfield/m17. Basically choose the least dense powder, and the most of it, you can safely stuff in.

About recoil - yes it's necessary evil. And also why blokes wear jackets and allowable padding. You won't catch me ever shooting a recoiler without my USMC jacket - that's how you developa a flinch!

About your "our duty to preserve old weapons" claim. For competitive service rifle shooting I certainly don't agree. If the barrel is toast, yet the rifle works for you - you should go ahead and rebarrel it. The way I see things, you are doing it a favor. It's not a rifle without a barrel, rather a shelf ornament. And the rulebooks always account for this, so long as the profile is retained. Both under SSAA and NRAA. All the best NRAA service rifle shooters are using sharp barrels, and run fast loads.

About case fill, to give context, you will never find any experienced fullbore shooter running any less than 100% fill. And it pays, the further back you go.

It's important to note that for standing and sitting stages, YES, you don't need such accuracy to still score well... because the relative face is larger. Save the clunkers for the offhand days, if you must. But moving back, for prone, particularly slow fire, you need every ounce of accuracy you can squeeze out, to be winning overall (up the tippy top of A grade). As I said, I can assure you, all the A grader's rifles will not be mechanically grouping more that 3moa - I'd claim probs a bit closer to 2moa, for a 12 round string.

About longevity of cases. Cases are consumables; you must expect them to be replaced. Load for accuracy if you want to win, and replace them as necessary. Stick to the popular calibres for the economy of scale!

About 3moa at 300m, I present to you a 300m deliberate with an m17, showing you what's possible out of a tuned fullwood milsurp, running loads it likes: https://youtu.be/GdAIPp2HFOU

TLDR: "100% case fill is the secret"

PS: Vince, good on you for taking up SR - it's highly addictive. Don't get too hung up about my claims when you are starting out - you have to have your 3ps down to a fine art before getting to caught up on load dev. But eventually you'll move up the ranks and then start to lust after accuracy more and more...

[in2anity]

For competition shooting, unless you are knocking down big lumps of steel, you don't need velocity to ring gongs or punch paper. Velocity can be useful for beating wind, but a couple hundred fps makes very little difference. The 168gn ELDM for example at 1000m in a 10mph wind has about 2700mm drift at 2750fps and 3000mm drift at 2550fps. I can't see that small a difference causing a win.

It makes all the difference actually, when you have a fishy head or tailwind. Like the Southerly's or Nor-Westers we get on the east coast partiuclarly in winter. if the wind twitches either side of the 6-oclock you can be off the target in an instant, with no opportunity to correct (given it's a timed event). Blokes load for speed and Swedes rule the roost on those days.

Also 2206H in big old 30cals (eg 303) is a poor choice for 300m+. Like I said, load density removes the vertical. Many milsurps are designed to be run hard

Nice group on your 223 btw - keepi that load Blade.

[bigpete]

So did anyone " bust " the myth yet ?

[in2anity]

So did anyone " bust " the myth yet ?

Sorry. Digressed heavily. There was method to it.

Answer. Fill the case, then shoot that one load heaps, before changing variables. Too many conclude they found their "optimal" charge weight after only a quick ladder test or three. Don't get me wrong, a ladder test isn't a bad thing. Of course it's the perfect place to start. But it's not nearly of an adequate sample to draw meaningful conclusions, from only a few outings at limited ranges. Seating depth, and neck tension, might in fact be a more important property than tweaking the charge by a few grains (provided the case is near enough full). The ammo needs to be verified at all distances as well. Fullbore shooters will stay on the same load for weeks if not months, before changing a variable. Also load resiliance is a different property to cold bore groups.

Same principal applies to factory - if it's grouping south of 1moa at 100m, then KISS buy a tonne of it and get out there, under all distance and conditions.

[Wapiti]

I don't see the problem with people asking questions on a forum that have been asked by others before.

They often list some individual gear details, experience levels and just are asking for some personal replies, as the OP did here.
And the big one, they are contributing to the site.
And, at least IMHO, reading the replies from the people that take the trouble to contribute can really be enlightening no matter what your personal experience. And I appreciate the effort others put in even if I'm not contributing on something, I learn something new every day.

[zbenga]

it 100% does and I can attest to that. On my LA105 with Berger 130 OTM's it's a laser, with Berger 144 Long Rage hybrid it's awful same brass same primer same 2209 same jump same day

on the 130 OTM's ignore the bigger holes, they are from zeroing the 45-70

[deye243]

What is this laser you speak of .
I prefer a rifle that groups tight than one that shoots flat as a laser
Yes I am being facetious I am sick of the laser reverence as no firearm anywhere in the world shoots as flat as one .

[zbenga]

I prefer flat shooting with heavy projectiles

[bigpete]

What is this laser you speak of .
I prefer a rifle that groups tight than one that shoots flat as a laser
Yes I am being facetious I am sick of the laser reverence as no firearm anywhere in the world shoots as flat as one .

Yeah its a pet peeve of mine also.
Still haven't seen the myth busted,only proven time and again that its correct

[MG5150]

I've recently watched a few videos from Ozzie Reviews where he fires 5-10 different ammo types to look at the groupings and can see the proof that different types/brands perform differently.

Cheers for the input from everyone

[ruger 375]

There has been a ton of info thrown here, some with long winded replies that are incorrect. Not to be rude but twist rate doesn't effect the way a rifle groups, only weather it will stabilize or not. ( obviously no accuracy if it doesn't stabilize......barrel length plays a way bigger key as factory ammo will posibbly be on a node a 24 inch or 22 inch but not both

[animalpest]

I have the flattest shooting .243 ever.

[on_one_wheel]

I have the flattest shooting .243 ever.

Well, my .243 shoots so fast the projectile throws it's jacket off, laces up it's running shoes and vanishes into the next dimension !

[Wapiti]

There's some interesting theories here.
I'm obsessed with getting my rifles shooting their best, even the paddock rifles. But we are enthusiasts of long range rifles too and have a few, and I have seen 100% volume fill loads shoot best with one projectile, and a completely different, faster powder shoot best with another projectile at maybe, 80% fill.
By best I mean, smallest groups.
If you're chasing ultimate velocity, the same applies.
The 100% fill myth being consistently the most accurate is just that, a myth. Those who think that may not have tried many alternatives, and that's quite normal. I'm not trying to disrespect anyone's opinions, but they aren't true in my case. No pun intended.