Diagnosing Hunting Rifle Accuracy, Part One

’m Ia chicken when it comes to difficult subjects but some things have got to be addressed. The first two have fixes of their own, so let’s talk about rifle accuracy. When a customer puts his rifle on the counter for you to fix, he may have preconceived notions of what needs to be done to get it shooting at that 1/2 MOA (minute of angle) mark they know it’s capable of. If you’re really a good gunsmith you can make that happen; if not… well. The first thing that comes to my mind is questions.

Is it a lever, pump, single-shot, or bolt action? Is it new or just bought used? Is it a trusted rifle that suddenly quit shooting as well as it used to? There are many more questions that will come later. Let’s start with the kind of firearm, what kind of accuracy is expected, and what level the manufacturer maintains is "in spec." All of these types of rifles can shoot well for their intended purpose if they are properly cared for.

Levers and pumps are not renowned for being more than 2-4 MOA shooters, but many will surprise us. Single-shots and bolt actions are the accuracy kings, with the nod going to bolt actions. Along with the action type the next question should be what is this rifle intended to do? A heavy-barreled varmint rig with a powerful scope should generally shoot anywhere from an inch down.

A big-bore double intended to shoot elephants at close This group is representative for this pump-action rifle with factory ammo. range is a viable rifle if both barrels will overlap at four, five, or even six inches. Elephants and Cape buffalo have a huge kill zone compared to a prairie dog and are shot at much closer range. The next question is what accuracy level does your customer expect. Is it realistic or just so much powder smoke? Is he known to you?

Right now I want to insert a caveat: Field accuracy and bench accuracy are not the same. There are different philosophies for each discipline that must overlap but we’re talking about wringing the most accuracy from our rifle regardless of how well it is used in the field. The shooter is actually the main influence on any sort of accuracy and due homage must be paid to his influence (good or bad) regarding what he and his rifle can do.

In the early eighties when synthetic stocks were first coming into vogue I chanced upon a man at my local range who’d just paid a gunsmith to install a fiberglass stock on his 7mm- 08 Remington deer rifle. I didn’t know this man but I did know who had fitted his stock. The gunsmith did a good job and I thought his rifles were elegant for the price. My new shooting friend immediately complained to me that his rifle didn’t shoot any better than before he’d shelled out his money for the modification.

It shot as well, just not any better. I try not to get into any arguments with people I just meet and refrained from informing him that perhaps the stock wasn’t intended to make his gun shoot better than usual but to be more stable and consistent in the field. The big issue was having a rifle impervious to moisture thereby eliminating the tendency of a wood stock to warp and change impact. Other accuracy measures could be taken but just the stock was not the cure-all this guy thought it was supposed to be.

This shooter and others have different expectations of reality. He might not have been as knowledgeable as his gunsmith thought he was. The ‘smith just took the job rather than having a little talk to make sure they were on the same page. This guy was bad-mouthing the gunsmith who had

actually done a good job, but the old word-of-mouth gotcha was at play. A lever action and some of the old pump-actions are usually not expected to shoot any better than four MOA. While I haven’t fired a huge selection of these two types, I have one of each that will do much better than that, and anecdotal evidence proves my point. The first is a lever-action Model 94 Winchester chambered in .30-30 Winchester. It isn’t anything special, bought long ago at Kmart for around a hundred bucks.

I have shot this gun with jacketed factory and handloads at around two inches at 100 yards with open sights if I do my part. I switched to shooting cast bullets almost exclusively with it and installed a Williams Fool Proof receiver sight because these loads shot so low the factory buckhorn rear sight could not be adjusted to meet point of impact. With a good load I’m getting around two inch rounded groups at fifty yards.

This level of accuracy is more than good enough for plinking, and I think with more load development and the right bullet I can do better than that. Would this kind of accuracy satisfy your customer? I bought five hundred .30 caliber flat-nose cast bullets suitable to shoot in this rifle from a commercial manufacturer. On the web site where I ordered them was a review stating that they didn’t shoot worth a darn. I was able to obtain the groups mentioned above without too much trouble.

The difference is that I know a little bit about loading cast bullets but don’t think the reviewer did. Cast bullets have been used in rifles for centuries but I’m afraid that we have forgotten a lot of the knowledge that sustained our grandfathers on this subject. Maybe this man’s test rifle didn’t have the right kind of twist or rifling type to wring out the best in accuracy with lead-alloy projectiles (Marlin Microgroove are an example.) Maybe his loading technique wasn’t up to snuff.

Maybe the groove diameter was not standard. Who knows? These bullets are flat base with no gas check. I started by weighing all of them on an electronic scale and sorted the bullets by weight. I flared the case mouth properly with a set of RCBS Cowboy dies that are of slightly different dimensions than their regular dies to load cast bullets without deformation of the base. Bullet hardness was checked using Lee Precision’s handy little tool for this purpose.

Lee’s Modern Reloading has an excellent treatise on how hardness effects pressure on cast bullets. The Lyman’s Cast Bullet Handbook and Black Powder Handbook & Loading Manual, countless articles from Rifle and Handloader magazines and others have been consulted for years. A lot of cast bullets shooters should read more and com- The Model 141 Gamemaster in .35 Remington is not drilled and tapped for receiver sights or scope mounts.

The Gamemaster Model 760 is scope ready. 280 Remington using bulkbought 150 grain Core Lokts. I taped a dime there to show how small it is. plain less. One-hole accuracy can be achieved with cast bullet shooting if the Nimrod is willing to take the time to learn. I will give one more example before we move on. Several years ago I met up with a man and his partner shooting at the 100-yard bench.

He was using a now forgotten brand of lever action trying out another now forgotten brand of so-called .45 Colt "cowboy loads" he had picked up at a local shop for an outrageous price. He was disgustedly flicking the brass off the bench onto the dirt even though we’re supposed to clean up after ourselves. He told me this ammo shot poorly. I pegged this guy as a tyro who knew absolutely everything about shooting. What did he expect cowboy ammo to do except go bang and knock over a steel target at ten feet?

That was all it was made for, but he wanted inch groups at 100 yards. My mama didn’t raise no fools, so I asked him if I could recover his empty brass. He gave me a sarcastic, "Help yourself," and I scarfed up fifty once-fired cases. I’ve loaded them with cast bullets (probably getting better accuracy than this shooter) about five times so far just using standard .45 Colt loads and I still have a ways to go before the necks start splitting.

375 H&H caliber, certainly capable of "minute of Cape Buffalo" groups. 30-30. A little tweaking will do better. His partner had a bolt-action rifle and asked me if I knew anything about sighting in as he couldn’t hit the paper in the same place twice. As is my habit, I might have tried to give him a hand, but I begged away from these two and left the range without even shooting my rifle. After observing their behavior I was not in my normal Good Samaritan mood. These area few of examples of customer mindsets.

Suck it in and try to explain why what they want may not be what they can get. Be prepared to bite your tongue when they outline what they might think of your gunsmithing abilities. I was reading a book printed in 1974 written by a respected gun writer about what kind of accuracy we can realistically expect. At that time his standard for state-of-the-art winning benchrest rifles was under 0.2 inches. That’s five five-shot groups at 100 yards averaged.

Even today if you can shoot that well you’ll have a good chance of taking home gold. Wind, weather, loss of concentration, anything can take an errant shot out of the group, sometimes way out. This extreme level of accuracy can only be achieved using tight custom chambers with neck turned cases, a perfectly bedded rifle and barrel, complicated loading technique, and a competitor as consistent as the rifle.

A drop of sweat in the eye, a twitched trigger finger, not correctly reading that last wind flag down at the end, or other little things will take you out of the winner’s circle clear up to that last critical shot. If you are not working on benchrest rifles just forget about this stuff, right? No! Remember that the BR crowd has given us most of the standards for accurizing rifles known today. Back in the 1940s an inch group was almost a miracle. The bench resters have led the way.

Throughout this article we will be promoting techniques pioneered and perfected by those who came before. If you have time, the bench-rest game will give you aper-

spective on accuracy that is difficult to ignore. What does that have to do with our fictional customer who doesn’t give a darn about shooting off a bench because there aren’t any in the woods? The only way to know how your rifle will shoot is to fire it from a good rest using the best technique you can muster. We already know how you can shoot, but what’s that have to do with your rifle? Awhile back I was shooting at my local club at 200 yards.

A man and his father pulled in the parking lot and started to take out their gear from the truck. They came up to me and the old man asked if I was getting ready to go out west since I was shooting at the longest range my club offers. I told him no. He became livid and red in the face while he informed me that he and his son hunted in West Virginia and never sighted their rifles at more than 100 yards. This guy was actually angry at me for simply shooting my rifle at a different distance than he thought suitable.

How much I would have liked to explain to this fellow that I wasn’t testing my own ability as I already knew how well I could shoot but wanted to see how well my rifle could at that range. I also wanted to inform him that I usually sighted all my scoped, bolt-action deer rifles at two hundred yards, allowing for a vital zone hit at any distance in between 220 Swift. by simply holding where you want to hit within an inch or two. Assuming an eight inch kill zone, that’s not bad.

Since I just shot my last buck at a distance of over 200 yards it wasn’t unreasonable to sight in at that distance. Don’t they have fields in West Virginia? His son just looked embarrassed for his opinionated father. I told them I was done anyway and they marched down to the with their deer rifles, probably to shoot all day and still not really be sighted in. Let’s check some figures from Hornady’s Handbook of Cartridge Reloading.

Shooting my .300 Winchester Magnum and Hornady 165 grain boat tail spire points at 3200 feet per second, a 200 meter zero has the bullet never going higher than 1.6 inches or lower than 7.3 inches at 300 meters. I use the same bullet in .308 Winchester at 2700-2800 fps and the same zero is 2.4 inches at the highest point and no lower than 9.9 inches at 300. Some of you may have bought into this maximum point blank range nonsense, whatever.

When I’m shooting at game I want to know the range exactly past 200 yards as I know the drop and can aim accordingly. Up to 200 yards where most deer are shot I aim dead on and get a good hit. I’m using yards because I can’t estimate meters as well, although my range finder can.

A 6-20X Leupold target scope helped make this one possible. Don’t try this with a 4X scope. They are not gospel, anyway. Every rifle is a law unto itself and needs to be shot at different ranges in different conditions to reveal its true accuracy potential. So this old boy and his son probably have sat on the same stump for twenty years and killed a decent buck the first day. But, by the same token, while he doesn’t mind spreading his opinions around, maybe we should be more cautious while still telling the truth.

I am willing to bet that these hunters have never seen a ballistic table in their lives. Introducing them to a few facts and figures can be rewarding if handled with respect and care. After all, none of us, including me, knows everything. Maybe I might learn something from them if we could have a rational conversation and leave our biases in the truck.

Printed ballistic tables and computer programs cannot be totally 35 Remington (left) and 6.5×55 Swede (right) are not necessarily picked for accuracy potential but will shoot very well. If there is a winner as most accurate cartridge it will be determined at the benchrest matches, not the game fields. relied upon. Each rifle shoots differently. The old GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) relates to what data is entered.

If your scope is mounted 1.75 inches over the bore line instead of 1.5 inches, or your temperature that day is 65 degrees instead of 80, or the wind is actually hitting you in the face at ten miles an hour instead of five, or you set your chronograph 12 feet from the muzzle instead of 15, you will get skewed results. These programs and tables are helpful, just not gospel. Each rifle must be shot at the different ranges to determine real trajectory.

Even then, it may shoot a little differently under changing conditions. Even professionals sometimes forget such things and start talking in absolutes. Be careful where this can lead you in a talk with your customer. Since I am a story teller I will share one more. I arrived at my local club’s fifty yard range and found two other shooters there before me. Since we have twenty benches on that range this presented no difficulty.

After exchanging pleasantries, they cooled the range so I could hang some targets and we all settled down to shoot. I was shooting a 7mm-08 Remington sporter weight rifle. I wasn’t really checking accuracy per se, (actually, I was just there to have a good time and enjoy the weather) but I was "testing" some of my handloads to see if any had any potential. I slipped on a PAST Recoil Pad on my shoulder and fired away. I noticed between firing strings that these guys were looking at me queerly.

I had a short conversation with them and one sneered that if he had to wear a sissy pad he’d stop shooting. He was shooting a lever-

35 Remington. action .45-70 with factory loads. He proudly displayed his latest target of three shots touching at this range. Pretty good shooting I told him and went about my business. I’ve said somewhere before I don’t pick arguments with people I meet at the range (unless they really piss me off) so I just shrugged. These guys were just typical shooters who had their own opinions and believed that three shot groups translated into one inch at one hundred yards and two inches at two hundred yards and so on.

I would have bet my rifle that if I went with this guy to the two hundred yard range he couldn’t duplicate a MOA group in five tries. As far as the "sissy" pad goes it was obvious that these guys didn’t understand the fact that recoil is cumulative. Even the light recoil from using a .22-250 Remington during an extended prairie dog shoot can create a flinch at the end of the day. The more you shoot the more effect it has.

He had probably shot around six rounds; I was planning on shooting many more than that and had also shot at least that much the day before. I could have told him about the torn rotator cuff surgery I was just recovering from and how painful it could be for me to shoot in the first place, or the arthritis my orthopedic surgeon told me she scooped out of my shoulder like sugar on a teaspoon. Why make a man feel foolish just because you can?

If I spent my time in that manner I wouldn’t get anything else done due to the plethora of candidates. The point is this man thought his fifty yard group qualified as the end-all accuracy test of his rifle. He probably doesn’t shoot deer any further than that. Good for him, but believing that single group translates 243 Winchester varmint rifle. The little flier may have been my fault. When working these types of rifles here is what to aspire to. A lot of them may not live up to it.

By the way the group is measured outside to outside at 1/2". None of us will ever know everything about it. to unbelievable accuracy out to infinity is an attitude we sometimes encounter when casual shooters come in the shop. You aren’t going to change their minds about what accuracy is and a good three round group at fifty yards is more than adequate for this type of rifle.

You’re not going to please everybody when it comes to how their rifle will shoot but there are definite techniques that can be used to make almost any rifle shoot better and, hopefully, make it a reliable tool in the field. Next time we’ll get into the nitty gritty of trying to get our rifles to shoot as well as we want or expect. AG