re: Cooling Barrel When Sighting It In?

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You’re still doing load development. Your method is just different from the majority of hand loaders. Loading 3 rounds at max, half grain and 1 grain down, is load development. Most people do 3-5 rounds per powder charge, but if 1 works for you then do what works. It’s still load development though. So you can’t really say load development is a waste of time lol

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Im not looking for group size with powder charges. I'm looking for pressure. That's the difference.

For the majority It's a waste of time doing seating depth testing and powder charge testing with 3rd groups. Chasing your tail.

Benchrest and F-class have to find what works and what doesn't but they're spending thousands of dollars $$$$$ to do it and shooting thousands of rounds per year.

The average person doesn't have the time or funds for that. So, 13 shots and you're most likely done with hand loading. The rest of your time is spent shooting at distance.

Hes right.

I was sent a video a while back called "your groups are too small." Covers a lot of things most of us kinda subconsciously know (at least I did) but never wanted to admit because ammo costs too much.

The moral of the story was basically all the "flyers" we like to blame on things like hot barrels are really just regular shots within the rifles regular accuracy cone.

Most of our rifles are less accurate than we want to admit and it's not due to barrel heat, bullets being seating 0.005" more etc etc. It's due to us not shooting statistically significant groups to find out how accurate it really is or what the zero really is.

That's one extreme, the other extreme being shoot one and call it good if you like where it landed. I'm in the middle. I aint shooting 10+ shot groups for a rifle that costs $65 to shoot 10 times. I've gotten far less concerned about "the flyer," within reason, admitted to myself that my rifles probably a 1.5 - 2 MOA rifle, and decided that's just fine for killin.

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Once you have no pressure shoot 10 at that charge weight. If they all fall into an inch, your handloading is done. If it's 3 inch group, change powder or bullets. No need to waste any more time. That's it.

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You just did load development to find max velocity in your chamber, with that powder and bullet. Nothing wrong with it, but you’re jumping to the point of the process that matters to you. If all that mattered to me was saving money and getting the most out speed out of a cartridge I’d buy a savage in an big magnum and shoot factory ammo, and in some cases I’ve done that.

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For the average person /hunter/handloader this method will achieve everything you need in much less time and money spent.

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Ohhhhh ok. I thought you were talking about actual accuracy and not hunting accuracy. For hunting accuracy you're right enough.

I fully understand the excitement and the want to go and shoot now and shoot several rounds. I've always waited until late October to sight in for deer season because of the heat.

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Because I've got a competition benchrest .308 that we took months both dialing in a round for it and finding the most consistent brass to tighten groups. Moly coatings and loading at the bench from only that brass. You can swat flies with it at 200 yards. You throw factory rounds in there or any other rounds for that matter and it's not going to get the same kind of group tightness. It will still be tight, but not like those that we've worked up.

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Competition benchrest. That's the difference. How much time and money was spent on your tiny groups? You can smash flies at 200 yds because you wanted that level of accuracy but it came with a price. Months of looking for a recipe.

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How much time and money was spent on your tiny groups? You can smash flies at 200 yds because you wanted that level of accuracy but it came with a price. It doesn't kill any better.

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Didn't realize that cost was a criteria. Yes, it's expensive and time consuming to get it that tight. But you're making broad sweeping statements about "accuracy" so I assumed you were talking about all of it.

I don't necessarily disagree with you about hunting rifles. You don't need fly swatter rifles to hit a basketball at a hundred yards.

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Odds are they all shoot damn near the same if you shot enough of them to really find out.

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Absolutely not. Go shoot an entire box each of 8 different factory loads, and there are going to be significant differences in the groups, or size of the “cone”. What you’re saying is the differences in the size of those groups don’t matter to you, or that most people can’t shoot well enough to see those differences, but they absolutely exist.

I laugh at people claiming they have a 1/2 MOA gun when they likely couldn’t put 10 into a softball as much as anyone, but you’re glossing over the propagation of error.

Ammo differences, POI shifts due to barrel (and action) temp, trigger form, scope parallax/magnification/tracking imparting a slight POI shift, and environmental conditions all contribute to where the bullet is gonna go and I’m probably still leaving stuff out. The contribution any individual factor makes might be small or large depending on the shooter or gun, but they all add up. Im a firm believer moment of pie plate is good enough to kill a deer, and sometimes one error will “correct” for the other, but it’s still not that hard to stack enough frickups on top of one another to hit gut instead of lung. How many deer you see a year spined, liver, or gut hit? Those are the extreme examples, but even for a competent shooter the more of those factors you work through and rule out, the better odds you have of recovering an animal cleanly. Load development/ammo is one factor entirely within your control, at your leisure, and also one that also forces you to spend time on the trigger and address the others, so I hardly consider that a waste of time or money. Whether it’s from floating, the chamber, lockup, or improperly torqued action screws, a lot of lower cost sporter contour hunting rifles are gonna see POI shifts from a cold bore shot, and it’s not a waste of time to at least understand if your gun has an issue with it or not.

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couldn't tell you if my eyes were open when I jerked the trigger or if I was even breathing..

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Yep, a lot of this is about building forgiveness into it, to help you when you’re about to shite your pants. A good light trigger, dialed in ammo, and understanding how your POI might shift are all things you can do before that moment to shave a few inches off the prayer you throw up.