Originally Posted by
Three44s
I have been loading since one year after Nixon resigned and have never found loads with significantly different components to print very close.
Each major load change is it’s own animal .... so to speak.
A different bullet of the same weight is a major load change for the purposes of this discussion.
At any sort of “range” you will need to develop a load that suits you for that rifle and shoot that one until another suits you and be sighted in for one at a time of your choosing.
You can fire other loads for group size in the meantime and here is how I capitalize on that:
I make my own targets on Excel, the spreadsheet program. I designed my targets around the concept of four solid black squares with an equal amount of white between them. I adjust the white space so that at my chosen power setting and range with that particular cross hair thickness I am left with jus a bit of white showing around the hairs.
These targets are labeled on the screen in a corner of the page in a way that suits me (within the file).
In the field my target stand is designed so I can rotate my target backer (used political signs) 4 Times 90 degrees thus giving me four “targets” on one target paper that have those four black squares. Typically I shoot my sequence of load tests in related groups on the same target ie. same case, primer, powder used, bullet, seating depth etc with the only change being powder charge between the four groups.
There is a tendency for newbies to hop around like a grasshopper expecting to find this magical load or that and it just lands in their lap.
Trust me, that is rare.
A fellow can hop around in this business and leap right over an excellent sweet spot for a particular rifle and never be the wiser or one can dig in and ferret out those gold nuggets of accuracy.
On another note, I never really got hair splitting accuracy from spherical powders such as in a large case like the 243. Unfortunatley it has always seemed that I had to resort to the stick powders to get a fine edge “on my sword”. I did have a real fly shooter in my 22-250 with WW760 for a while at half throttle .... that is until Winchester went from the metal can to the plastic jug! From then on my Canjar triggered 788 Remington was a boat anchor with that powder. I found my next thrill with Varget but never got it sub .5 MOA again .... just faster.
Like they say, “First your money, then your clothes!”
Best regards and good shooting
Three44s
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