"1 MOA, all day long"

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Next time I get out, which will be awhile, I'm going to try both the target in post #87 and the "penny challenge". I've still got to try my own "How far can you hit a baseball?" challenge from a couple of summers ago too. Should be able to hit a baseball at 300 yards if you can consistently shoot MOA.
 
When I moved down here from No Co out west of Woodland Park we had one shot match at 100yd limited to sporter rifles and 6x scopes then we had Dynamite shoot out western Co

http://www.gufd.org/gu/dynamite-shoot/ Good friend of mine won the 1000yd few years back with sporter pre 64 model 70 270 and he also won couple up in Mt before moving here.


we have few shooters in our gun club that shot match like this and it's held down NRA center Raton

http://www.snipershide.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1230667

I think their lot more shooters that can do MOA but don't brag.
 
I think most current production rifles are perfectly capable of MoA accuracy, including Art's citation of "all day long" indicating repeatability (not a a literal marathon shoot).

However, most shooters are not capable of the same.
They either don't care, have poor technique, or don't practice enough. (I'm drifting farther and farther into the latter bracket. :()



The majority of statements I see along the lines of "1 MoA all day long" are referring to the rifle, and sometimes the ammunition. Almost never, do you see some one say "I can shoot 1 MoA all day long."
It's a statement about the rifle and/or ammunition's consistency and repeatability; not the shooter's abilities.
 
Since I've had plenty of time to learn the capabilities of my rifles and their ammunition, I wanted to test my own precision, and a combination of precision and accuracy, during my last shooting trip.

I wanted something with some small, challenging targets; an appearance that was NOT pleasing to the eye (distracting); and something a little different.
I ended up building the target in a CAD program, so I could plot 1:1 on paper.


This is what I came up with - with minor inspiration from "Smack the Smiley":
The circles were intentionally left without a center point. -They're are good for groups, while challenging yourself to keep everything inside the lines.
The diamond is great for 'distance from center' shooting. (Single shot, or group.)
And, the smileys, of course, are for wiping that stupid grin off their faces. ;)

attachment.php


And, the dimensions:

attachment.php

Some of the dimensions are a bit funky, because my printer's scaling is only accurate to about +/-0.020" per 2 inches, or so. Through trial and error, I tweaked the virtual dimensions to give me something more accurate on paper.


It sure does make you feel like an idiot, when you miss that 5/8" smiley at 100 yards, with a rifle you KNOW will run 1/2 MoA. But, it fells pretty good, when you can wipe that smirk off the face of the 5/32" and 5/16" smileys.
 

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I have a .308 that will do 0.5 MoA "all day." Unfortunately, there are few days that I am good enough to make it work to that level. Also, what i've found that greatly affects the accuracy repeatability is the concentrcity of the ammunition. I've gaged a number of factory "target" ammunition and a lot of it has highly variable round-to-round concentricity. This type of variability has a huge affect on highly accurate rifles.

If I'm using the rifle in a situation where high accuracy is imperative - I go through every round with a concentricity gage and tweak the bullets in the case until the round-to-round variation is under 0.001 - and you can see the difference in accuracy.

That's what I find so interesting about precision rifles and shooting - figuring out all of interactions in the entire system from the load and bullet type to the actual physical configuration of the finished round.
 
"the concentrcity of the ammunition"

interesting....

My #1 ammo complaint for factory .223 69g match rounds is overall length. With my Savage I can feel the slight bolt pressure of a long round touching at the last moment of chambering. The lack of bullet jump increases the pressure slightly and will cause a round to strike about 1/2 inch high at 100 yards. This is less common with Black Hills or Federal Premium, but I do notice 2-3 in most every box of PRVI. (but $0.80, $1.10, and $0.50 per round respectively)
 
Nope.
They're just for reference.

For some reason, the first image's URL was broken. It has been fixed. ;)
(My browser probably had a cached copy of the image when I submitted the post, so I couldn't see that it was broken.)
 
buckhorn_cortez, if you go through every round with a concentricity gage and tweak the bullets in the case until the round-to-round variation is under 0.001 - and you can see the difference in accuracy, you are probably the only person on this planet to do so with a .308 Win. cartridge.

And your worst groups with bullets having .002" to .003" runout would have to be no larger than 1/4 inch at 100 yards.

Nobody in the top levels of competitive shooting with the .308 Win. cartridge would suscribe to this premise.

Besides, if you're measuring bullet runout with the cartridge resting on the body right behind the shoulder for the gauge's front reference and the case body right in front of the extractor rim for the back reference, you are not measuring bullet runout relative to how the case neck and bullet aligns in the chamber. The case body right behind the shoulder ain't where the cartridge centers in the front of the chamber when it's fired.
 
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Not sure of the MOA on a bad day with many of my rifles. Though I can say most everyone of them will shoot better than I can milk them for on any day.

My Savage Model 12 FSSV will shoot sub half MOA with my hand loads. Under MOA with cheapo crappy ammo any day. My CZ 527 American will shoot one hole of caliber size for 5 shots till it warms up, and the hole gets a little bigger.

With iron sights the best I do most times is 3 to 4 MOA with any ammo. My eye sight is the limiting factor in that.
 
I go on a two mile walk two or three times a week for exercise. Yesterday I took a target and target stand and went 1.5 miles in one direction instead of a mile to land I can shoot on, I never shoot there, but I have permission to and its fairly remote. I sat up the target and walked back home. Today I took my Remington 700 BDL Varmint .308, range finder and spotting scope and walked over where I'd set up the target. Light was still good as that was about 15:00 this afternoon. I checked the distance with my laser range finder until I was as close to exactly 200 yards from the target I sat up yesterday as I could get.

I used only the bi-pod for support and I shot a ten shot group at the right top orange circle fairly rapidly. I can't really say what size it is because obviously two shots missed the paper. Then I was going to slow fire five at the upper left, but after the first four I decided to try and hit the bulls eye on the shoot 'n see.

The eight shots that made it on the paper of the ten shot group measure six inches and the four shots on the left measure two and a half inches. And as you can see the bulls eye shot missed. Not bad for the worst, high powered bolt action rifle I own. Well, excepting my old Enfield and Smith-Corona 1903-a3. Also it has a 3x-9x Burris Fulfield II with the ballistic plex reticle. That scope can only be described as rudimentary by todays standards.

IMAG0085_zps95668c31.jpg
 
So after reading and contributing to this post, I wanted to try my 'MOA all day' capability. :)

Arrived at the range with a newly mounted scope (added new base / rings) and a 50 pack of Black Hills. (normally shoot cheaper ammo, but in a shortage, I will pay $0.80 a pull) Shot 5 to warm up the barrel and find my 0, shot a couple more making fine adjustments and a few retesting after replacing zeroed caps.

With 40 rounds remaining, I dialed down 0.5" (to preserve my point of aim) and fired the following 8 five shot groups onto my targets 1 inch dots.

Here is the setup.

Savage 12 FCV .223
69g Black Hills match
100 yard outdoor range
temp 38F
wind 7-10 from about 80d (so very minor)

Before I did the measurments with On Target, I thought I had blown it with one target, but I narrowly snuck in under 1 MOA.

I shot (in MOA) from worst to best....
.908
.843
.780
.558
.494
.465
.342
.257

Is 40-rounds-in-a-row 'all day'...... debatable, but I will claim at least a tie. :)

TgtGfx_zps7db89bfd.jpg
 
So to the OP: There are enough guns out there that can. There are probably a lot fewer people behind those rifles that can. It's not the tools fault that the wielder is not capable of using it to the full advantage

BINGO. Plus 1
Click to expand...

+2.

I've got a couple of rifles that can (and have) shot 0.5 MOA reliably.

I certainly can't. :D
 
Best examples of a barrel shooting 1 MOA all day long, or at least for many, many shots, are the test barrels used by Lake City Army Ammo Plant testing M118 or M853 7.62 National Match ammo lots. They'll put 200 to 300 shots in a single group. Their best lots' group have a mean shot hole radius of 1.7 to 1.8 inches and the extreme spread's under 6 inches. Tests are done at 600 yards, so that's MOA all day long to me.
 
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