Shooting for a new type of “Magic Group”

[Flintsack]

I put this in general discussion, because the benchrest shooters are not the only ones who are interested in long range accuracy. Nor are the field target shooters the only ones who are trying to get inside a circle at a certain distance. A whole bunch of guys just try to shoot good groups for fun, but don’t compete.


My new airgun goal is to shoot sub 2 MOA 20 shot groups at 100 yards...in less than ideal conditions. 


I spent most of a summer a few years back trying to shoot 10 shot groups first under MOA and then under 1/2 MOA (ouch). This is WAY harder than 10 shot MOA groups in great conditions. 


I have been hanging out with the 100 yd benchrest guys for the last couple weeks during my isolation. As far as I can tell, if you could keep a 25 shot group under 2 inches at 100 yards you would do fairly well. 

Sound easy? It’s not.

I spent the last week fooling around with the best rifle I had available for this task. It is a 10 m Walther rifle converted to a 30 foot pound silhouette competitive set up, it was put together by AZ Including the handcarved stock. It is a 22 caliber, it started out life is a 177 m rifle. The stock is beautiful, but it’s designed for silhouette shooting. It is horrible for resting on a bag. So I shot all my groups with just a front rest and a flat bag behind. The scope is a 25X loophole with target dot. Not ideal when you need to hold 5 inches to the left, to hit your 2 inch circle.

my crown let me down. My new barrel should be showing up today. I have a feeling I will have a little less Windrift shooting a 25 caliber heavy.

below are my first attempts at this new to me sport at 100 yards, with the above rifle shooting 18 Grain JSB. 


conditions were medium 2 to 4 inch winds with switches. Temp 45 degrees. 


sometimes the circle ️ seems to have crypto-nite.

25 shots

 

[2manyAirGunz]

 

[Chuck-in-Ohio]

I would think that giving yourself some sort of an aim point inside the circle would help things, as opposed to using a blank 2 inch aim point.

Or is that frowned upon for purposes of training?



Not judging, just curious. 

 

[JCD]

Good goal and very much along the lines of my efforts (last year at least). I have a couple guns that theoretically perform well enough to do 1" groups at 100 yards, the shooter has been the problem. You're a better shot than me and I remember your posts so yeah. While I've been sticking with 10 shot groups, I've just barely got to under 3 moa for the 10 at 100y but I've gotten down to .75" at 75y over the winter so I'm looking forward to 100 again (different location). Weather here is just turning good for me so the effort starts again as soon as the puddles between me and the target box become a little more walkable.

 

[sonny]

Thats some really good groups at 100 in my opinion specially with a small caliber pellet. nice shooting.

 

[Yo]

I would be really curious as to how well the H&N Barracudas would do in your gun YO!

 

[Yo]

The 25gr JSB King (providing its from a decent lot batch of course) or even the Benjamin domes should do really well out of an FX Crown at 100 yards typically sub moa Consistently YO!

 

[davelarson]

Great challenge. I like the idea of the less than ideal conditions too. I’m going to try today with my Theoben .20 cal. Unfortunately I just sold my Crown .25 or that’s what I’d use for this game. I’ll post my attempt.

 

[davelarson]

Whatever you do today, shoot for a little while! I turned off the news and set up targets for a fun shooting session. It immediately raised my spirit! Here’s the results of my afternoon shooting session using my Theoben .20 cal. For some reason I didn’t do very well at 75 yards. But I’m happy with the other ranges. I’m shooting the 13.73 grain pellet at about 860 FPS. I shot at least one magazine per group and more for others. There was almost no breeze until the group that stretches out. It was the perfect example of how far the wind moves a light pellet. I kept one aim point and just watched the growing wind pushing the pellets further and further. I just had to sell my .25 Crown or I would have tried it too. Next I’ll be trying groups with my HW44’s at 40 and 75 yards, I’ll be using scopes and shooting off of bags otherwise my groups will look like one shotgun blast