How much accuracy do you NEED?

[Ignition Override]

A direct question deserves a direct response:
Hitting a clay pigeon from 50 yards. It's all about fun.

A few times a year when visiting a buddy's land in Hernando MS, if an Enfield #4 or SKS manages to hit a gong at 320 yards, which does happen, that's nice, but not really necessary.
Life's too short to be concerned about it. All of my guns have only iron sights.

 

[Llama Bob]

If the definition of a 2 moa shooter is someone who can hold the centerline of the bore within a 2 moa circle as the bullet exits the barrel, and they have a rifle capable of keeping all shots within a 1/2 moa circle centered about the centerline of the bore as the bullet exits the muzzle, the worst group should be 2.5 moa.

Nope. You're about to learn something.

Let's say we're quoting group size (for shooters, guns, and shooter + gun combinations) as the circle they can keep 95% of shots in. What number we pick (50% vs. 95% vs. 99%) is arbitrary, as long as we use the same one for everything. Now let's focus on just one dimension (arbitrarily, horizontal) and just the shots that go one direction (arbitrarily, right). So for our 2 MOA shooter, 95% of shots that go right will be no more than 1" right of center at 100y (I'm going to use shooter's MOA). Similarly, for our gun, we expect 95% to be no more than 1/4" right. Now, if we followed your logic, the 95% line for the gun + shooter would be at 1 1/4" right. But it's not. Because in order for that to happen you'd have to have something like a maximally bad excursion from the rifle AND from the shooter at the same time. The probability of each is only 5%. The probability of their independently occurring together is the product - 0.05 * 0.05 = 0.0025 or 0.25%. So we haven't found the 95% line for the shooter+gun combo, we've found something like the 99.75% line. Before someone get's excited, the preceding math is not exact and I know it - it's just to get you thinking about what would have to happen to get the bullet that far out. The 95% line will be closer in. Wally's math (which is the exact math) tells you where that 95% line for shooter + gun will be - sqrt(2^2+0.5^2) = 2.06 MOA, or 1.03" from target center.

What this means is that the combination of multiple independent sources of error results in an error less than their straight sum but bigger than any of them individually. Furthermore, it's dominated by the biggest term. Doing things to reduce the smaller terms will have limited impact. For example, if you improved the gun to a 1/4 MOA gun above, the combination would improve only to 2.015 MOA. You improved the gun by 0.25 MOA but the combo by only 0.045 MOA - less than 1/5th your supposed improvement showed up on the target. There's diminishing returns.
.

 

[hdwhit]

Llama Bob wrote:
They didn't. The first whitetail was successfully taken in 1986 when Nightforce scopes came out.

I KNEW IT!

All that venison sausage people kept trying to feed me when I was a teenager must have come from red deer or mule deer.

 

[hdwhit]

JohnKSa wrote:
Thank goodness someone finally provided this clarification. This discussion had run to over 3 pages and yet, clearly no one had a clue what any one else was talking about because people were sometimes using the term "accuracy" instead of precision

Well, if the question had originally been asked with the word "precision" rather than "accuracy" would the posts have been all that different?

How many people, in their day to day lives, use the terms as anything other than synonyms? If someone wants people to think about the distinction before answering the question, it's necessary to not only change the word in the question but also post a definition of each term and probably some examples as to how the term should be properly applied.

 

[spitballer]

voted 1 moa or less, for a 21 lb .223 range-only bolt rifle with experimental handloads.

 

[JackSprat]

Nowdays I expect more than I need..The reason I say that is because before I started reloading about 4 years ago I shot nothing but store bought ammo,and when I lined a rifle in it was usually shooting from the hood of a truck at a target set up at a guestimated 100 yards.If I was just a hair high,and a little to the left I was satisified,mainly because I didn't want to shoot up all my shells...I now have a sturdy bench set up down in the bottom,and I shoot from a store bought rest,at a measured 100 yards,and I can get good enough groups from a lot of my guns that after a few shots you are likely goint to be touching holes..I had just as good luck hunting before I got as picky as I am now..I could have the best shooting rifle in the world,and still not shoot as good off hand as I could with an average rifle from the bench.

 

[CoalTrain49]

I knew what the OP meant. The term accuracy is used more than precision when people talk about bullets striking targets. That's probably why the thread ran 3 pages without anyone making the distinction. We all knew what the OP meant or at least I think we did. He was talking about gear.

Im curious how much accuracy we all personally require from a gun for us to like it?

You still have to break it down though when you start talking about gear because we are trying to measure the performance of that gear. I'm not an old hand when it comes to rifles or even pistols. My experience has been mostly with shotguns, both target and field. I do have some experience hunting with a rifle but the gear in use today wasn't around in the 60's and 70's. I recently took up rifle and pistol target shooting so I'm interested in what effect the gear has in improving the shooters ability to place bullets in tight little groups. I just purchased my first heavy barrel rifle and will take it to the range on Friday. I'm going down the rabbit hole looking for the best gear for noncompetitive bench rest. If I get it dialed in I might try shooting for score.

 

[Walkalong]

A 2MOA gun and a .5MOA shooter add up the same as a .5 MOA gun and a 2MOA shooter.

My Benchrest gun? I wanted it to be able to shoot zeros, so when I didn't get the wind right or had a slight gun handling error, I could still shoot 1's or 2s at 100 yards and 2's and 3's at 200 yards. Sometimes bigger of course. Sometimes a lot bigger.

A hunting rifle for deer where the longest shot is 100 or so yards? 1 MOA is gracious plenty. My .308 with a so so barrel is lucky to do 1.5 and I use it.

Varmint hunting? My .222 Mag heavy barrel will shoot .25 to .5 if I do my part, never over .75. I would not be happy with 1 MOA for a rifle where I would be shooting small targets at 300 to 400 yards, and sometimes farther.

Berm blaster? Who cares.

My Mini 14 does between 2 & 3 MOA, but it is fun at the range and is minute of bad guy at any distance I would be shooting at an attacker from.

Different needs, different wants. Some folks want .5 rifles to hunt with at 100 yards, and that's cool, it's just not really needed.

 

[entropy]

I voted 2. I don't shoot competitively anymore, so for my applications, 2 moa is fine. I wish some of my milsurps could do 2 moa.

 

[MCMXI]

Let's say we're quoting group size (for shooters, guns, and shooter + gun combinations) as the circle they can keep 95% of shots in.

So the generally accepted definition of a 2 moa shooter is someone that can keep the muzzle within a 2 moa circle 95% of the time and the generally accepted definition of a 0.5 moa rifle is a rifle that puts all shots within a 0.5 moa circle centered about the muzzle 95% of the time? Just trying to get the definitions sorted out.

 

[Llama Bob]

So the generally accepted definition of a 2 moa shooter is someone that can keep the muzzle within a 2 moa circle 95% of the time and the generally accepted definition of a 0.5 moa rifle is a rifle that puts all shots within a 0.5 moa circle centered about the muzzle 95% of the time? Just trying to get the definitions sorted out.

Those are the definitions I used, yes.

I'm not sure that there's a generally accepted definition - lots of people just shoot 3 or 5 rounds and measure it and say that's the "MOA" of the rifle and ignore the time they shot it and the group was twice that size. Flyer, don'tch know?

But it is a reasonable way of specifying it that conforms to most people's intuition - if you have a gun that shoots 95% within 1 MOA, most of your groups will be 1 MOA or less. it also happens to be a definition that, combined with some generally true assumptions about how shots are distributed from a gun, lets you do math and see how the factors interact. The choice of 95% is arbitrary - for example, for ICBMs and other land attack missies they look at the circle 50% of missiles will fall in. It's called circular error probable (or CEP). The math works the same.

 

[Llama Bob]

Incidentally, if you want to see an example of how this works, it's pretty easy. Scrounge up a couple of Garands - a CMP Special with a new Criterion barrel, and a rack grade (or better yet completely shot out) beater. Same trigger, same sights, radically different mechanical accuracy. Compare them off a bench, and you see 5 MOA of difference or whatever. Compare them from offhand standing, and you'll see almost no difference - usually about a 1MOA adder for the worse rifle beyond the base 10-15 MOA offhand groups.

 

[Nature Boy]

I keep thinking of golf analogies (something I used to do a lot and obsess over before kids came along and ate up all my free time/tee time)

The first time I broke 90 I thought, "all right, I've figured it out. I'll never shoot over 100 again!"

Wrong

Then one day I shot a 79 and thought my days of shooting in the 90's were over.

Wrong. I shot a lot more rounds in the 90's than I ever did in the 70's

My expectations never quite live up to reality, which is human nature.

 

[someguy2800]

I've learned that you can pretty much take anybody's quoted group and double it and that is what the gun will really do. People love to shoot a .5" 3 shot group once and then forever go on saying its a .5 moa gun assuming the other 100 1" groups they shot were there fault. I think a guns true accuracy is a 10 or 20 shot group including flyers, or the largest of 5 5 shot groups. If a gun shoots .3, .5, .9, .7, and .6 moa 5 shot groups then its a .9 moa gun, not a .3 moa gun.

 

[Art Eatman]

Whether "accuracy" or "precision", I think in terms of group size at the benchrest.

Bench rest competition? One-hole group is the goal. Self defense in an urban situation? 4MOA is probably adequate.

Long range competition? Whatever it takes for the rifle to put everything inside the ten ring.

Prairie dogs to 300 or 400 yards? Half MOA works, I know.

Bambi? Since most are killed inside of 200 yards, with body shots, the old two-MOA group is okay.

All that said, all my rifles (sporters) get tweaked with and have tailored handloads developed so I can get inside of one MOA and for some, about half MOA. That's consistent and reliable, not just occasional.

 

[salt&battery]

So the generally accepted definition of a 2 moa shooter is someone that can keep the muzzle within a 2 moa circle 95% of the time and the generally accepted definition of a 0.5 moa rifle is a rifle that puts all shots within a 0.5 moa circle centered about the muzzle 95% of the time? Just trying to get the definitions sorted out.

You have to remember a 2 MOA gun is only an inch away from where you were aiming at 100 yds. 2 MOA sounds bad until you realize that. for big game 3-4 MOA is plenty good

 

[easy]

Minute of squirrel head is all that's required.

 

[david58]

I hunt with my rifles, and like to play some long distance shooting with my muzzleloaders. But long range shooting and hunting are not the same in my book - if I have to venture out beyond 250 yards for a deer or elk, I'm shooting and not hunting. To me, the object is to get close enough that I'm not taking a "long shot." That said, I like to think me and my Savage 99 or my wife and her 7mm-08 are both capable of 1-1.5 MOA. That's by far enough for us to hunt to our maximum point blank range of about 250-270 yards, which is plenty for us out here in New Mexico. I've never killed a deer beyond 100 yards, and the only elk I shot at 400 yards was killed at 20, after half a day of tracking. More important to me than accuracy is familiarity. But that's me, with a brain clearly somewhat damaged by too much black powder.

 

[Reloadron]

Im curious how much accuracy we all personally require from a gun for us to like it?
Does it out weigh some other factors....all???

When I actively hunted quite a bit I was good with average hunting rifle uncertainty so 2 MOA or even a little over was fine with me. Retired now and have not hunted in years I like leisure target shooting off the bench. Target shooting is where I like the sub MOA rifles. Then too if I were hunting prairie dogs at 300 yards I believe I would want sub MOA. I did get into the 6mm PPC game years ago which was fun.

Ron

 

[horsey300]

You have to remember a 2 MOA gun is only an inch away from where you were aiming at 100 yds. 2 MOA sounds bad until you realize that. for big game 3-4 MOA is plenty good

4 moa of antelope vitals on a wary herd is not good enough. I can sneak up pretty close, but they see very well and if they've already been hunted a time or two or there's s wounded one from another "hunter" you can bet that 2 moa at 400 yds is borderline.

 

[murf]

Well, if the question had originally been asked with the word "precision" rather than "accuracy" would the posts have been all that different?

How many people, in their day to day lives, use the terms as anything other than synonyms? If someone wants people to think about the distinction before answering the question, it's necessary to not only change the word in the question but also post a definition of each term and probably some examples as to how the term should be properly applied.

precisely! I consider that an accurate statement.

murf

 

[JohnKSa]

Well, if the question had originally been asked with the word "precision" rather than "accuracy" would the posts have been all that different?

Not a bit. That was precisely (accurately?) the point of my reply which was intended as sarcasm.

 

[salt&battery]

4 moa of antelope vitals on a wary herd is not good enough. I can sneak up pretty close, but they see very well and if they've already been hunted a time or two or there's s wounded one from another "hunter" you can bet that 2 moa at 400 yds is borderline.

yes antelope are tiny so there is a need for an accurate rifle

 

[Bayourambler]

I believe a 1.5 moa rifle in the hands of a good shooter that understands the conditions will be in good shape.

 

[Robert]

It appears some of y'all only seem interested in posting to hear your own voice in your head. I think 5 pages is enough on this one.