Accuracy with cast bullets

[klw]

I'm curious as to how small a group you can get with your cast bullets?

Shooting offhand, with a rifle (I've used several over the years), the best I can hope to get is right at 5 inches at fifty yards. This is an average taken over ten days. I can do better than this on occasion but the best ten day average I've seen is just over 5 inches. And I don't get this good often. A six inch average is much more likely.

With a revolver I can do better. A top ten day average for me is four inches. Again I've used several pistols and four inch average over a ten day period is my best.

I've tried numerous powders and powder charges. I've used several different alloys. Changed bullets, guns, bullet diameters, etc.

So just how good can you shoot offhand.

[Ricochet]

About like you.

[44man]

What many don't understand about offhand shooting is that the accuracy of any given gun MUST be at it's best from the bench first. If you get poor groups from the bench, add the spread plus fliers, plus your wiggle, plus your trigger control and any flinching to your offhand groups.
It also stands to reason that rifle groups from an accurate gun should be a lot smaller then from a revolver, 50 yd's, offhand.
When the gun is super accurate, I blame myself for any misses. I can live with that but I can't live with any gun or load that sprays shots.
I normally can hold 3" at 50 with a big bore revolver, offhand, but they will do 1" or less from the bench. If the bench groups are 3" to start, what would I have? Not even minute of deer! :Fire:
Let us know how your guns shoot from the bench. Then your offhand technique can be evaluated.
Take your 6" average with the rifle. If it groups from the bench at 4", then you are doing super. If it will shoot 1/2" groups, then you are not doing good at all. You should be down to 2" to 2-1/2" offhand. I was able to do a lot better then that with a .45 caliber flintlock years ago but those days are long gone, (Not too far though.) old age creeps in with a wicked laugh. :mrgreen: I used to hit pop cans at 75 yd's offhand with a flintlock. My daughter could break a bottle at that distance too. She shot the highest score in the Marine Corp. that any girl ever did. She outshot the men.
Most of us don't practice enough or build the muscles and control. It just costs too much.

[Shiloh]

Most of us don't practice enough or build the muscles and control. It just costs too much.

Too much of a commitment in time also. Shooting off-hand requires LOTS of practice.

Going to a gym and working on the upper body has helped me. My 50+ year old eyes don't contribute to better scores either. My scores will never be what they were 20 or even 10 years ago.

Shiloh

[jeff223]

the link to this thread will sume up my accuracy standard with a cast boolit.
http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=20894

i will not waist time casting or shooting at the range with boolits that dont shoot well

[jhalcott]

KLW, what are your groups with jacketed bullets like? I like to shoot at least 5 shots off hand with the gun /s each session when I'm ready to leave. If my groups were in the 5" range, more practice would be done. I shoot an air gun or 2 in my basement. I also shoot those plastic bullets powered by a primer. This kind of practice, with a bit of excercise, helps a lot. It is getting to where I can NOT afford to just waste powder & primers on junk ammo. Fixed in come is lousy.! I make sure the ammo is good by shooting from the bench first. If the groups are larger than 2" at 50 yards I go back to the pot and another mold.

[jonk]

5" at 50 yards is 10 MOA. That is entirely unacceptable to me.

My best guns group under an inch at 50 yards and about 2" at 100, with cast or jacketed- depends on the gun. Offhand groups are a bit larger, but that's me, not the gun. My best with jacketed is from a 1903 Springfield, 5" at 200 yards; one might equate that 1.25" at 50. Again, that's offhand. Cast.... well if I can't manage 2.5" offhand at 50 something is wrong.

Of course, I have some guns that aren't as accurate, so have my standards for each. But by and large, no more than 4" offhand at 50 even with my worst rifles. Offhand that is. Say 3" benched for my lesser types.

[stillhunter]

Big second to 44man. You should bench cloverleifs from 50 yards. Lyman 311291 in 3006 will do it all day. Shoot and tune from the bench, then do position shooting.

[klw]

5" at 50 yards is 10 MOA. That is entirely unacceptable to me.

But by and large, no more than 4" offhand at 50 even with my worst rifles. Offhand that is. Say 3" benched for my lesser types.


Couldn't begin to do that. Five inches offhand at 50 yards is my best effort and that doesn't happen often for a ten day average.

[doc25]

As stated above start on the bench and see what the load will do. If the accuracy is poor from the bench you need to change the load. Where I shoot we're not even allowed to shoot other than on the bench but when you go hunting it's fine.

[Ricochet]

Oops! That's 50 yards. I was thinking 100 yards. I can do that well at 100 yards with my M91/30 and several long Mausers with their original sights. At least I can when I've been shooting a good bit and am in practice. I've been going through such a long dry spell I don't know if I can now. I seldom shoot at 50, unless I've got a new rifle, load, scope or such that's far enough off to have trouble getting it on the paper at 100.

I figure the minimum accuracy you should have before going deer hunting is to be able to hit a standard paper plate offhand at 100 yards, essentially very time, shooting quickly.

[BruceB]

Comments so far reflect precisely the philosophy of rifle and handgun competitors over many decades, namely: Get the VERY BEST guns/ammo/loads (if handloading) available or at least the very best one can afford out of what's out there, so that one's worries can be restricted to the human factors involved in accurate shooting.

For instance, an NRA Bullseye shooter NEEDS guns and ammo that will reliably group well within the 3.39" ten-ring at fifty yards. Without that capability, the shooter will be mostly unable to determine if a bad shot was the fault of his equipment, or himself.

Once the limits of a load are established, we can make realistic estimates of just how well (or badly) we personally are performing with that load. My Ruger .416 Rigby reliably groups its cast hunting load into around 1.5" for three rounds at 100 yards. Firing off-hand, I do VERY well to group the same load into four inches, and often perform worse than that. This is the reason I carry shooting sticks in the field, these days. Using the sticks, I can come quite close to the benchrest-grouping capability of the same load.

[crabo]

What Bruce said. I call it "having confidence in my dot". If I know my gun shoots good, and that my sights, wether it is iron or optics, is on the money, I shoot better.

Once I begin to doubt that my sights are right, I have truble hitting anything. (particularly in a match)

Crabo

[shotstring]

Small groups, either with cast or jacketed, really depends almost as much on the shooters skill as the mechanics of the load. I only say this because I can in no way approximate the tight groups I used to get when my eyes were young, my hands were steady, my breathing was completely under control, and I practiced 4 times a week, hours and hours per session. Even from the bench, trigger squeeze, breath control and the tightness and position of the grip on your handgun or rifle, has so much to do with the final results that it is a bit unfair to place all the credit or blame on your load or its components.

That being said, my best cast rounds would shoot every bit as good as my best jacketed rounds. The only cast shooting I was doing at the time with a rifle however, involved pistol calibers, so I can't really comment on the differences with long range rifle calibers.

[felix]

Everyone needs to shoot a bonifide BR gun once, just once. Never more will you ever blame the gun/load, but your natural skills first. Unfortunately, not many of us ever get that chance. If you ever do, don't miss it. Do it no matter the results. The owner of the gun won't laugh, I guarantee you. ... felix

[Forester]

My 1895 Marlin 45-70 runs about 1.5-2" at 100yards from the bench. Off hand I can shoot it into about 4-4.5". What I know then is that I can reasonably take a shot at a deer at 100yards offhand. Much past that and I need to be looking for a way to gain some additional stability for the shot.

[Guido4198]

Establish the PRECISION (the ability to put rounds in the same place...i.e.: a "tight" group, regardless of where it impacts) of your rifle and load combo from a good solid bench rest FIRST. When you have a combination that meets your standard for PRECISION...then stand up and see how ACCURATELY you can shoot it..i.e.: how close YOU can put rounds to a specific desired aiming point.
I'm forever perplexed by the number of people I see at our local public range who shoot round after round into very nice groups from a rest...but don't work on position shooting at all. One of these fellows was REAL proud of his hunting rifle's ability to shoot tight groups off the sandbags. When he got around to showing his targets to me...I kindly offered a suggestion my Daddy gave me once..."OK...we know what your rifle can do...why don't you stand up on your hind legs, and see what YOU can do with it..??" Might as well have been talking Greek....

[44man]

I will be 70 in a few days and notice my coffee cup shakes a lot. It is VERY hard for me to hold still anymore, yet I manage very well with a revolver. There were few guns I could blame for misses but I did have a few over the years where a bullet would go somewhere other then where it was aimed, even rested. Although I can call every shot, the called shots are a LOT wider then before. :mrgreen: That is acceptable to me because the boolit usually goes to where the sights were so it is just me and not the gun.
One thing we have always done is to laugh at those misses and poke jabs at each other. Shooting is fun and we make it so.
We used to do the same at IHMSA shoots and there were a few others with a great sense of humor. One team had a billy club hanging in the tripod. They said a miss needed drastic action from the spotter. But then there were those with puckered *$%-holes that would give us nasty looks when we laughed at each other. I think we made a lot of enemies. Some were so serious that they never had fun. Neither did they ever shoot good while we were always at or near the top.
My suggestion to all of you is to never get too serious, enjoy yourself and laugh when you miss. You will miss when you are puckered up and also when you are relaxed, so if you get angry, the fun of shooting goes away and it becomes a chore instead of a good time. Do your serious work at the loading bench and at the load testing phase. The rest should be fun! :drinks:

[Bass Ackward]

My suggestion to all of you is to never get too serious, enjoy yourself and laugh when you miss.


Yea. Get you a hat. I mean a REAL hat.

When things go badly, shoot the hat. :grin:

[Bass Ackward]

I'm curious as to how small a group you can get with your cast bullets?

Shooting offhand, with a rifle (I've used several over the years), the best I can hope to get is right at 5 inches at fifty yards. With a revolver I can do better. A top ten day average for me is four inches. Again I've used several pistols and four inch average over a ten day period is my best.

I've tried numerous powders and powder charges. I've used several different alloys. Changed bullets, guns, bullet diameters, etc.

So just how good can you shoot offhand.


Big "K",

So how do you do with jacketed? Load development should be from a supported position with any material projectile first.

The only unsupported shooting I do anymore. (trees everywhere) is snap shooting with a handgun. There the goal is number of hits, not how close the miss. (group) I use rational bore diameters with rational loads.

If I had one of those crater production devices, then close may be valid. But who wants to draw, fire, and eat steel? Catchup anyone? :grin:

[Ricochet]

My range used to have a nice concrete pad at one end where you could put down a piece of carpet and shoot prone, sitting, whatever. But they've put benches over all of it. It's rare to see anyone stand up and shoot offhand. There was a course on position shooting with military bolt actions offered this summer (which I was unable to attend.) Don't know how they arranged it.

[klw]

Big "K",

So how do you do with jacketed? Load development should be from a supported position with any material projectile first.

The only unsupported shooting I do anymore. (trees everywhere) is snap shooting with a handgun. There the goal is number of hits, not how close the miss. (group) I use rational bore diameters with rational loads.

If I had one of those crater production devices, then close may be valid. But who wants to draw, fire, and eat steel? Catchup anyone? :grin:

I'm just not the least bit interested in jacketed bullets. Haven't shot any in years.

What I do shoot are a lot of cast bullets, 17000 plus per year, mostly revolver bullets. My rifle shooting is with iron sights, standing at 50 yards. The accuracy figure I'm interested in is a ten day moving average. The best I can do at that is a five inch group. Shooting ten rounds a day that's a five inch average group over 100 rounds.

So if some of you can do two inches standing with iron sights at 100 yards you are a GREAT deal better at this than I am!

[jhalcott]

SEE! Now we KNOW you are talking about REVOLVER shooting. I do not honestly think I can do much better than you with my .44 mag SBH. That gun has not been out in the sunlight for about 10 years! I DO shoot it in my basement with the plastic bullets,and the range is a LOT less than 50 yards!

[klw]

SEE! Now we KNOW you are talking about REVOLVER shooting. I do not honestly think I can do much better than you with my .44 mag SBH. That gun has not been out in the sunlight for about 10 years! I DO shoot it in my basement with the plastic bullets,and the range is a LOT less than 50 yards!

NO NO NO NO NO!

At 50 yards with a RIFLE I can not get better than a five inch group averaged over ten days.

At 25 yards with a revolver my best is a four inch group.

[jhalcott]

http://hunting.about.com/c/ht/00/07/How_Shoot_Accurately0962933351.htm
are you flinching when you pull the trigger? If possible have some else load the gun with an empty case once in a while,this will force you to concentrate on the process of firing. Also use the lightest loads you can for practice. A friend of mine had a terrible flinch . His loads off the bench were 2"at 100 yards but all over the paper at 50 off hand. We worked on him for 2 months. I'd load his gun with out him knowing whether it was a live or dummy round.He got to where his off hand shooting was only about 3-4" at 100 for 5 shots.

[JohnH]

klw, I dn't know your health, here's how mine has afected me. I'm 48, will be 49 in April I had my first heart attack at 40, a second 2 years later, had to be stinted agian in 2005 and was in the hoipital for a new blockage weekend before Thanksgiving . I smoked 2-3 packs a dya for the best part of 30 years, mostly Camel humps and Pall Malls, I thought filters were for sissys. I quit 6 years ago Labor Day, began shooting daily to relieve stress. Took me nearly a year to get control of my breathing again, that off a bench, I couldn't stay on an 8" plate offhand at 50 yards at the time, did good to shoot 3" off the bench with a rifle I was able to shoot 1 1/2" groups off the bench a year after that.

We won't talk of my eyesight.

These days, I can shoot 4" off hand fairly regularly at 75 yards, but generally it takes a 5"x9" target to ring the steel 9 of 10 times at that range. A 6" round plate drops me to 65-70% hits. These days I can shot strings from the bench all daywithout tiring, off hand, 30 rounds is a lot, and that is fired 5 rounds at a time: shoot 5, go inside, load 5, shoot 5, go inside load 5..... you get the drill. Most all of my misses, on and off the bench, I attribute to the fact that I can neither see not breath as I did 30 years ago, forget about when I was a kid, I was capable of some stunning shooting with a particular BB gun.

A others have suggested, test your loads off the bench first, then use ballons, blown up to about softball size and average you hits. Groups to me, are actually somewhat misleading, they tell us about our ability to control, not about our ability ot hit. A bulseye don't move or bob or sway in the wind, we take our time, often too much time trying for perfection. Hitting is about sight alignment and trigger control (as opposed to trigger manipulation) Hitting teaches us to use our instincts, shooting is about controlling muscle groups, related things but different approaches.

One can also learn hitting by using a series of bulleyes, one shot per target, 10 seconds per shot, experation of time or the shot being loosed, move to the next target.

Perhaps this will help out.

[klw]

Thanks!

[kount_zer0]

I think your 100 round groups over 10 days are quite good.

I'm not a great shot, but I think if I tried to put 100 rounds into 5 inches offhand at 50yds with a rifle at the range i'd have to slow way down. Shooting at game, baloons jugs o' water, I concentrate better than with paper.

OK I'll try it. 100 rds at 50 yds, over 10 separate days.
Handgun at 25 yds?


Expect no report....[smilie=1:

[andrew375]

I'm curious as to how small a group you can get with your cast bullets?

Shooting offhand, with a rifle (I've used several over the years), the best I can hope to get is right at 5 inches at fifty yards. This is an average taken over ten days. I can do better than this on occasion but the best ten day average I've seen is just over 5 inches. And I don't get this good often. A six inch average is much more likely.

With a revolver I can do better. A top ten day average for me is four inches. Again I've used several pistols and four inch average over a ten day period is my best.

I've tried numerous powders and powder charges. I've used several different alloys. Changed bullets, guns, bullet diameters, etc.

So just how good can you shoot offhand.


How good a shot are you? Get yourself a half decent .22 and try that, if you are still getting the same groups then I would suspect the nut behind the trigger has gotten loose again.

For the record I am shooting 2 inches or less, standing at 50 yards, with my .44 mag M94 loaded with 250gr. Kieth SWCs. I have a load for my .375 H&H that will shoot plain base bullets in to .6 moa all day long, so long as the nut behind the trigger keeps tight. If my .223 stops putting NEI .224-72GCs into under one moa I know that damn nut has got loose again; time to reach for the spanner.

Seriously though, get yourself a .22 and a few thousand rounds of decent ammo. You will be amazed at the difference it will make.:drinks:

[Bass Ackward]

Seriously though, get yourself a .22 and a few thousand rounds of decent ammo. You will be amazed at the difference it will make.:drinks:


Yep. Both handgun and rifle. I have gotten away from it, but the best balance I was taught was 80/20. 80% of your shooting should be 22LR and the 20% the shooting you need to get used to the gun and the recoil.

At some point, you simply get fatigued. And even the noise will get to ya subconsciously. Then you are just blowing away components or breaking in your gun instead of actually progressing physically. I suppose the actual ratio would depend on the shooter. But as I said, I shoot very little unsupported anymore. When I do, it's usually a snap shot with a smooth bore. :grin: (yep, I'll cheat.)

[bobthenailer]

all shooting off hand ( not taco hold) with pistols with cast bullets , 25 X 25- 6" X 10" rectangler steel plates straight at 100 yards , 7 in a row 4 inch round steel plates at 100 yards. 117 bowling pins straight at 50 yards in 5 weeks of matches for the pins . bob

[klw]

My 1895 Marlin 45-70 runs about 1.5-2" at 100yards from the bench. Off hand I can shoot it into about 4-4.5". What I know then is that I can reasonably take a shot at a deer at 100yards offhand. Much past that and I need to be looking for a way to gain some additional stability for the shot.

That is certainly a great deal better than I can do but it was a helpful answer. My best, and it is rare, is 5 inches at fifty yards and I have to work to achieve that. My eyesight is ok. I'm not shaking yet. So five inches is my best.

So I have to conclude that compared to some I'm, well, a very poor shot. Not the greatest disappointment in life.

[PatMarlin]

I was at a range with family in Spokane during turkey day, and I shot my Swiss Carbine for the first time off the bench at 100. My pulse kept pulling the sight to the left like a drum beat from to much coffee. I tried to time my shot in between my pulse. .....:mrgreen:

The best balanced rifle I have is my Ruger #1 in 300 win mag- scoped. It will shoot clover leafs off the bench at 100 and I can shoot very near consistent 3" off hand with it at 100, but that is with condoms.

My best practice was with my crossman 760 air rifle as a kid. I shot hours and hours every day, but never ever took a rest. Nobody showed me how to take a rest, so I never thought about it. Shot all off hand for years.. :Fire:

[PatMarlin]

Here's the last offhand shooting I did with my 358 Winchester VZ-24. 50 at the bench and 50 off hand. I think the coffee thing caused horizontal stringing..
:bigsmyl2:

[Bass Ackward]

Here's the last offhand shooting I did with my 358 Winchester VZ-24. 50 at the bench and 50 off hand. I think the coffee thing caused horizontal stringing..
:bigsmyl2:


Really? More than one shot? Dang I'm proud of you boy.

That's the good news.

If that's really 50 at the left target and 50 at the right, I only count 5 hits or so in each one. Not so good I think. The right one's almost MOK. (minute of kitty) :grin:

[PatMarlin]

I shoot 5 cause it gives you a clean slate... for the next five. ..[smilie=1:

[Ricochet]

My best practice was with my crossman 760 air rifle as a kid. I shot hours and hours every day, but never ever took a rest. Nobody showed me how to take a rest, so I never thought about it. Shot all off hand for years.. :Fire:Same here. My old 760 is standing by the kitchen door now, for pest repulsion.

[Bent Ramrod]

I'm probably doing good to get 4 out of 5 in a 6" circle offhand at 50, and it doesn't matter what the load or bullet is (within reason). Probably a foot at 100 yards would contain the bulk of my offhand shots, unless the wind was blowing, which it was this morning (and please don't ask me how I did.) Or if I get tired or rattled.

Ned Crossman observed Steward Edward White's shooting at the old Angeles Shooting Range eighty years ago and concluded that if you can hit a grapefruit offhand every shot, snapshooting at 50 yards, you have the potential to be the greatest game shot that ever lived. A grapefruit is about 4" across; California ones even bigger sometimes, so 4" is quite good, for deliberate shooting day in and day out.

I spend way too much time doing important experiments with rifles at the bench; I just don't practice enough offhand. But I always am amazed by the bad guy gangsters in the movies who open the crate of M-16's, pull one out, stuff in a magazine and stack all the shots into a fist-sized cluster 80 yards down the end of the alley.

[shotstring]

My best was a 2" group at 100 yards off hand with a Winchester 94 in 45 Long Colt with factory iron sights shooting 255gr RNFP. That was one 5 shot group with up to 30 seconds between shots. I shot that about 12 years ago. My best at that time with a 308 and scope shooting jacketed at 100 yards off hand was 1 1/2". Today I doubt if I could better 4" at 50 yards with the same load and the same guns. Being in good shape and in good practice form makes all the difference.

[Pathfinder1cav]

K........
A couple of GOOD offhand shooters that I shoot with occasionally will often drop 7-8-9 of ten chickens at 220 yds. Ron C. has dropped 10 of 10 & Chip has gone 9 of 10 three times, (spun the 10th once!). These are life size steel chickens using iron sights on Black Powder Cartridge rifles.

[imashooter2]

During the Offhand Postal Match run by David R I shot 11 targets at 10 shots per. 4 of those targets were under 5 inches and the best one was 4 inches even and entered into the match. Of the remaining 7 targets there were a couple of poor efforts that went over 6 inches. If I were to average the 10 best 10 shot targets, I believe the number would be between 5.5 and 6 inches. It's a shame I didn't save them to know for sure.

IMO, 5 inches average for an honest accounting of 10 groups of 10 shots each fired offhand at 50 yards is pretty fair shooting. The key here is the honest accounting. No throw aways.