9 mm load development

[Pirate69]

This a great conversation and I started to think about how much pistol sight control a person would need to shot a 3" group at 50 yards. That would mean the person was always hitting plus or minus 1.5" of the POA on each shot. If you convert this to a line graph, it would have a slope of 0.00083 inches (+or-) per inch of travel. What does that mean for allowable variation in the height of the front sight to maintain a 3" group at 50 yards? I measured the distance from the leading edge of my Sig back sight to the leading edge of the front sight. It was 6.625". That means that the front sight must not vary from the perfect alignment by more than 0.006" at the time of firing. People that can shoot a 3" group at 50 yards must have almost perfect eyesight. Not saying it can not be done; but the eyes much be capable of refining the sight alignment within that tolerance. Do not think my 71 year old eyes can do it. But I will have fun trying.

[Green Frog]

I STAND CORRECTED. 44Mag1 reminded me that the ten ring of a fifty yard Bullseye target is a little over 3” so according to my statement Master Class shooters would need to shoot perfect scores to qualify as Master Class. This is incorrect. I was confusing the indoor, reduced size target for slow fire, which is about an inch and a half, but which is shot at just 25 yards. Mea Culpa!

Green Frog

[44MAG#1]

I STAND CORRECTED. 44Mag1 reminded me that the ten ring of a fifty yard Bullseye target is a little over 3” so according to my statement Master Class shooters would need to shoot perfect scores to qualify as Master Class. This is incorrect. I was confusing the indoor, reduced size target for slow fire, which is about an inch and a half, but which is shot at just 25 yards. Mea Culpa!

Green Frog

I have some OFFICIAL NRA 50 yards Bullseye targets. As close as I can measure the 10 ring inside the white circle is 3.315 inches. From ouyside to outside of the white ring is 3.355 inches.
To consistently keep all offhand shots in that area OFFHAND, well let's just say I want to meet that person and watch him/her do it. I would say I won't have to worry about coming up with gas money for the trip.

[ChuckS1]

To consistently keep all offhand shots in that area OFFHAND, well let's just say I want to meet that person and watch him/her do it. I would say I won't have to worry about coming up with gas money for the trip.

Are you saying you don’t think it can be done?

[44MAG#1]

Are you saying you don’t think it can be done?

It can be done. And has be done but not anywhere near consistently enough to say one can do it far more than not. Shooting a 3.00 or 3.25 inch group once in awhile doesn't meant one has arrived. It just means it can be done
I have shot 7.5 inch groups offhand standing two hand hold at 100 yards more than a couple times. But that is not consistently.
To me consistently is 75 percent plus of the time. Not 2 or 3 percent of the time. I used to shoot with a Master Class NRA Bullseye shooter and have seen others. My buddy has shot 100 point 50 yard targets before. But not consistently.
A hole in one in golf doesn't make one a professional.

[Pirate69]

I saw on the internet that a PFC had shot a 3.34" group, one handed, at fifty yards during a competition. He was using a 45. That is some shooting. It was a 10-shot group.

[ChuckS1]

It can be done. And has be done but not anywhere near consistently enough to say one can do it far more than not. Shooting a 3.00 or 3.25 inch group once in awhile doesn't meant one has arrived. It just means it can be done
I have shot 7.5 inch groups offhand standing two hand hold at 100 yards more than a couple times. But that is not consistently.
To me consistently is 75 percent plus of the time. Not 2 or 3 percent of the time. I used to shoot with a Master Class NRA Bullseye shooter and have seen others. My buddy has shot 100 point 50 yard targets before. But not consistently.
A hole in one in golf doesn't make one a professional.

Take a look at the 2021 .45 ACP slow fire scores at this link. Sixty six shooters out 78 scored at least 150 out of a possible 200 (that’s your 75% threshold), one hand hold, at 50 yards. The number next to the aggregate score is the number of hits in the X ring, which is a little bigger than 1.5 inches. So yeah, it can be done by folks who can do do it consistently.

https://www.nrahq.org/compete/natpdf/cp143-21.pdf

[44MAG#1]

Take a look at the 2021 .45 ACP slow fire scores at this link. Thirty nine shooters out 78 scored at least 175 out of a possible 200 (that’s your 75% threshold), one hand hold, at 50 yards. The number next to the aggregate score is the number of hits in the X ring, which is a little bigger than 1.5 inches. So yeah, it can be done by folks who can do do it consistently.

https://www.nrahq.org/compete/natpdf/cp143-21.pdf

All of their shots did not stay in the 10 ring. One or more must have been a 9 or may be even an 8. One can shoot nine tens and pop a seven and still shoot a 97 point target.
We are talking group size. 10 shot make a group. One can shoot nine tens and pop a 6 and still shoot a 96. One can shoot seven tens and pop 3 nines and still score a 97.
Group man, group.

[44MAG#1]

All too many time shooters will "cherry pick" what they can do. As an extreme example. Someone shoots 10 rounds offhand standing at 100 yards and the put 9 out of the 10 in 1 inch but one flies out to 12 inches that group of 10 shots did not go into 1 inch. 9 did but not the 10. so did you shoot a 9 shot group or a 10 shot group? What if the bad shot was in the middle of the string of shots in the group? What if it was the first shot?

[MT Gianni]

This a great conversation and I started to think about how much pistol sight control a person would need to shot a 3" group at 50 yards. That would mean the person was always hitting plus or minus 1.5" of the POA on each shot. If you convert this to a line graph, it would have a slope of 0.00083 inches (+or-) per inch of travel. What does that mean for allowable variation in the height of the front sight to maintain a 3" group at 50 yards? I measured the distance from the leading edge of my Sig back sight to the leading edge of the front sight. It was 6.625". That means that the front sight must not vary from the perfect alignment by more than 0.006" at the time of firing. People that can shoot a 3" group at 50 yards must have almost perfect eyesight. Not saying it can not be done; but the eyes much be capable of refining the sight alignment within that tolerance. Do not think my 71 year old eyes can do it. But I will have fun trying.

It is nearly impossible to hold a handgun without some wobble. The trick is to train yourself to have a circular wobble, or transcend that to a circular motion to the bullseye. The size of the circle is unimportant. Only press the trigger as the gun approaches the target in the last 1/4 arc of it's movement. Do not increase pressure as it hits the target or when it passes. Improve until you are pressing only in the last 335-340 degrees of the circle. As you train you shorten your circle.

[44MAG#1]

It is nearly impossible to hold a handgun without some wobble. The trick is to train yourself to have a circular wobble, or transcend that to a circular motion to the bullseye. The size of the circle is unimportant. Only press the trigger as the gun approaches the target in the last 1/4 arc of it's movement. Do not increase pressure as it hits the target or when it passes. Improve until you are pressing only in the last 335-340 degrees of the circle. As you train you shorten your circle.

I have heard of your technique. The problem with it is unless the shooter has near perfect control of himself the exercise turns into the shooter picking his shot (jerking the trigger) as the sights swing through the Bull. That is something one DOES NOT want to happen but it quite frequently does without super mind control. Can it be learned, yes it can but can be quite difficult unless the shooter is someone that is wwwaaaayyy on top of things. This is another thing that is easily said but hard to convince oneself to do without strict, very strict discipline.

[fredj338]

The bullet weight sounds like the bullets are soft. You night get better accuracy with a bit harder bullet. I water drop my coated out of the oven. THough I would be fine with 2" groups @ 15y, shoot them at 25y & see what they look like. Agree, you wont get much help weighing vs throwing charges imo. Diff case volume form brand to brand will make that moot.

[alfadan]

I used to take an 8lb weight and hold out at arms length, hold it, and relax as an exercise for my one-handed shooting.

[eveready]

You have to remember that in bullseye shooting the bullet only has to touch the scoring ring. The bullet does not have to be fully inside of the scoring ring. This increases the scoring area, by nearly half the diameter of the bullet.

[megasupermagnum]

This a great conversation and I started to think about how much pistol sight control a person would need to shot a 3" group at 50 yards. That would mean the person was always hitting plus or minus 1.5" of the POA on each shot. If you convert this to a line graph, it would have a slope of 0.00083 inches (+or-) per inch of travel. What does that mean for allowable variation in the height of the front sight to maintain a 3" group at 50 yards? I measured the distance from the leading edge of my Sig back sight to the leading edge of the front sight. It was 6.625". That means that the front sight must not vary from the perfect alignment by more than 0.006" at the time of firing. People that can shoot a 3" group at 50 yards must have almost perfect eyesight. Not saying it can not be done; but the eyes much be capable of refining the sight alignment within that tolerance. Do not think my 71 year old eyes can do it. But I will have fun trying.

If your eyes can't do it, a red dot can save you. Honestly eyesight is not that big of a deal when shooting at 50 yards, unless you are really trying to scrape every last inch out you can. You often hear things like "the gun is more accurate than I am". While true, it's also a pointless saying. It doesn't matter how good of a shooter you are, a Keltec P32 is not mechanically capable of really good 50 yard groups. You can put one in a ransom rest, and it still won't shoot very good. On the flip side, it doesn't matter if you have a perfect S&W model 16 capable from a ransom rest of incredible groups, if you yourself have any number of bad habits.

3" at 50 yards is not something that happens over night. It's not something that happens every day (unless you are talking about some special handgun like a TC Encore). In an ideal world, we would all have access to a Ransom Rest, and we could make our handguns the most accurate as possible. We could then practice shooting with those loads that are for sure as good as can be. Since that isn't the case, most of us have to figure out a good bench method. One of the biggest factors I find in handgun accuracy is a consistent grip. Trigger pull is the most important, but everyone knows that. A consistent grip trumps a crystal clear sight picture. Even with my young eyes, I can't get the rear sight, front sight, and target clear all at the same time. It's a matter of focusing on the front sight, then finding a target that allows the crispest picture possible, while still allowing a precise aiming point. A 1" red dot at 50 yards is useless, nobody can see that. A 13" black circle NRA SR-C target is pretty big, nothing real defined. Personally I like an upside down black T with about 1 1/2" to 2" wide lines. I like the T itself around 8"x8". Plus the sights on your gun matter. I like black square rear, and square if not undercut front. I don't like ramped front sights. All black sights is probably best for targets, but my fronts are orange.

Then you have to figure out how to hold the handgun. Just slapping it on a sandbag won't do that good. You can't just stuff a bunch of bags around and under the grip, since a consistent hold is more important than sight alignment. You need to steady your arms, not the handgun. I use one front bag, then stack some foam pads under my wrists. I want my wrists steady, but not locked solid. You will need that movement to get on target without having to push on the front bag. You will also need more pads under at least one elbow. Often I like to kneel behind the bench so I can push my body against the back, but not every bench allows this. A chair works great, but you usually need taller bags all around to make that work, unless the chair is adjustable. Once you figure all that out, you need to focus on trigger pulls, and consistent grip. Often I can feel myself start to tense, or push into the bags after a while. This is fatigue, and it results in inconsistent grip, and groups open up.

I don't do this every single load this way. I usually do a first run working up loads. when I identify a good range, I then come back and shoot them off a bench like this, 25 shots minimum each load. Just about every variable has some effect on accuracy. In 9mm, I'd focus on the bullet more than anything. Make sure those bullets are cast great with no imperfections, good base fill out, it doesn't hurt to sort by weight. Then make sure your brass is not sizing them down. Just pull a bullet, and measure it. Sorting by brass headstamp definitely has an effect, especially in 9mm which can have a zillion brands and variations. Measuring every powder drop will also help. Even the lube or coating you use has some effect, but nothing earth shattering.

Yes, shooting groups to that level is tedious as can be. It's not enjoyable, but it's the best way I know how for maximizing my handguns for hunting. After you do that, then you can get back to real world shooting practice.

I'm guessing you don't need that great of accuracy for 9mm luger.