mounting man

I've been loading for 40+ years! There were lots of things i tried from powders to brass and in between!
Anytime i read a new thing i would have to try it? Most of them were like giving vinegar to a baby!!!!!!
Some times i would get a rifle that would shoot clover leafes at 100 yards and be very happy and hang onto the target. I would show my buddy. I would talk him into going to shoot! Same load,same gun and the clover leaf turned into a sunflower!!!!!!
I don't own any match grade rifles,just factory ones.
The thing i've learned about consistency is that it is inconsistent!!!!!!
Alot of it comes from the materials we use such as the powder lots,the primers , the brass lots and the bullets. The guns fall in there too.
There is one saying that i hate to read and it is " My gun will shoot tight groups all day long,if i do my part." I always wanted to go shoot with one of these people but have never found one in real life????
Anyhow,how about you?

super_hunt54

Actually I have several rifles that will shoot MOA all day if I do my part. But my part has MANY MANY parts! I'm highly consistent on my loads. When I buy powder I usually buy it in a large quantity so that when I do develop a load I will have that particular powder from that particular lot. I weigh each and every bullet and keep them separated according to weight variance. I keep an extremely close eye on OAL with high quality calipers. I use high quality scales that I make sure are calibrated often and dead on correct. And most of all, I shoot a lot to keep in shape. Muscle memory is one short memory and if not exercised often will fade.

buffybr

When I first started reloading I recorded EVERYTHING about every load in a book, including shotshells, and the results of when I shot them.

Now 47 years later I still record new load development in a book and I record the pertinent load data on the boxes containing rifle and pistol cartridges, but after reloading over 250,000 shotshells, I only record the weight and size of shot on the shotshell boxes, and I have the powder weight and type and the shot weight and size marked on the respective powder and shot tubes of my reloaders.

Finepoint

One thing that has really grabbed my attention recently about shooting precision. After nearly a year out of the country and doing no shooting at all, my rifles all seem to have less than half the accuracy they used to.
The lesson is this: the biggest variable in shooting precision is the shooter. Biological systems (people) will never remotely achieve the precision of the mechanical/chemical system that is a firearm. As much as the obsessive-complusive hyper-nerd part of me wants to fix all things by fixing "things", what I really need to tweak is myself. Breathing, relaxation, concentration, training muscle memory. Terribly Zen...enough to be on the edge of my comfort zone. I need to find a culturally palatable shooter version of yoga, I think.