I generally do use CCI or Federal match primers, but I have made a lot of beautifully stable, low variation loads with standard primers. For benchrest shooting, EVERYTHING has to be perfect. For any world where .25-.5moa is tight enough, like PRS, the velocity spread starts to trump raw group size. For hunting, any tomato stake barrel that prints smaller than 1.5” at 100yrds is more than accurate enough. I shot a handful of matches this spring on WLP’s, they printed 10 shots in .4-.6 at any outing. Swapping to BR2’s didn’t shrink my 100yrd groups, but did reduce my SD from 8 to 6. Worth it? Eh, probably not, but I don’t sweat primer costs - 3¢ vs. 5¢ per round doesn’t make me cry.

There’s really no trick to it - if you find the nodes and stay there, then a LOT of things can go wrong and the rifle will still shoot small groups. If you’re shooting outside of a node, you have to expect and accept variability in your groups. You might see one tiny 5 shot group, then 3 groups twice as big. Or you might see a tiny group at 100yrds, then a ton of vertical dispersion and even extra drift spread at 800. Keep it in the node, life is easier. More often than not, that’s what I expect to be the cause of “big differences between powders” some guys talk about - they start with a small straw sample of loads, then inadvertently end up comparing a node-centered load in one powder against a non-node load in another powder. I’ve played with ladders, OCW, OBT, and velocity curves - any of these methods work very well, and will find accurate loads within WAY less shots than the conventional, old school methods which take tons of shots to find any trend. I was absolutely baffled how fast I could find a good load with velocity curves - done with development with only 10rnds...