GROUPS AND MARKMANSHIP

DOWN RANGE

- Mike Venturino

Mike has shot thousands of groups from a bench rest during his career.

As do many readers, I have some nice groups taped to my office walls. For the most part, they were fired during the years when learning precision handloading for Black Powder Cartridge Rifle (BPCR) competitions. There are no poor groups posted. Those targets were discarded; in my case, used for fire starter. I’m sure that’s normal for most of us. Here’s an example: One calm, overcast afternoon, I fired four consecutive five-shot groups at 300 yards with one of my favorite BPCR Silhouette rifles – a Lone Star .4065 rolling block. The first three groups all hovered around 3 inches, give or take a quarter-inch or so. Those three hung on my office wall for years. The fourth group was over 5 inches so I “disappeared” it.

From the beginning of my rifle shooting career, many years passed along with tens of thousands of rounds fired through a multitude of rifles from .222 Remington to .50-90 Sharps. Then the fact dawned on me that a single group has little meaning. A single group is simply what a rifle did with three or five rounds on a particular day. To truly understand a rifle and load combination’s precision, it should be fired on several occasions and if possible, at different ranges. If that load’s performance is always acceptable for the shooting purpose, then a fine handload has indeed been discovered.

This target is a typical example of why the first shot from a clean, cold barrel is discounted in group shooting. These shots were fired from Mike’s Lone Star rolling block .40-65.