I consider acceptable ELR accuracy to be when you have better than a 50% chance of hitting a 4moa target on the first shot. At one mile, that’s about a 6’ diameter circle. If you can hit that 3 for 5, most every attempt, you’ve got something.
Even at 600yds, a cold bore, 3/5 on a 2’ target would be an impressive demonstration.
First off I would like to congratulate you on your recent RMAC Big Bore win in this competiton. Very nice result, good shoting, nicely built rifle and well prepared other equipment.
now on to your post:
You put the word accuracy correctly, unlike most other shoters (even I often get it confused, especially in the English language), because there is a big difference between the word accuracy and precision.
Under the term accuracy is included everything necessary to hit the target (cold shot), which at the 600 yards you mentioned means that the characteristics of the shooting system (rifle and ammunition) mean only about 50% success here. The other 50% have nothing to do with the rifle and ammunition at all.
Precision, unlike accuracy, is precisely defined for the characteristics of the rifle and ammunition and clearly indicates what MOA dispersion on the target at a given distance a particular shooting system achieves.
This is absolutely essential for understanding my whole post therefore it is necessary to define it first.
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Overall accuracy consists of the precision weapon system and marksman imput error and the inaccuracy of other equipment. This means the error of the input of all variables (wind, temperature, pressure, distance, angle, BC, MV, etc). Some inputs can be damaged by the shooter itself (estimation of wind direction and strength), other is error equipment used (accuracy of rangefinder, accuracy of chronograph, accuracy of ballistic coefficient measurement, used ballistics program, riflescope precision tracking ).
All of this is accuracy, so all of this will affect whether you hit with the first shot or not.
Precision, on the other hand, is what group you make at a given distance, and that is best when the wind can be eliminated (which is not possible, but all the inaccuracies of other inputs disappear if the shooting takes place, for example, for 5-10 shots in a short time)
Another example of Precision, more from practice, is the percentage of success with which you hit the target, for example, out of 10 shots when you know that your impact is correctly set exactly on the midle of target (ideally, of course, in zero wind).
As a manufacturer of airguns and ammunition (slugs), the only thing I can present is precision, because everything else is out of our control and each shooter has to solve it himself, because we don't decide which chronometer he uses to measure our rifle or slug for MV. Which riflescope he mounts on the rifle, which ballistics program he uses, or how accurate the rangefinder can afford and most importantly, how capable it is of reading the direction and strength of the wind.
So my presentation as an airgun and slug manufacturer must always be focused on precision, even if for longer distances it can never be fully separated from the shooter's ability to shoot accurately and, above all, read the wind correctly.
In addition, the accuracy is practically impossible to show on YouTube, let alone trust it, unless it is footage directly from an RMAC-type competition. The reason for this is that the video author may always tell you it was a first shot, but in reality it could be the first shot after the previous 10 shots he first shot his rifle at the given distance and conditions. That's why the only serious videos are those that show precision, not "first shots" or a lot of video editing between shots.
Now I will show you scientifically what the difference between accuracy and precision is in practice:
this is a screenshot from Applied ballistics analytics, a program used by the world's leading ELR shooters (King 2 miles competition,etc)
In this first picture is a model example for a 600 yard 4MOA target (I used one of my .25 rifles for it and MW 270 m/s 885 fps)
This is an almost pure simulation of the precision of shooting system, where I left only one change imput, the wind uncertainty + - 0.5 mph, all other inputs that are not related to airguns or slugs are turned off.
as you can see the probability of hitting a 4MO target at 600 yards (550m) is practically 100%
The second image shows how a 100% probability quickly becomes a lower probability if our estimate of wind strength changes from +- 0.5 mph to + - 2mph or more. (personally I don't think I'm capable of estimating better than + - 1 mph and I still like it a lot)
so even with an error in estimating the wind force of 2mph, we only have 60% of the 100% probability of hitting left
(accuracy of the rifle and slug remained the same, only the error from the shooter regarding the wind increased)
Now we will look at the case of accuracy for input errors as the program is set by default with the difference that we will use the wind error + - 1mph
This result is still very decent with a first shot hit probability of 88%. Unfortunately, this is still not a realistic case that is likely to occur in practice.
Now we will include one significant input error and that is the muzzle velocity variability, which we have increased from + - 0.7 fps (the standard deviation of this my rifle and slug when shooting like 20 shots in a row)
to + - 3fps.
This number is not random, but takes into account both the precision with which the muzzle velocity of the given system was measured ( precision of the chronograph measurement) and the fact that the muzzle velocity changes as the barrel gradually becomes dirty. Not to mention that if the rifle had not been fired at all for a long time before, then only temperature changes (change in pressure behind the regulator) can cause greater deviations than the deviation given here for all the imput error above.
so suddenly we have only a 73% hit probability from 100% and unfortunately we still haven't counted all variables imput.
This is what the average chance of a hit might look like for a shooter using reasonably decent gear and able to estimate 1,5mph winds and have a really good riflescope:
So the reality is that from the 100% success rate guaranteed by the given shooting system, the probability has been reduced to 50% thanks to individual errors, whether by the shooter or the equipment.
As I have already stated, there is unfortunately one more crucial factor and that is the scope's error. Specifically, I am not dealing with the parallax error, which can also contribute, but above all the riflescope tracking error.
I will give an example.
Let's say that your riflescope has a tracking error of 1%, which is not bad at all, although nowadays you can find riflescopes that have less of this error and do not cost as much as a used car (Arken optics).
1% means for my shooting system that the required 43mRad click at 600 yards when I need to be exactly on the center of the target it will not be made precision, but will add 0.43mRad error = 1.5 MOA (up or down, it doesn't matter). But the target has a size of 4 MOA and half is 2 MOA (upper or lower half), so if I aim thanks to the error riflescope not at the center of the target but almost at the edge of the target, i.e. only 0.5 MOA above or below the edge of the target, then my probability of hitting the target will decrease drastically, unfortunately this is not included in the program, but I estimate that it will drop to 10-15%.
It is also necessary to realize that for firearms rifles a 1% scope error is not such a problem, because at the same 600 yards they use only 4.4 mRad, i.e. 10x less than for airguns and the scope error will therefore also be 10x smaller (0.043mRad = 0.15 MOA).
I didn't even mention some other error inputs liek accuracy of ballistic coefficient measurement and correctness from the point of view of reality of the ballistic function itself (G1 or G7 ) that further reduce the probability of a successful first hit, so in reality it will be even worse than what is stated here.
So yes, shoter can have a shooting system (airgun and slug) that will give them 100% certainty of a hit at a given distance, but unfortunately this does not mean that shoter and his other equipment are capable of this 100% certainty hit.
If it was my post too long and too scientific for someone, I'm sorry, but unfortunately physics won't excuse you for not hitting the first shot thanks to it, the only thing you can do is start using physics to your advantage, because without it you have no chance to even know where is the error, let alone expect a certain hit.
