@Bedrock Bob , I have to agree with almost everything you wrote in your reply #40 here, and your original post (#14) clearly shows that you have several guns that shoot really well, and that you can shoot them very well too. I think
@karl_h may have been reacting a little too strongly to that one part of the sentence, but I really get what he was driving at and wish more people understood it and think that way (as I think you probably really do). Honestly, I think there is too much focus on how small a group guns can produce – “group size” is simply a horrible performance metric on many levels, and looking for the smallest ones while discounting the bigger ones either overtly by cherry picking or in statistics by averaging makes it even worse. What really matters is the true capability of the gun in the conditions, and that is always going to be a “bigger number” and not a smaller one.
I’d have worded it differently. I think the best way to put it would be that while it “shows what the gun can do”, it more accurately should be understood to “show what the gun is almost certainly
not going to do” when called upon to perform.
At the extreme end, I think
@SDellinger shows the good and bad of “groups” with his 98 shot group. First, it shows that the system (gun / sighting / ammo / rest / shooter / environment) are extremely consistent, at least for those conditions. But it also shows how little actual information one learns from all that shooting – probably 70% or more of those shots sailed right through what ended up being that final hole leaving
zero data behind, other than being part of the count of how many were shot, as part of the and the final dimension on group size. Of course they had no impact on that group size - probably less than 30% did, but those 30% are the more important shots as they show what one is likely to get almost a third of the time.
It takes more work to really understand the true capability of a gun, and I posted an example of such an effort yesterday in a different thread and I’ll just link to it here:
https://www.airgunnation.com/threads/tell-the-truth.1324441/page-3#post-1875786 . Of course all that work shows the results in just one set of perfect conditions, so it speaks mostly to the gun and not to the rest of the system. I really do think that what karl-h described as his test is even more telling on true capability of the system, but the two tests are trying to understand a different thing. In the end, had I taken all those shots at one bull, the result would have looked just like the 98 shot group SDellinger shared – maybe a bit bigger, but it was at 50 yards so a smaller MOA, so I have that going for me.
But since this thread is about showing the best or most interesting “groups” we have I’ll show a ten shot one from the same gun at 55 yards (a .22 Daystate Air Ranger, for those that don’t read the other post). I’ve never managed to get all ten in the one small hole – I always end up with one or two slightly off it. Maybe some day – and I’ll admit that I will feel great when that happens, but also that I’ll know it does not mean anything! Anyways, nine in one hole with a stray a few millimeters off to the side (if I recall correctly, it was shot #8, not #10 - could have been an unseen breeze).
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Merry Christmas everyone, may God richly bless you and yours.
