Expected accuracy at 50y with spring gun.

[Jonjon79]

Flyers are real - I know. I shot 10 of them into an 8 inch group while standing with my .22 Tx

[TORNADOS7]

Agreed. Discounting flyers is ignoring an issue no matter what the reason for it.

Also 5 shot groups are pretty pointless.

No, no, no mate, you've got it all wrong a 1 shot group is pointless, 5 is a reasonable gauge of what's happening, 10 shots is just wasting lead !...

[Sallyannsnow]

50 yards ?!.......I don't take my dog that far for a walk !

[ChrisC]

There are plenty of videos on youtube of 5p sized groups.

Yep, and videos of aliens and sea monsters and blah,blah,blah

[Brian.Samson]

Yep, and videos of aliens and sea monsters and blah,blah,blah

5p is 18mm diameter (about 3/4 inch), so perfectly doable. I shot a 5 shot group the other week to show someone how a new experimental tune was working out and at 55 yards, FT sitting position with about an inch of left-right wind, I still managed a group that was 1/4" wide and 1/2" inch high (C2C), so easily covered by a 5p coin with room to spare.

Scan-160415-0001.pdf

It's perfectly possible, I just don't expect to do it every time. I would expect a group size in the region of about an inch or a £1 coin though.

As to whether 5 shots is too few etc.. I guess it all depends on what you're trying to do, what point you're trying to prove?

Personally I rarely shoot groups on paper (I simply can't be bothered to walk 55 yards to set out a paper target). I prefer to shoot at a steel plate, leave a pellet mark in a clean area and then have a few shots at that, before moving on to another clean area of the plate. I only do that when I'm checking my zero or checking my clicks, it's not like I it there all day trying to stack pellets on top of each other - what's the point?

That scan above was the last time I shot a group on paper (about 3 weeks ago now). I'd already shot plenty of groups on the steel plate so I knew the tune was awesome, I just felt I should record it on paper.

[archie]

3 shot groups are pointless, much better to use 5 or 10 shot groups to get a true indication of accuracy. At 50 yards I would be happy with 1" groups shooting a springer. Indeed most members of the club I attend would be equally happy. I recently won a friendly shoot with several members with a 1" group of 10 shots and that was using a 99s in .177.
I know certain videos on the tube indicate fantastic size groups that can be covered by a five pence coin at up to 60 yards. But only usually 3 shots and if a single shot goes astray it's a bad pellet or called as a shooter error. But surely that's the point of shooting a 5 or 10 shot group, in order to get a true indication of accuracy, including errors.

[TORNADOS7]

3 shot groups are pointless, much better to use 5 or 10 shot groups to get a true indication of accuracy. At 50 yards I would be happy with 1" groups shooting a springer. Indeed most members of the club I attend would be equally happy. I recently won a friendly shoot with several members with a 1" group of 10 shots and that was using a 99s in .177.
I know certain videos on the tube indicate fantastic size groups that can be covered by a five pence coin at up to 60 yards. But only usually 3 shots and if a single shot goes astray it's a bad pellet or called as a shooter error. But surely that's the point of shooting a 5 or 10 shot group, in order to get a true indication of accuracy, including errors.

Quite agree matey, as I said in my first reply, shooting groups at 50yds is something I've never really tried/considered so wouldn't really know what to expect, I regularly shoot out to 70-75yds but only whilst plinking at inanimate objects such as pine cones and the like so not a real gauge of rifle/pellet accuracy, more a gauge of my ability to hit targets at differing ranges, I would suggest that if you can regularly put 5 pellets in a row on the same mark without to much hassle then it would be pointless wasting a further 5 pellets on it, maybe I'm wrong, maybe 10 pellets makes you more of a man than the 5 pellet guys, I dunno, either way I'll not lose any sleep over it !...

[archie]

Trouble is I can never put just 5 pellets near enough to each other to be happy.

[pennineway.fswo]

3 shot groups are pointless, much better to use 5 or 10 shot groups to get a true indication of accuracy. At 50 yards I would be happy with 1" groups shooting a springer. Indeed most members of the club I attend would be equally happy. I recently won a friendly shoot with several members with a 1" group of 10 shots and that was using a 99s in .177.
I know certain videos on the tube indicate fantastic size groups that can be covered by a five pence coin at up to 60 yards. But only usually 3 shots and if a single shot goes astray it's a bad pellet or called as a shooter error. But surely that's the point of shooting a 5 or 10 shot group, in order to get a true indication of accuracy, including errors.

I witnessed Archies group and he then shot another 10 shot group on our club 50 yd range with the HW and again the group size CTC was arround 1 inch
Wind speed was 5-10 mph so quite impressive for a BB springer

Most of us occassionally can get half inch 5 shot groups but 10 shots usually opens the group up to twice that size
With our TX's and Prosport 10 shots into 1 inch edge to edge is pretty good
Flyers are part of the group, lets not kid ourselves

[ChrisC]

5p is 18mm diameter (about 3/4 inch), so perfectly doable. I shot a 5 shot group the other week to show someone how a new experimental tune was working out and at 55 yards, FT sitting position with about an inch of left-right wind, I still managed a group that was 1/4" wide and 1/2" inch high (C2C), so easily covered by a 5p coin with room to spare.

Scan-160415-0001.pdf

It's perfectly possible, I just don't expect to do it every time. I would expect a group size in the region of about an inch or a £1 coin though.

As to whether 5 shots is too few etc.. I guess it all depends on what you're trying to do, what point you're trying to prove?

Personally I rarely shoot groups on paper (I simply can't be bothered to walk 55 yards to set out a paper target). I prefer to shoot at a steel plate, leave a pellet mark in a clean area and then have a few shots at that, before moving on to another clean area of the plate. I only do that when I'm checking my zero or checking my clicks, it's not like I it there all day trying to stack pellets on top of each other - what's the point?

That scan above was the last time I shot a group on paper (about 3 weeks ago now). I'd already shot plenty of groups on the steel plate so I knew the tune was awesome, I just felt I should record it on paper.

Erm...

I actually meant it in the context of not believing all you see on Youtube vids.

[TORNADOS7]

A standard skinny barelled 10/22 is easily outshot by a good airgun with matched pellets, but having said that, .22LR are also fussy feeders, and the rounds must be matched to the gun.

An airgun outshooting MY 10/22 however, that's a different matter

Well I did think to myself that something wasn't quite right, seems like the blokey shootin the 'Ruger' needs to do a bit more homework on his ammo selection, that or a bit more practice I will say though the rifle in question seemed to have quite a short stocky barrel, it looked from what I could see to be about 20mm at the muzzle, last time I saw a 'Ruger 10/22' it was my uncles and some 30 odd years ago so I can't be 100% sure !...

Ps, could possibly have been cut down which might explain the short, fat, inaccurate barrel !...

[Harrympope]

I've got a 50 yard target set up permenently out if the shop door.I shoot mostly at night when the wind seems to be less(sometimes ).if I look at the piles of targets I've shot with my good springers they range from better ones 3/4" to the wild 2" plus "wind " group.I don't think the average is close to one inch but I'm thrilled when I shoot a sub inch group.
I asked the question because some usa guys claim sub 1"
as a standard pointing to youtube videos and such.I'm just personally not getting that.

As far as comparing a stock 10/22 with junk ammo to a tuned airgun with select ammo isn't fair.a lightly worked ovet 10/22 with good ammo is pretty darn accurate at 50 yards.and costs about the same as a high end tuned springer.

[BALD ERIC]

I expect to be able to completely cover a group with a £1 coin at 55 yards. I don't discount shots as 'flyers', I think that's just kidding yourself.

That is about correct for if you shoot comp's.

[air-tech]

I agree you can't just call it a flyer because it didn't land in a group. As far as anything but 10-shot group being worthless I'll have to disagree. I believe multiple 5 shot groups are fairly good representation of accuracy. I think 10 shot groups the human factor and changing conditions becomes more prevalent and the mechanical accuracy of the gun isn't generally the issue.

Here's where a misunderstanding of "groups", statistics, probabilities, randomness and sample sizes takes over. And over optimism.

If a gun is capable of shooting a 1.5" group (lets keep things simple here) - this means that if you were to aim at a fixed central point, a pellet or bullet could land randomly at absolutely any point within a circle of diameter 1.5" centred around the aim point.

Anywhere. Anywhere at all.

You take another shot.

As above...

This second pellet or bullet could land randomly at absolutely any point within a circle of diameter 1.5" centred around the aim point.

Anywhere.

And another shot... again see above, ad infinitum.

Now the mistake people make is that they think that the gun, or the pellet, has any memory at all as to where the previous pellet has gone. Hence, they also think that if they fire (say) 5 shots, they will be evenly spread out within that 1.5" circle.

This is a complete fallacy. The reality is that they are just as likely to be perfectly evenly distributed as they are to be passing through the same hole, wherever it may be.

The truth is simple. Refer previous. Each individual shot of the 5 shots could land anywhere. Randomness dictates that with a small number of shots - 5 is a small number - there is quite a high probability of having 3 or 4 of them clumping together, with just one or two slightly distant.

This does not mean that the gun is now shooting 1" groups rather than 1.5", it just means that you need to shoot a hell of a lot more to get any form of reasonably even spread that can serve as a useful group size indication. The more shots fired, the more randomness and probability work together to give a more realistic, more even spread.

You can see this all the time on shooting forums. Someone puts up a multiple-target card, claiming (say) 1/2" groups, with the mandatory "flyers". You then do actually see 1/2" (mostly) 5-shot groups on the 6-target card.

With a huge caveat.

The group on one target is offset (say) 1/2" to the left of the POA. The group on another is offset 1/2" to the right of that target's POA... the group on the third target is 1/2" down from POA... you get the picture.

But the shooter claims 1/2" groups.

Not likely. The more accurate representation would be had by overlaying all those individual targets around the central POA. But that would be disappointing, no bragging rights to be had there... so the 5 shot group is popular as a measure of accuracy...

Which is why competitions are scored by distance from the POA, and not group size, which sorts out reality from the wishful thinking...

[Harrympope]

[QUOTE=

Which is why competitions are scored by distance from the POA, and not group size, which sorts out reality from the wishful thinking...[/QUOTE]


Actually over here we shoot both score matches as well as group size matches. There's always an argument whether it is more stressful to have to put them in one particular spot (ring)or to put them in the smallest group. Bottom line is you must have a very accurate gun and know the Tendencies of your gun in the shot string and where it might wander.

And often when you shoot multiple 5 shot groups in a particular target when conditions could be blowing them off left to right.being that you're just shooting groups who really cares where they land ,you're just looking at group sizes. I would love to have a rifle that never changes a point of impact. Whenever I shoot other rifle matches that's always the main talk in the line----- "it was just in the X- Ring we stopped for lunch now it's in the 8 ring"-----


I don't know of any competitions we shoot in the USA that are measured from average distance from the center. What matches over there in the island do you guys measure the average from Center?

I believe a hundred years ago that was the way they measured groups the "string measure "method. Which is where we got the shot string nomenclature


But what you're saying I definitely agree with. too many people claim their guns hits dead center same spot every time with tiny groups .all the matches ive shot over the last 30 years I just don't see that in any shooting discipline. And the people that make these claims don't tend to show up to the matches. I do and I often get my ass handed to me. But at least I'm trying.