How important is ES/SD for Precision Rifle Competitions? 

So what you are saying is that I suck and can’t blame my ammo anymore.

Really enjoy the videos. As a mom who is now starting to shoot with her son and husband I need all the info possible! Need to give my son a run for his money!!

I like that you know your going to get your phone blown up by the wind comment. 😆

Dont worry about es or sd if you are an off-butt shooter 😂

You're correct. However the further you shoot the more themore the speed and you ES/SD come into play

PRS is an oddity in that you are shooting square targets. Most target disciplines involve shooting circular targets. The majority of your misses are going to be due to poor wind calls. On a circular V bull, you want to be centred vertically, so that you can benefit from the full width of the circle. If you have A high ES, you’re going to see vertical dispersion, and that means you’re not going to benefit from the full width of the circle.. I don’t know of any of the top shooters in any discipline that don’t reload. And they are reloading for increased consistency first and foremost.

The question I might have asked, was his rifle shooting consistent .5 moa with factory loads or was his best group .5 moa, that could make a huge difference if some were 1.25 moa or 1 moa, .75 moa. Todays ammo shortages, your gonna have really hard time getting two boxes of same lot as well. Heck when I was buying factory it was hard to get 2 boxes of same bullet. Might’ve been a box of 140 black on shelf and box of 143 match. I took the time to learn reloading. Yes you are correct it’s a lot of info to absorb and we’re always learning.

He's 100% right. If 1/2 MOA is your standard of acceptable accuracy, then ES is not THAT critical (within reason). Especially when shooting Steele, an impact is an impact. Shooting for score with an X ring where not all impacts are equal, ES becomes more important.

I've seen a ton of 1 and 2 moa targets at 1k here in local matches. .3 mil spread will most definitely cause misses at that range and those targets. That being said learning to shoot positionally is more important but precision rifle is about that precision in everything

my reloading ES/fps for my 223 ranges from 23 @ 25.3 gn at avg. 2900 fps. to 44 @ 24.3 gn. at avg. 2800 fps. yesterday I shot 6 - 5 shot groups at 100 yds. and two groups were @ .25" using 25.3 gn. now I have to fix the Indian as the arrow appears to be ok 😀

Great video. It's easy to miss the forest through the trees in this game.

No matter what discipline you shoot practice and more practice! As Erik Cortina says Believe the Target because some of your best groups may have SD’s and ES’s you would probably not be happy with.

I mean your friend wasn't wrong that having an unacceptable standard deviation and extreme spread won't help you hit the targets at longer range as point .3 and a bad hold will be a miss at 1000, but a bad hold or a trigger pull could cause the same miss even if his ES was in the low double or single digits. Not sure if you'd agree but this gets exaggerated for projectiles with lower coefficient such as .308 or even NRL22 where 50es causes a heck of a lot more elevation error at range. Excellent video!

Side Note. Hornady Stated a batch of there 140gr 6.5CM Match that had a ES 22fps.

Staball 6.5 gives insane single digit es numbers

Your 💯 right about focusing on your fundamentals and data points. Sometimes you are at the mercy of your bullet though. You can have your rifle bench viced and machine trigger pulled and you will still get a bust hole variance. If you get good at reloading at least you know your quality of ammo. Ammo companies are in such demand right now that most of them aren’t as quality as they should be.

This is a great subject. I have similar opinions about about SD/ES or what I label as "instrumental accuracy". I would like to discuss it with you if I rate a hit show like yours!

Really do appreciate your effort and how you're helping to educate. I, for one, spend too much time on load development and not enough practicing. That said, two points:If my dream were to put 95% (~ +/- 2 SD) of my shots in the X-ring at 1,000 yards, I'd better have a load whose standard deviation is in the very near neighborhood of 5 fps; 10 fps if I want to be in the 10-ring (95%). This level of precision/accuracy requires a perfect rifle (a rifle whose POI only depends on MV) and a perfect shooter. Throw in systematic and random variations in rifle performance, changing temperatures, mirage, wind and a flawed human shooter and it all opens up from there. A low ES should not be a focus. ES is algebraically related to the SD; it is a component of the SD. In small samples, you cannot have a large ES and small SD just as you can't have a large SD without a large ES. They go hand-in-hand. ES uses 2 data points; SD uses them all. SD stabilizes with more data; ES, although it may appear to stabilize, will always increase with more data. Focus on improving your SD and ES comes along for the ride. Here are two groups with the same ES, 20 fps: G1 = {2840, 2840, 2860, 2860, 2860} and G2 = {2840, 2850, 2850, 2850, 2860} with SD's 10.95 fps and 7.07 fps respectively. Clearly not equivalent groups, despite the same ES.

Hopefully if all goes well I’ll be joining the NRL champs in Colorado next year with the rest of the South African team . Can’t wait to meet you guys 💪🏻

From a long time precision reloader, this advice is spot on...very true Videos on the fundamentals would be good

Well said Mr Lilly. Personal experience here; going out to shoot and one day my group is on one side and the next week on the other. I took a class and learned how to set up the rifle and not "steer the weapon" with my trigger hand. If i didn't learn anything else, this changed my long range experience. Not the ammo I use.

I really liked the comment that when you started reloading it actually hurt your performance. As a new shooter i'm trying to improve fundamentals and learn reloading so it's good to know it's a normal progression. I'd probably would have stuck with factory ammo but with the shortages reloading was the only way to be shooting consistently. Thanks for another great video.

Cal Zant over at the precisionrifleblog has a great write up titled "How Much Does It Matter? Overall Summary" from 2015 which is really helpful here. He uses a monte carlo simulation software that does a great job incorporating the error stacking from the various contributors to shooting precision. TL;DR is you're right that SD is one of the more minor contributors to misses. It does make a larger difference at the smaller distant targets, but as you note those are infrequent so while SD/ES could be the thing that separates a 1st from a 2nd place finish it's not going to move you from 50th percentile to the top. The biggest contributor is wind reads and a close second is "don't use a 308 because it's slow MV and bad BC bullets makes wind reads and SD that much more important". My remaining question is what is the best training for reading the wind that doesn't break the bank? In my minds eye it takes shooting at distance to really know. I imagine taking you kestrel with you places and trying to guess the wind and see if you were right, but that seems too easy...

Great video. Really appreciate your specific targeting of who* this info is for; first year shooters (that would be me). I reloaded bajillions of shot-shells the past 40 years, but never reloaded rifle until last year. It's been a great learning experience, a bit of investment $$, but it's the time investment that's by far the largest. Personally, I started paring back on time spent on the minute details of each load, and put that time toward dry-fire drills in the garage using ladders as barricades, backs of chairs, etc. (fundamentals). Hopefully, I'll see more improvement in the 2022 season.

Thanks for another great video. I just started reloading myself this year and was a bit disappointed in my ES/SD numbers. Moving forward, I’m not going to sweat them and just enjoy the whole process.

😎😎😎😎😎

Great video but where do I buy that shirt?🤙🏽

At 1000 yards your target should be ten inches. So 10.3 difference caused by a high extreme spread will cause you to be WAY off.

Ask the guy lifting the trophy how important ES is… his opinion is more important than anyone else’s!

I just switched to 6 ARC at the end of this past PRS season and am shooting factory ammo. The rifle shoots tight and the SD/ES are pretty good for factory ammo, to the point I'm pretty sure I won't gain much (if anything) by handloading for it so I'm going to take the time that I'd spend on loading and put that into dry fire training. I know the rifle is good to go so now it's invest the time on me.

Prime example of KISS.

Very good info. What about positional shooting when you have a .1 or .2 wobble or more? I think the errors can multiply. I personally love seeing small numbers.

Loved the text message part 😂

Great video!

Aside from cost of equipment, does reloading really save money? I have a 6.5 Creedmoor on order and thinking about ordering a 6.5 PRC as well.

The long and short of it from what I took away from this is, if you’re inside 700 yards it isn’t going to matter. .3 error at 1000 will certainly be a miss though. I would expect to miss if I dialed high or low .3 and shot at any of our normal sized 1000 yard targets.

Great topic and details. Have you tried 108 eld match bullets in your 6GT?