I do understand that and bench shooting isn’t my priority at all. I just sight it in at 50 and go from there. Last spring I tried running my thermal scope on the ar15 and was missing some shots on coyotes. So I moved it back to my 308. Yesterday I went down to the pond and layed down on the dam and shot 100 yards with some wind and it was shooting 1” to 1.25” groups about an inch high at 100. In my opinion if a gun isn’t close to 1 moa it’s really hard to use it for hunting and varmints. 2” groups at 50 won’t cut it. 200-300 yard shots are much more common than up close for me on our 80 acres.
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Yeah, I'd rethink that 50 yard zero. That's gonna leave you holing under until about 200 yards or so.
How many types of ammunition have you found that consistently get you about 1.5 MOA? Or maybe even 2 MOA? Are you just plain getting big groups or are they vertically or horizontally strung?
When you shoot your groups, is it usually in the type of setting in the picture? Are you holding consistenly on target for every shot or are you accounting for environmental variables? Are you judging the performance of 5.56 based on your experience with .308?
I'm asking because you may have found the right ammunition and don't know it. You really can't compare results you get from an accurate .308 to the results you get with a 5.56. Although .308 and 5.56 share similar trajectories, good .308 ammo has a higher ballistic coefficient and isn't nearly as affected by the wind as 5.56.
If you are shooting your groups holding in the same place everytime, without accounting for environmental variables, it would be no wonder that you're getting the results that you are.
My goto rig for out to 300 yards is a 12.5" Criterion barrelled AR. My chosen load is usually a 55gr V-Max leaving the muzzle at about 2900 fps. With that combo at 100 yards shooting with a cross wind between 5 and 10 mph, my wind hold is between .2 and .4 mils, depending on how my gut is reading the wind. That's about 3/4 to 1.5" at 100. With decent 77gr, i only have to hold about half as much, but I'm holding nonetheless.
That's why I said what I did about not going down the rabbit hole chasing ammo that groups sub MOA while just holding on the target in an open environment. What really matters is whether you can hit the target. For every shot, you need to be accounting for environmental variables. Unless youre lucky and have a place to shoot where environmental variables aren't a concern.
Yes, i shoot groups. I do it at 50 yards with .22 cal to minimize the effects of environmental variables to get an idea of what the ammo is doing. If i can keep ten round groups within a 1" target, then I'll start doing some real shooting with it. What im looking for is ammo that is predictable.
Honestly, as accurately as youre saying you need to shoot over several hundred yards, i don't know that 5.56 is for you. With all calibers, to varying degrees, your zero could change just because it's 10 degrees cooler or hotter than it was on the day you zeroed or the humidity changed. A 5.56 round gets kicked around if you look at it too hard.
if you are shooting at paper, have you tried hanging a streamer or even a strip of toilet paper from the target? Just to get an idea of what's going on with the wind. In that picture you posted, it's a little hard to tell, but are those wind ripples I see on the water?
In any case, I shoot a lot of the AAC V-Max stuff. It shoots ok in terms of practical accuracy and it's pretty cheap. The velocities can be a bit inconsistent. I also shoot a bunch of the 55gr V-Max from Black Dot Ammo. It runs a little slow at 2750 out of my 12.5, but im really starting to think that they use some sort of voodoo when loading that stuff. It shoots really straight out to about 275 to 300 yards. At that point it starts dropping like a brick.