My approach would be to recognize that all I'm shooting is paper (nearly all the time), and that I can afford to shoot a few foulers before I settle in on banging out the groups. I set aside a few extra rounds for use as foulers when I'm doing load development.
All my shooting these days is recreational. I had tried for a "Grand Senior" swan song last February at the Berger SW LR Nationals in the 600yd MR matches. Everything was up to speed but my ticker, and I ended up withdrawing after finishing the first of 3 matches. I learned something, and still had myself a heart attack two months later. I'm slowly working my physical condition back up to where it needs to be (we now own a treadmill, and I'm doing pushups, sit-ups, and some modified pull-ups), and may give it another try next year (or not, it's only worth doing if it's still fun....).
I no longer put much faith into the cold, clean bore idea. The rifle shoots more consistently, especially when cold, when its not coming off a serious cleaning.
However, when I'm doing load development, if the bullet jackets change, a cleaning and up to ten rounds of fouling will square way any 'oddness' associated with changing from one brand of bullets to the next. It's worth doing.
IMHO, the point of the load development testing is to get reliable data, and the most certain way I can think of to do that is to increase the size of the sample. Five sets of 5rd groups is more reliable than two, or one of them. Besides, I'm there to be shooting, so I may as well do more of it.
By all means do not relax standards for the sake of simplicity; I just want to put my own emphasis these days on the shooting, rather than the handloading. This represents a big change in me over the past decade and some, since my first heart attack, my 2004 Christmas present. My life these days is about finding simplicity, and cutting down on the self induced stress. Taking a step aside and removing my own self from the equation, I think there's a lesson to be learned from doing that, no matter what one's age may be.
The question about how much X or Y means in the overall scheme is good, but I've learned there's more to it than just the X or the Y in and of themselves. They all work together to form the whole; some adding, and some detracting. Rather than playing "whack a Mole" sorting out each from the other, I asked myself just what i wanted to end up with in the long run. Like, how much enjoyment was I getting out of polishing the apple more and more? My answer today is quite different from what it would have been before 2004. I see handloading as a necessary evil which allows me to enjoy more shooting for my shooting dollar. Obviously, doing it in a haphazard manner wastes more than it saves, but one can still draw some very dark lines that marginalize much of the soothsaying and arcane incantations. The simplest answer which still dots the I's and crosses the t's is the one that cleaves most true to the straight line.
So I decided I really didn't need to test four brands of primers with each bullet/gun combination, or have a full dugout in the powder department. I do shoot F T/R with a Bob Sled, but my rounds will still feed from the AR mag the rest of the time. My 223 loads are intended to shoot in both 1:9" and 1:8" twists (hence the shorter HDY 75gr HPBT-Match), and some effort is made to find a happy compromise load that works well in a fair number of my guns.
More perfection than this is simply not required. YMMV!
Greg
