Polar shooting
Some additional thoughts on shooting in the cold. With the tiny amounts of powder in a 22, the cold means that the combustion gases reach lower max temp and pressure, thus has lower muzzle velocity. The bullet passing thru the air is governed by fluid dynamics and the heavier, thicker air increases drag, slowing the bullet faster and causing the wind drift and spin drift affects to increase. That is possibly why the slower twist bbl mentioned earlier is slightly more accurate in the cold. It is spinning slower and thus experiencing less spin drift.
I shot a lot this past winter in temps from the high 40's to down in the low 20's. It stayed cold so long that I actually got kind of used to it. I agree that a 5mph wind at 20 deg F has more impact on accuracy than the same wind at 80 deg F. This winter my best groups have been with Eley Black when the temps dipped into the 20's. All the SK/Wolf/Lapua ammo seemed to shoot more erratic and was affected more by wind than the Eley stuff in very cold temps. That was with my rifle (your mileage may vary). The Lapua did shoot faster and when I switched from Lapua to Eley it would take 8-9 clicks up on my scope to correct for the lower POI of the Eley ammo. Once the temps get above 40's I am seeing big improvements in the precision of the Lapua ammo. I believe that most of this is due to the shape of the bullet and the type of lube used on the Eley vs Lapua. Cannot prove it though.
For paper punching, Lapua/Wolf/SK all cut smaller more ragged holes in the targets than the nice round holes cut by the new Eley bullets. If you are scoring best edge this can make a difference, although small. This has nothing to do with cold but was something I have noticed. When shooting for small tight groups, the opposite is true. The smaller holes of the Lapua ammo makes the groups look smaller, when in reality, they are not, if we score them correctly. I think it has fooled me at times into thinking my Lapua ammo shot better.
We are all shooting outside. I shot the best 22lr groups in my life this past winter in 20 deg and 30 deg weather. The best match ammo is still going to have velocity deviation and if we had a perfect gun with perfect aim, the best it will shoot is about 0.160" just from ammo variance alone. Yes, some of us, me included score 5 shot groups at 50yds that are smaller than that, but if we shot that perfect gun for 50rd groups, it cannot get better than about 0.160" c-c groups with the current state of the art ammo. That is a theoretical best. I saw a recent post where a Blieker shot indoors fired a 40rd world record group at 50m that was 12.8mm which is about 0.500". I am pretty sure it was measured edge to edge, not center to center, so that is closer to the reality. It broke a record that had stood for several years by only a tenth of a mm. I think where cold affects us is that it magnifies the velocity variance impacts on accuracy as well as the wind affects, thus making that theoretical best open up to something larger. Unfortunately none of us have a "Perfect Gun", let alone perfect aim, and the wind, well even on a calm day, it is not always insignificant. Hey if it was easy, everybody could do it.
Irish