While getting lots of trigger time, and plenty of it, is important, probably the most impact on accuracy is reloading your own ammo. Taking the time to tune your ammo for your rifle goes a long way to insuring that those long distance shots actually hit where you want. I see guys with some pretty serious rigs at the range shooting factory ammo and while they're happy to shoot < 1.0-MOA, when they see me drilling bug-holes out of a "nothin' special" rifle, they realize there's more to it than trigger control and follow through. While I always enjoy happening upon a factory load that seems to shoot it my rifle, it's extremely rare to find one that I can't best with a hand-load,... In fact, I've never found one I couldn't best, but I have found a few that were "good enough" (<0.5-MOA) to use if I didn't have enough hand-loads. There's a reason ALL benchrest shooters reload their own ammo; it's the accuracy they can achieve.
Assembling a modest reloading kit that you can take to and assemble at the range is the ideal setup and well worth the effort. Being able to tweak your loads on the fly as you're testing saves not only a ton of money in components, but a ton of time in trips back and forth from home. Typically, I'll do a little research on the particular caliber I'm interested in and loads that people seem to be running, but I only use these as launch-pads for the testing I intend to do. Then I'll devote a day at the range to test 2-3 different powders with 2-3 different bullets. I'll run a couple ladder tests on the components and assemble and shoot a few 3 & 5-shot groups of the most promising candidates. I continue with this weeding out process; tweaking and testing different combos 'til I'm happy with my load. Sometimes I'm done by noon,... sometimes, I get done late in the afternoon. Whatever time it ends up taking, I always walk away with a load that shoots to the rifles full potential.
As for the components I use,... While I usually have personal preferences on what I would like a rifle to shoot, I've learned to be pragmatic and let the rifle do the choosing as it's impossible to know what it will end up liking. Also, worth noting on my loads, I couldn't care less about velocity. While it's nice to have a fire-breathing load, I'll always sacrifice speed for accuracy,... it's no contest.
Here's a pic of a 5-shot group of my pet load for my 260 REM (43.0gr H4350 with 139gr Scenars) shot prone with a bipod:
Happy Shooting!
Ry
Assembling a modest reloading kit that you can take to and assemble at the range is the ideal setup and well worth the effort. Being able to tweak your loads on the fly as you're testing saves not only a ton of money in components, but a ton of time in trips back and forth from home. Typically, I'll do a little research on the particular caliber I'm interested in and loads that people seem to be running, but I only use these as launch-pads for the testing I intend to do. Then I'll devote a day at the range to test 2-3 different powders with 2-3 different bullets. I'll run a couple ladder tests on the components and assemble and shoot a few 3 & 5-shot groups of the most promising candidates. I continue with this weeding out process; tweaking and testing different combos 'til I'm happy with my load. Sometimes I'm done by noon,... sometimes, I get done late in the afternoon. Whatever time it ends up taking, I always walk away with a load that shoots to the rifles full potential.
As for the components I use,... While I usually have personal preferences on what I would like a rifle to shoot, I've learned to be pragmatic and let the rifle do the choosing as it's impossible to know what it will end up liking. Also, worth noting on my loads, I couldn't care less about velocity. While it's nice to have a fire-breathing load, I'll always sacrifice speed for accuracy,... it's no contest.
Here's a pic of a 5-shot group of my pet load for my 260 REM (43.0gr H4350 with 139gr Scenars) shot prone with a bipod:
Happy Shooting!
Ry
