CCCC & Ptarmigan,

I see ya'll are begging to get into it, allow me to provide a more detailed response:

In 50 plus years of shooting/hunting I've yet to crony a load. If it works, it works. It's up to me to position it. I don't need to obsess over speed.


I have zero disagreement with this. Lots of game killed over the years without the use of a chronograph, and I certainly don't obsess over speed.


Good groups, bullet construction/performance, and knowing the trajectory of the round is far more important than speed.
The crony will only tell you how it should perform according to the charts. You still have to shoot it at ranges.

Maybe you could make a case for this argument back when you couldn't buy a scope that tracked reliably, chrony's were less accurate and BC's were estimated instead of measured. With an accurate chrony and a reliable measured BC the trajectory will be precisely mapped out. With reliable scopes that actually track the prescribed amount, accurate range finders and bullets with known reliable BC's I can shoot a zero at 100ydss and make first round hits out to my max available range of 700yds.

If you don't know the velocity of your round you're just guessing. Fundamentally more important, you're guessing about wind drift as that is a function of time of flight, wind vector(s) and BC. As long as your practice includes 2 uncontrolled variables you will have a fundamentally difficult time - easily eliminated with a relatively cheap chronograph.

The other thing it might tell you is the consistency of your loads, which can be a good thing. Again provable otherwise by actual shooting. I cut out the chrony middleman....tho I do use the factory statistics and charts- which seldom exactly match the gun/me /range live shoots.

A chronograph provides a lot more data to the handloader than just the consistency of their loads.

No kidding! The factory charts aren't reliable?!?!? Wonder why that is? If you had ever used a chronograph you would know why.







I have zero problem with anyone that doesn't want buy / use a chronograph. Certainly you can kill a lot of game w/o pushing the limits on range and loads can be worked up w/o a chronograph. But to imply that a chronograph doesn't provide any useful information is just ignorant. Those statements are boldy offered from someone that has never used a chronograph.

Wow!

David