The vitals of a deer being the size of a basketball - would have to be really bad rifle not to hit them at average deer hunting ranges.
The problem is for me, that traditional 3 shot groups aren't sufficient in determining if a rifle is good, bad, or really bad and what the chance of making a clean shot is at different distances.
I've gotten a few 3 shot groups from my lever gun under an inch. Best was 3/4". Sounds good right?
But, when aggregating 20 on the same target:
- The mean radius is 1.46, which means 50% of shots can be predicted to fall inside of a 3" circle.
- The extreme spread (i.e. group size) is 5.2".
- The R95 is 3.1, which means 95% of shots can be predicted to fall inside of a 6.2" circle.
When you add the error for rise and drop of the trajectories for different zero points (e.g., 100 yds, 110 yds, 120 yds) and assume a point blank center hold, then off the bench, the gun could be expected to hit a basketball or pie plate with 95% out to about 125 yds. And at 200 yds, the R95 tells us that 95% of the shots should be in a 12.5" circle. That is, long shots don't give me a high hit percentage even if I had a perfect zero dialed in and was shooting from the bench.
Now... I don't want to drag people into a long discussion about how to best determine the accuracy of a gun (although, I'm fine with that). What I really would like to know is what other hunters think is "good enough" on hit likelihoods.I'm pretty conservative and view my lever gun as a 100 to 125 yd gun, which is fine for my uses in the woods. But I can't see using it to hunt meadows and power lines.
What likelihood do you expect from your deer guns?
