I'm assuming you're shooting 3 shot groups and here's the thing, unless you're getting a one hole group at 50 yards, you don't know if you're dead on.
Look at the groups above, those look great until you consider all 3, 3 shot groups are in different spots. Overlap them and they're over an inch. (no offense Ted) That's why 10 shot groups are better at telling what's going on. Trying to call zero off a 50 yard group is useless past that range.
Zero at 200 then shoot at other distances and see where you hit, right the results down.
Or zero at 100 yards and do the same because unless you're only concerned with getting hits somewhere on a full sized silhouette, you need to forget the 25, 50 or even the 36 yard zero. You need to know exactly where your gun hits at the distances you want to shoot in the conditions you are in.
I'm glad you said it. 3 shot groups are useless. Especially at 50 yards. It should be 1 hole at that range with a good rifle. 5 shot groups at 100 yards and further are much better, because you can see anomalies in group dispersion and gives you a better idea on seating depth etc. Then step it up to at least a 9 shot group. I generally run 10, just to be safe and that was the criteria on the black rifle and MOA all day long challenge here. That's the only way you are going to know what the rifle and shooter is fully capable of and where your true POI is. Just about anyone can pull off a tiny 3 shot group with a 1.5 moa rifle. You are giving the op some good advice and at least he told us what barrel he's using now, but everything matters when it comes to how accurate you can make an AR. Non freefloating hanguards are a small ding, so subtract for that. How much, who knows because every rifle reacts differently to that. Using chidt ammo is a huge detriment in accuracy. Scope mount? Cheap unproven scope. Those are still some unknowns. The trigger is a known and that is also subjective to each individual shooter. One guy may shoot a heavy trigger rifle just fine, where another is more nit picky about such things. Other guys hitting on some great things like wind and using wind flags. I'm guilty of not using them lately, but have been thinking about doing so since I've been working on my precision BCM build. Lately the wind has been blowing hard enough to rock my target stand and its a heavy stand. Wind pushes those bullets around enough to open up those groups.
