Originally Posted by alpinecrick
Originally Posted by Jordan Smith
Casey,

Obviously I’m not John, but the point of shooting more shots into the group is not to test how the barrel handles heat (that’s a separate experiment), but to understand the statistical distribution of shots fired under the same conditions. For a hunting rifle, it would ideally test the statistical distribution of cold-bore shots, so allowing the barrel to fully cool between each shot wouldn’t be a bad thing. So two separate 3-shot groups fired into the same target is essentially a 6-shot group, in the context of testing your rifle/load’s precision.

Jordan,
That's what I was wondering if two, 3 shot groups would still be statistically valid as a 5 shot group. I'm doing this because of throat erosion rather than first shot, cold shot POI. Thanks!

I do this quite often, the 3 shot group, another the next day, etc, etc, etc. I'd much rather do that than wail away with 10 shot strings at the same sitting. Since I've never shot more than 3 times at any game animal in my 51 years of hunting, I'll probably keep doing it that way. I am with jwp though.......1st round cold bore hits is where it's at.

It is irrelevant what you think. What matters is the TRUTH.