Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters POA, MOA, and accuracy...

I've been hunting with a Remington 700 for many, many years. I've always found Hornady ammo to shoot less than one inch at 100. A few years back I moved to Federal Fusions, and now to Partitions. ***And just now I have started to reload.*** I have been chasing .5 MOA w/ Partitions and Accubonds - fiddling with powders, powder weight, seating depth... I'm working through it all and I believe I've discovered more than few loads with different weighted bullets that consistently give me under 1 MOA - which is functional accuracy for me. But chasing small groups has brought up a question.

Why am I doing this?

When I take a 1MOA reload to the range, I can hit targets and steel at 300 and 400 all day. My groupings may be 3, 4, or 5 inches in width, but they would only be 1.5, 2, or 2.5 inches from my Point of Aim (the center of the target or plate); as long as my scope is sighted in properly and there is no parallax or cant going on. If a deer has a 10" vital area, could I not have a 20MOA rifle and hit the vitals at 100 yards? Why do writers seem to equate 1MOA with 1 inch of target? It seems to me a sighted in rifle would need MOA to be doubled to equate with target size. I miss equally left and right (vert is quite consistent).

Alas, I know that I don't know much. And I would bet a brick of primers my thinking/reasoning is off. I would love to hear facts/thoughts/opinions...

-B

I’ve seen many gun writers make exactly that point in articles. It’s shooters that usually obsess. Especially with the current popularity of guys who want to play “long range sniper” instead of hunting.

20 MOA at 100 yards would be 20.9 inches. So no, a 20MOA rifle would be useless.

"20 MOA", that's a little extreme. Don't you think? The simple truth is many guys have been getting by with 1.5 moa rifles all their lives. Killing big game animals every year. Now, keep in mind, no one is going to be shooting 1.5 moa offhand or in most other field positions from that same 1.5 moa rifle. When I say "1.5 moa", I mean that is its full capability off a bench with a rock solid hold. Chances are a lot of guys, especially unpracticed ones, are going to be shooting in the neighborhood of 7 or 8 moa (and likely even more) offhand if they are lucky. That is why you need to know your limitations and capabilities. Now, take a rifle that is a true 1/2 moa rifle and your chances of placing shots into 3 or 4 moa or even better is within reason for that same shooter. This is the reason I chase accuracy. I used to hold twice the accuracy capability of my rifles when I practiced offhand shooting a lot. Meaning if my rifle was a true 3/4 moa rifle, I would hold 1.5 moa in the offhand position. This may not make sense to some, but others will likely agree, if they have done a lot of shooting in field positions.

Goal, labor, achievement I guess.

We spend time and money on what we like.

Im no longer a big accuracy nut with rifles. But I enjoyed it briefly in the past.

What BSA said there is the whole truth, the real truth and nothing but the truth. Shooting under range conditions and shooting in the field at game is a whole different world, period. RJ

I think you kind of answered your own question. A 1 MOA shooter puts all the rounds into 1 inch at 100 yards, 2 inches at 200 yards and 4 inches at 400 yards.

A 20 MOA rifle puts all its rounds into 20 inches at 100 yards. That is under Minute-of-Bushel-Basket, but it's still a pretty big area. It isn't even guaranteed to be centered. At 200 yards, the group is now 40 inches. Aiming at the deer's boiler room will put you. . . about 50% of the shots you take will land somewhere on the deer, but a good percentage will be in places you don't want.

Can you take a deer with that rifle? Yes.
How do I make a 20 MOA rifle work? Easy. Get in a treestand that you use for bowhunting. When a deer comes by at 20 yards or so, point the rilfe in the general direction of the chest and shoot.
How do I sight in a 20 MOA rifle? Fill a milk jug with water and cap it. Place it out on the lawn. Step back roughly 10 paces and fire at the jug. If you hit the jug, you're sighted in.

But Shaman! I don't have a 20 MOA rifle, but I want to explore this seemingly exciting niche just for the challenge. What do I do?
Take any legal centerfire rifle deer hunting:
a) Don't practice before season. If you do practice, make sure it is with a stout load that promotes a sincere flinch
b) Limit yourself to only offhand shooting
c) Don't worry about distance

. . . Following these guidelines will give you a fair approximation.

Remember, I'm the guy who wrote the thread about hunting with 4 MOA deer rifles. 20 MOA is a bit more of a challenge, but well within the same wheelhouse.


EDIT: On the way to work this AM, I was pondering the 20 MOA problem. How does one practically make a 1 MOA rifle into a 20 MOA rifle? So much of what I wrote earlier takes a great deal of discipline. I suppose you could work over the crown with a screwdriver, but that is kind of final solution. About the fastest way I've seen to temporarily accomplish this feat is to add one of those fancy bipods to your rifle and extend the legs all the way before attempting an offhand shot. I've got a fellow that comes down to the farm occasionally with a Mossberg Patriot in 308 WIN so accessorized. He can't hit within 2 feet of his previous shot. I've tried the rifle a few times without the bipod and it is a really great shooter. Make sure you let no part of the bipod touch a solid surface. You want those legs swinging freely.

A) Because you can
B) You caught the Loony Virus

It keeps you off the barstools.

I do it for a couple of reasons
1) If my rifle will shoot small groups, it give me confidence that I can make a good shot (even if it is only a 50 yard shot)
2) I want my equipment to be the best it can be.

You never know if it is you or your rifle that sucks until you shoot a rifle that is accurate.

I think the MOA thing has been adequately addressed.

"Why am I doing this?" Confidence!

The more accurate you know your rifle to be, the more confidence you have in your equipment. The more you shoot, the better you get.....

But not off a bench. Once the rifle is well and truly zeroed practice from field positions.

I have spent quite a bit of time and money competing off the bench and prone and building rifles for myself and others to do the same. For these rifles, I wanted to achieve the very best accuracy I could, of course. With my hunting rifles, I don't even shoot them much from the bench and seldom shoot groups. Same with the silhouette rifles. I'll fire a couple of groups during initial testing and may fire from a rest to confirm zero later on but that's about it. Compared to the obsessive-compulsive behavior required for BR or "F" Class, I find the less stringent requirements for hunting rifles and even the silhouette rifles to be liberating. GD

I saw something about this in a video with Clint Smith recently (at the 6:35 Minute mark):
https://youtu.be/8mCAd7giD2o?t=395

Bottom line for me is that I am plenty inaccurate and I don't need my rifle to add to that even more. Aim small, miss small, that also goes for my gun.

The short answer is because group size has a inverse correlation to personal Ego.

Wasn't always like that, but it is like that now.

[b][/b]

Why MOA and 1" get equated by writers is that 1 Minute of Angle = 1.047" at 100 yards. Basically 1MOA = 1" at 100 yards. I think why it became a somewhat standard is that before BDC reticles and turret twisting, reticles were basic X or plex. Hold overs were estimated in inches. ie. 30-06 sighted at 200 yards - deer at 300 yards, hold 8" high and get your knife ready. Easier to quickly determine than what 2.67 MOA looks like with a holdover.

I believe the internet has reduced typical group size by at least 1/2 also.

Tend to be a little surprised when these threads always include a bunch of posts saying finer accuracy doesn't matter--usually "in the field," or in "real-world hunting."

First, this assumes that the only reason for finer accuracy is practical, It ignores the fact that ever since firearms appeared around 800 years ago that one of the consistent trends has been toward finer accuracy. One of the big jumps was the development of spiral rifling, which took place in Germany just about 500 years ago.

The other two trends have been toward lighter, smaller caliber, higher-BC projectiles at faster muzzle velocities--which just about any "modern" rifle shooter is involved with, whether a "traditionalist" who uses a Model 94 Winchester .30-30 with open sights, or anybody who uses a scope and spitzer bullets.

Plus, I have also found that finer accuracy does indeed matter in certain kinds of hunting. Have been shooting prairie dogs for half a century, ever since my first full-time job (ranch-hand in eastern Montana) partly involved PD whacking. I have probably shot PDs with at least 100 rifles, chambered for cartridges from the .17 Mach 2 to the .375 H&H and an original "trapdoor" .45-70. Finer accuracy has helped in every type of rifle, because PDs are small targets--especially as ranges increase.

In fact, one of the most effective prairie dog rifles I own is my 6mm PPC benchrest rifle--which weighs 13 pounds with its 4.5-30x Bausch & Lomb scope. It will average under .2 inch for 5-shot groups at 100 yards with several target-bullet/powder/primer combinations, but with 55-grain Nosler Ballistic Tips only averages around .3 inch--again, for 5-shot groups, not 3-shot. Still, that load has been highly effective at 500-600 yards. I know from long experience that a "1-MOA" load does not work as well at that range.

Of course, finer accuracy does NOT matter as much when shooting big game. Duh! Have killed big game cleanly out to 500 yards with factory ammo that averaged about 1.5" at 100 yards for 3-shot groups. This is because the vital area (heart-lung) of pronghorns is the diameter of an official volleyball, around 8"--which is a pretty big target at 400 yards, especially when you're used to shooting 2" targets (the width of a BIG prairie dog), at even longer ranges.

You're sick.

It's normal. Don't worry about it.