Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting The reason why the Audette is the greatest, never-improved upon Load Development Method

It's been a number of years.
But I remember you posted a picture of a classic textbook
Ladder test you shot.
As I remember you had 3 rounds in a "flat spot" and everything else was below and above it.
Talk about getting rid of vertical.....

Dave

Generally that’s what you see on the target; 3 to 4 consecutive shots that have the same POI.

Then it’s a matter of shooting groups with those loads in the “flat spot” or node to determine which is best.

The intersection of "Audette Testing" for load development and statistics is ironic for me. I'm a Creighton Audette fan and chased down whatever of his writings I could find; Rifleman, Precision Shooting etc.

Audette was very well versed in Statistics and wrote an article entitled "It Ain't Necessarily So" where he debunked folks making pronouncements of accuracy based on single groups or 3 shot groups etc. The irony is that he used and wrote about load testing shooting single shots at escalating charge weights (he called it the "20 shot method"). And thought nothing of the statistics of if as others are calling out here. The method just flat out worked for him to find a load that had match winning accuracy.

For those that don't know much about Audette, he was a high level Highpower Competitor, gunsmith, and accuracy critical thinker. He was the Harold Vaughn of his generation (if you haven't heard of Harold Vaughn, that 's a discussion for another time).

Others such as Dan Newberry decided Audette needed to bulk up his statistics by shooting 3 shots at each charge weight in a "round robin" fashion. (google OCW or Optimal Charge Weight to read more). Chris Long put his Engineer's stamp on Newberry's theory with his OBT (Optimal Barrel Time) theory. I personally think they missed the point. The 20 shot method is a great shortcut to getting to an accurate load that is conditions, temperature and charge weight resilient. It wasn't meant to withstand statistical analysis.

Closer to the topic raised by the video; Randolph Constantine (he was an actual bona fide Rocket Scientist) decided he would use a chrono at 100 yards in his version of Audette Load Development and called his twist "Incremental Load Development". I shook my head when I read his article in Precision Shooting for much the same reasons as that video called out. Flat spots in a charge/velocity curve didn't match up to 300 or 600 yard accuracy on paper for me.

To address the statistical concerns, the assumption in using a Audette test is your rifle has to be accurate enough to give you high confidence that the elevation differences are load related and not random error (rifle with poor accuracy). A poorly shooting rifle gives too much random noise to use an Audette test.

This video might better be titled Spiraling Toward Statistical Nihilism.

I'm not convinced I should stop collecting as much data as practicably possible.

I’m not convinced that’s a realistic assumption. Shooting groups at 100 yards with all load increments where trajectory differences are negligible would reveal that the precision of the various increments is often inconsistent enough so as to be comparable with the dispersion in the trajectory between increments at longer distance. There is little doubt that the theory of faster bullets exiting the barrel lower in the arc than slower bullets is sound, but in reality all things that have inherent non-deterministic behaviour are at the mercy of statistical uncertainty. The ability to determine a weak “signal” from the noise requires an extremely low level of noise.

For the record, I have experimented with the Audette method at 100 meters out to 600 meters in the past, using rifles that shot in the 2s and 3s.

Yes, the signal gets lost in the noise as they say…hence as described by Audette, he shot at 300 yards to boost the signal and shot prone off a front bag, with a scope (even though the end use was irons for competition), during the early morning when the wind was calmest to reduce the noise.

Curious what the results of your testing was like?

Nice to see someone on the Long Range Forum who is familiar with the method and Long Range Load Development. Not many are, as you can see.





I doubt you’ll get any useful feedback

Here is a well-written detail of how I have modified the Creighton Audette Method. I think I have improved upon it and can finalize a good Long Range Load for any rifle in short order, without multiple trips to the loading bench or range.

Member GSSP here on 24hr is a friend, fellow Precision Shooter and the author of the write-up on longrangehunting.com

RC’s Long Range Load Development Method

I walked him through his first effort over the phone and he had great success

Charges are weighed at the bench, charged cases brought to the range with your press, dies, tools, scale.

Homemade Shoot n see targets so you don’t have to drive down range to mark impacts to keep things straight.

Nice! Audette did his testing on a range equipped with pits and had a buddy pulling and marking his shots. That seems to be the biggest challenge these days; identifying shot numbers and is the subject of many of the tweaks (ie using velocity as a surrogate for impacts rising etc.) ...although...technology is catching up! If you're fortunate to have an acoustic target like a Silver Mountain who needs pits and a puller! DirtyBird type targets are another game changer!

You and your friend have iron nerves to be able to carry and transport a tray of charged cases. I wouldn't do so well and should probably continue pulling bullets from the losers (I can't carry a tray of charged cases across a room without spilling powder!)

I leave them in the loading block and set it on the floorboard or the truck. Never had any issues with spilling

I got burned trying an Audette.

There are two problems with that, the first is that both dispersion due to limited precision of the rifle as well as dispersion due to barrel position when the bullet is released are both angular quantities, so the signal and the noise both get amplified as distance increases. The second problem is that with increased distance comes additional sources of noise, like wind, as you mentioned.

I experimented with the Audette method with a few different rifles at various distances. In a couple of cases, I repeated identical tests at 600 meters to investigate repeatability, and the correlation between the results left me with little confidence in the repeatability of the test.

If the method is truly valid, then it should be repeatable. My experience and sample size is very limited, which is why I’m interested in the repeatability of others’ results, as well.

Does anybody else have any data on Audette test repeatability?

Fortunately for me, the Audette method isn’t the only way to successfully develop a LR load. My methods have done well enough to enable me to place on the podium at multiple precision rifle competitions with stages from 1000-2000 yards.

As I said, I experimented with the Audette method a few times, and didn’t have consistent enough results to adopt the method in general. If others have success with it, great. Whatever works.

There’s no reason to repeat a test that yields the best long range load for your rifle. Why the hell would you want to continue searching for a long range load with minimal vertical after the test produces one?

The “repeatability” is verified every time you shoot practice, a match, or kill something at long range.

Exactly. Whatever works.

For me and the method I’ve refined, the Audette finds the best long range load with minimal vertical the fastest and saves barrel life for the real thing

Curious as to what matches? In the USA? What have you won?

It produced minimal vertical once. You don’t know that vertical is minimal when you are shooting LR afterward, only that it is small enough to be useful.

Repeatability is a primary criterion of any scientific or engineering-related project. Experimenting with the intersection of internal and external ballistics definitely falls into that category. That’s the whole point of the video you posted.

If you’re so sure that the Audette results are definitive, why are you so worried about repeating the test? It’s not a lot of handloading components to invest. If the method works as well as you say, you should be able to repeat the test over and over with the same results. If not, the results of the first test were somewhat random and not all that significant, right?

I guess if you’re obsessed with testing and don’t mind wasting useful barrel life on it instead of actually shooting a good long range load for reelz, knock yourself out.