[Bart B.]

And I sometimes ignore groups some folks shoot from the bench.

The only way to find out how just the rifle and ammo shoot is to clamp the rifle in a free recoiling machine rest, load it, then shoot at least 20 shots. That eliminates all the holding and trigger pulling errors us humans make. Top ranked high power match rifle competitors take their rifle that shoots its ammo under 1/2 MOA all day long from a machine rest at 600 yards, lay down slung up in prone and in good conditions will shoot about 1.25 MOA at 600.

Humans add a lot to the accuracy degradation rifles and ammo. I believed this after watching a dozen or more riflemen at a public range take a Win. 70 .308 Win. factory match rifle and each one shoots 10 shots at 100 yards with a National Match lot of M118 ammo. Their groups ranged from about 2.5 inches down to about .75 inch. By itself, that rifle shot that M118 ammo about .375 inch. The rifle had a 10X scope on it.

And rarely does anybody shoot a hand held rifle with butt plate hard against their shoulder as it rests atop something on a bench as accurate as they could slung up in prone with a bag under the fore end and stock toe. Especially with cartridges more powerful than the .30-30 Winchester. Proved this to several folks over the years.

Go figure all this out.