Re: Analyze This
Ahh, so now it's list some possibilities. Funny, but that's exactly what I said was the only thing you could do, make a list. That list is so long as to have basically no value, I did list a number of possibilities, which is hardly helpful.
I'm not here to suggest that calling a shot and ploting the result is not a good practice, or not useful. However, before that can be of any actual use, some baselines and some experiance are required. Otherwise, how is one to start eliminating any of the 'possibilities'? If the gun is not zeroed, how is a call/plot of a single shot of any value at all? If the shooter is not properly instructed and has no understanding of the basics, how does his reporting to me the call/plot of a single shot help me to help him?
I believe I understand the point you are trying to make, which is many people seemingly cannot be bothered to do any analysis of what is going wrong when they miss, seeking to blame almost anything except the nut behind the trigger. That self examination of the possible causes of error on each shot are important to moving forward certainly true, and many people don't do it at all, much less well.
I'm really only responding to this post at all because this is one of my pet peeves, making adjustments off one shot with no other context at all. Yes, operationally, if you miss the guy off the left edge on a 600 yard shot you run the bolt, hold the correction left and shoot. In training and practice, shooting a group provides much more data and a much better decision about what that actual problem is and how to solve it.
In this case, we call the shot .2 mil right but it is on center. Shoot a few more with the hold you planned on. If they group .2 left, you just under called the wind and your first shot call may just have been a fraction off, or maybe you had a little gust that just happened to cancel out your error. If they group on center, your call was good and you pushed the shot left .2 mil. Why? That's where some experiance and instruction help you out. You should KNOW when you make a bad press. You should be able to say to yourself, 'Yeah, slid my hand back a little and got side pressure on the trigger, that would explain it.' If you did not fire those other shots, how do you know if it's s gust/bad call or good call/bad press?
The slide that Frank refers to in his post above shows a target at an estimated 600 yards and the POI of a shot. We presume the shot is called center, but the impact is .9 mil high. So, we hold .9 down and most likely we hit. But what exactly do you KNOW about the sight setting? If you dial down .9 and take the head shot, do you hit? At that point two 1 MOA circles that represent the nominal group at that range slid in to show it's clearly possible to miss, no matter how perfect the shooter, since you have no way to know which 'group' containing that single shot you actually moved.
So, when possible, we shoot a group to confirm what is actually happening and therefore how to go about fixing the issue, if any. When we shoot for blood, you spot the shot and hold the correction and SHOOT RIGHT NOW! We accept the fact that that is not a perfect solution, but has a good probability of success in the available timeframe. Now, we can examine what happend and determine what the issue was with the first shot so as to not repeat the same error. What were we .9 mil high on that firat round? Oops, range really was 500, not 600, misread the MDM scale, so sorry. OK, we learned a few things. We now know the real range to the target, we know to pay more attention to the range in the first place and we know how to make a quick followup shot.
On the otherhand, I watch people 'chase' bullet holes with the scope dials making an adjustment after every single shot. Three days into the class, they still insist on making 1/4 MOA adjustments on the morning cold bore shot, trying for PERFECT and making us both crazy in the process. Unless you shoot 1/4 MOA groups every time you lay down at 100, you are doing nothing useful by twiddeling the knobs. When you shoot 1 MOA groups, shooting one shot and making a 1/4 MOA adjustment is not getting anything done. This is just what this kind of question/answer is promoting, do 'something' after seeing a single shot go downrange. Now, because and experianced match shooter who knows an error was made puts in two clicks right since his 3 o'clock call made a center hit and he knows that was a push with a right hold, I get clients trying to do that for every bloody shot they send downrange. Sorry, rant mode off now...