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OCW vs Ladder at 200 yards

Genius.

Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Jun 4, 2012
377
0
40
West Michigan
Tomorrow I am planning on spending all day at my range and developing a few different loads, but my range is only 200 yards.

What technique will give me the best results with what I have to work with, Ladder or OCW?
 
200 yards is not enough for a ladder test and you only need 100 yards to do OCW testing. If it were me I would do the OCW test at 100 yards.
 
OCW for sure. I have done both methods and the OCW is better in my opinion.
 
tried with .308 and .222: I'm quite happy with ladder tests at 200 meters_ 200yds it's a little less distance, but I think it's enough to have good infos about the reloads in those calibers, in my experience_
 
I think it depends on the caliber. I couldn't tell what was going on with my ladder at 300 yards with my 7mag and 300mag, I moved back to 600 and it was easy to see.
 
I don't like ladders, whether I'm doing load work at 200, 400 or 600 I shoot OCWs. I've shot enough OCW groups (and I usually shoot at least 4 shots) that have one flyer low or high that would send a ladder shooter home with a completely wrong answer if said flyer was in the ladder and made them thing they had a 3 shot cluster.

OCW believer here.
 
Shooting one round of a given load and attempting to draw conclusions from that is just asking to get garbage for your efforts. As much as we'd like to reduce our load development time, you have to shoot some groups or your'e just fooling yourself.

OCW's, ladders, ABC's, 123's - it doesn't matter. Stats is stats.