This should settle the question, at least for the moment. The Pedersoli company offers a nice plaque for achieving success in what they call their MOA challenge (or similar name). Four consecutive ten-shot groups all measuring less than 1 MOA with a 40-cal or larger rifle, BP only.

To the best of my knowledge, to date only three plaques have been awarded, and two of these went to the same guy for success both with and without a scope. Dan Theodore won the pair of plaques and I forget the other guy's name.

If all these braggin'-type guys were shooting all these braggin'-type sub-MOA groups then I think there would have been more awards made. My conclusion is that your friend's opinion is right on the money, 1.5 MOA is darn good. Also, please bear in mind that 2-3 MOA will clean most any Silhouette course around. Thus far no clean scores have been fired.

I've seen my friend shoot several sub-MOA groups on steel, at all Silhouette ranges, but for only 4-5 shots. But try the same thing with 10 shots on paper and those little bitty groups somehow magically grow!

My esteemed colleague & friend Mr hst may care to comment on this one since he's now a bona fide celebrity state championship match winner!
Regards, Joe

Over the years, I’ve heard the same thing about needing a sub-MOA rifle to be competitive in today’s silhouette matches.   Well, it wouldn’t hurt to have sub-MOA performance out of the rifle, but in my experience it is much more important to have the shooter tuned for MOA performance.  I have several rifles that have on occasion shot at or just under 1 MOA at 200 or 300 yds for 10 shots.  But not on a regular basis.  So, are these 1 MOA rifles?  Possibly.  They cannot do this day in, day out, but is it the rifle or is it the shooter and/or the conditions the groups are shot under?  External conditions include but are not limited to the lighting, wind, temperature, mirage, haze, smoke, target background and even the comfort of the shooter (covered / uncovered firing points).  Some internal conditions like, shooters physical state, visual acuity, ability to break clean shots and follow thru, mental condition and confidence in self and equipment, experience in that style of particular match, experience with his equipment, ability to follow instructions from a spotter.   

There are a lot more things that effect performance then how well your rifle can shoot that will put you into the winner’s circle.  In silhouette, if you can consistently keep your groups into 1 ½ MOA, you will never loose a match.  Another thing to consider, if your rifle can maintain a 1 MOA group and you as the shooter can hold and break at 1 MOA, your cone of fire will average about 1 ½ MOA but can go as high as 2 MOA and at times as low as ½ MOA.    There are the statistician types that will argue with this, but it is my gut feeling it is correct for the most part.   

I don’t shoot silhouette much more then once or twice a year, but used to do it twice a month at one time.  Today, I shoot bulls eye matches with these rifles in NRA midrange and long range and find it more necessary to have the most precision to get higher scores then with silhouette.  A hit in the tail or the nose of the Ram will only give you a 7 on the 600 yd MR-1 target.   Many matches these days are won with a score in the lower to mid 90’s which equates to an average of the 9 ring or better.  The 9 ring is 18” in diameter or 3 MOA.  Nobody to date has cleaned the target but several have come close with scores of 98 and several X’s.  The 10 ring is 12” or 2 MOA.    The midrange prone aggregate record for 200, 300, and 600 yds is a 296 with a pile of X’s.  That means the shooter kept all but 4 of his 30 shots inside of 2 ½ MOA.  So these 1 MOA shooters could easily clean the course but have never done so to date.  I guess what I’m trying to say in a long and rambling fashion is :  1 ½ MOA is fine.  The thing to work on is the biggest variable.  The shooter.           Frank Monikowski

Frank, You failed to mention the name of the person that holds the 296 Midrange record....a humble man is a rare thing in the shooting sports. Congratulations on being both the record holder AND that rare man!

sorry frank...i think i meant to congratulate you.......i'm sure pete will pass it on.........blue

Good advice from all. here is my overall opinion for what it is worth. Accucary is fun to work on and there are endless possable combinations.

But my experence is experementation does not help match scores at all as long as your rifle and outfit is up the the general standard for the particular match.

You can do quite well just shooting the load combinations that are winning matches and never change or experement with a thing. At the level I shoot just elimanating mistakes is the best way for me to improve.  I think Harry Pope said something like " It's the absense of bad scores that make a winner ?." I can't recall the exact quote.

Last Hudson I shot I made 3 clear errors that cost at least 60 points. 3 out of 100 is a whole lot better than I used to do but still the way for me to improve scores is to work on no errors or pulled shots, not Sub moa accucary from my rifle.



Boats

Thats it !!!

Boats

99.99999% of the time the problem with accuracy is a single part of the equation, the NUT on the butt.