What’s Up with Those Pesky Flyers?
by Sierra Bullets Ballistic Technician Gary Prisendorf
Occasionally someone will ask, “Why did I get a flyer that didn’t go in with the rest of my group?” If I had an answer that would stop flyers from happening, I would be rich.
There are many reasons why this can happen. Everything from gripping a forearm differently to variations in the brass casing, the list goes on and on. Most of the time the flyer is usually shooter induced and sometimes what you may think is a flyer, is just part of your group. There are a lot of shooters, that go out and test a load and they may shoot a 3/8” group at 100 yards and think that load is good. But I have seen far too many times that you can shoot another group, same load, same rifle and the next time you may get a 1 ¼” group.
The total opposite can also occur. You may shoot a 1 ¼” group and turn around and follow it with a 1/2″ group without changing anything. If you only shot the one group, you might decide that load wasn’t any good and move on to something else without really knowing what that load was capable of.
To really determine how a particular load is performing we need to shoot multiple groups and take an average of the group sizes to really see what that rifle/load combination is really capable of.
I suggest shooting a minimum of three 5-shot groups and averaging the group sizes before deciding if the load is acceptable or not. Obviously the more rounds you shoot for a group and the more groups that you shoot, you will get a much better representation of what that particular combination can do.
Now I’m not saying to go out and shoot 30 groups with 50 rounds in each group to determine how well your load is shooting. That would be a bit pointless, in some cases it would be time to re-barrel your rifle before your load development was finished.
In most cases, I feel that three to five, 5-shot groups will give you a pretty good representation of how a load will perform in that specific firearm.
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Tags: Fliers, Flyer, Group, Load Development, Load testing
Flyers are a pain in the butt. No matter how carefully you reload you can still get the occasional one. However, the more you put into minute work on the bench sorting projectiles, the less you have off them.
My favorite way to troubleshoot groups is let someone else shoot the gun. I realized while doing load development on two guns at the same time they were having similar issues grouping. After having someone else fire the gun the groups tightened up.
It has been my observation that with the exception of benchrest competitors, very few shooters use wind flags. On this site, I see questions by shooters who, when questioned admit that their rifles have not had their actions bedded, yet they have gone fully into load testing, without taking this important preliminary step. Another issue is scope mounting. A friend saw dramatic results after having his rifle’s scope base bedded. Previously it had poor contact with the receiver. Previously, it had shown promise, but was erratic. There are lots of details that can cause grouping problems, but unfortunately, shooters often become too focused on reloading issues to the exclusion of other important factors.
All the above comments are excellent.
And I have to applaud Sierra bullets for making a short yet very to the point article.
I personally dislike 3 shot groups.
I always tell people the AVERAGE 5-shot group size my rifles shoot because it’s a more HONEST representation of the rifle and shooters performance.
I have hunting rifles that shot the odd 5-shot group in the 0.1 – 0.2 moa range, but I would never tell anyone they are sub 1/4 moa rifles.