Great mate of mine has finally bought a .223,it came up for sale on forum and I tagged him on it and promptly gave him push.....
I happened to have 25 winchester factory loads on hand so gave him those,and did a few VERY careful reloads with my time proven recipies,triple checked against book data of course.

mate went out to range,I got txt photo of a clover leaf group,the winchester factory loads were doing the biz....
he didnt say much about reload groups,all I could weedle out was 1 1/2"


needless to say my ego was crushed.... my rifle is not at all fussy and pretty much pokes any load under inch so was really down about it...mate brought around targets and all was revealed.
the winchester factory THREE shot group was there.....
and the four x5 shot reloaded groups too....I looked at targets,looked at mates 1 1/2" round black blob for a minute.......and said,"hang on a minute mate" went and grabbed calipers

now this is where life got interesting...if predictable
#1 group gross size was almost identicle to aim point
#2 taken as four shot groups eg taking 1 round out,all four were sub inch
#3 taken as three shot groups eg taking out worst 2 all four were 1/2"

so I felt a heck of a lot better after that....and considering we will only really shoot to 250 yards,even an inch will be more than fine.

his aim point was a circle drawn around end of suppressor...FAR TOO BIG,with higher magnification and good concentration he couldve cut circle like a pizza with Xhairs.....a 1/2" circle wouldve been much better and a simple X works well too.

as an aside ,Ive got bored so poked together 250 rounds of .223 in last week.the powder thrower is uncanny in how accurate it throws,and I always shine torch into all cases in block to spot any thing looking odd...I re weighed a few charges and gave up as were all spot on.

As we know, every rifle has it's own particular "likes" for optimum accuracy. What was the twist rate in you rifle compared to friend's rifle?

both 1;10 and as I said....at end of day absolutely nothing wrong with any of the loads he used...I will pretty much guarantee if he repeated preformance using a smaller aiming mark,the group size would shrink.

Elvis wrote:

both 1;10 and as I said....at end of day absolutely nothing wrong with any of the loads he used...I will pretty much guarantee if he repeated preformance using a smaller aiming mark,the group size would shrink.

Yep, I’ve always been taught…aim small, hit small. It just becomes frustrating when I couldn’t hit the ground with my hat in three throws.

I was always taught to aim in it not at it