For rifle...50 yards, 100 yards and 200 yards...
For pistol/revolver...7 yards and 25 yards...

Vince wrote:

Where is your SSAA Range in Sydney mate? Will they allow you to put a wooden target frame out at 50m Gelan? I am surprised that they dropped everything under 100m because that is where the rimfire shooters do most of their shooting. Very strange mate. Cheers, Vince

Yeah it used to be like that for years.. and then suddenly the 50 meters target is no longer allowed. Now both rimfire and center fires got to do 100 meters or more..
Crazy ...

Bushmaster wrote:

For pistol/revolver...7 yards and 25 yards...

Yeah, they used to have a 7 yd targets at our range...until a pilgrim got shot in his left leg, about 4 in. below the WORST PLACE.

A woman was shooting at the next position, and a ricochet from her metal target frame (a good 12" from the center of her target) hit the guy. He was thrashing around, and the range personnel had to almost hold him down, and whining; "I want to go home!"

I went to interview him, and thought his strange personality was the result of the pain killers he was taking. Nope: He was dumb as a box of rocks. Too bad it wasn't higher, it would have stopped him from polluting the gene pool.

What did the range do wrong? Nothing, but my boss was a career burocrat, so he decided to reward the guy for his stupidity.

And that is how the 7 yard targets disappeared from our range one day.

Bore sighting instruments are often good enough to get a rifle on paper at 25 yards. The old fashioned bore sighting by removing the bolt, holding the rifle static and matching the crosshairs to the bull on bolt action rifles is often good enough to place the first shot on paper at 100yds with a little practice. Done properly, it is better than the instrument sighting method.

For meaningful group testing, 200yds provides the most valuable information as bullets often stablize or destablize between 100 and 200yds. IOW I've had some rifles shoot the same size group at 200 as at 100, or, OTOH, I've had some that have tripled in size. Sierra Bullets suggest that seven shot groups provide far more validity than lesser numbers. Chronograph data becomes more valid with more shots, too.

A single group, in and of itself, is often meaningless unless it can be backed up with three or more groups with similar results. Hence, if a good load is identified, three or more seven shot groups at 200yds provide a "proof" aggregate that has statistical validity.

Using bases or rings that compensate for windage is beneficial as the less distortion in the erector tube the better the durability and light transmission. Shimming the base(s) for elevation to minimize elevation adjustment has the same benefits. Regretably, most shooters don't wish to take the field or range time to zero the base/ring adjustments before resorting to the fine tuning of the scopes adjustments. For those that do, benefits are found in durability and optical quality.

Handloader, interesting point on the number of shots in string and the validity of the results. I've seen that advice on the seven shot groups too someplace. I prefer to shoot a 10 shot group when I'm seriously trying to determine the consistency of a load, especially when chronographing. For zeroing a rifle I'm content with firing 3 rounds.

100 - 200 yards it is. Evryone seems to be in agreement with that.

Thanks to evryone for their info and thoughts.

Should I happen to see this guy again, I'll have to ask him why he does his testing at 25 yards !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life begins at 250..........