Is This Target as Good as it Gets?
To answer my own question....pretty darn close! Matching precision with accuracy to this level is extremely rare and you'll be incredibly lucky to see more than a handful of targets that equal this one.
Let's look at the target again and I hope everyone realizes just how exceptional it is. Any ARA shooter knowing the approximate diameter of the inner scoring ring would be drooling on his rifle after perusing it thru his scope after finishing. The vast majority of rimfire BR competitors will never have the pleasure of shooting a target like this.
Mike Kuklis is the owner of the rifle, the smith is Gordon Eck, and the build used Jerry Stiller's 2500X action.
It appears to me that Mike, Gordon, and Jerry make a potent combination in regards to building and shooting a world class rifle!
After Jeff (frey) posted it on RFC and BRC, I looked at it and my first thought was: Wow, that's incredible!
My second thought was: Would a closer examination of the target reveal what were sure to be some very impressive statistics and would it allow me to make some comparisons proving just how good it was?
My curiosity got the best of me and I contacted Mike to see if it would be possible for him to scan the target at a reasonably high resolution and make it probable for me to keep the measurement uncertainties for plotting the shots under a few thousandths of an inch.
Mike seemed to be as curious as I was and sent me the scan for analysis. Thanks Mike!
The following screenshot is from the OnTarget TDS software and the ATC, ES (CTC), width, and height of the 25-shot group along with its scores on the ARA/PSL targets are pretty amazing.
How about some comparisons using visual illustrations for other well known and popular targets:
IR50 score: 250 25X
USBR score: 250 14X
For all my prone shooting buddies:
X-ring on the NRA A-23/5 Prone target
ISSF 10.4-10.9 decimal scoring rings. Keep in mind that there is a non-linear growth in dispersion for 50 yds vs 50 M and this isn't a perfect comparison, but it's close.
I'm guessing, but I think this comparison may be surprising to many of the ISSF competitors because there seems to be very few who are familiar with the correct dimensions on this target.
There is one other statistic that's interesting. If I take the 1st 5 shots on target, the 2nd 5 shots, etc....the average size of the 5-shot groups is 0.130". It's obvious I haven't analyzed every target in existence, but that's the smallest number I've ever seen for that particular statistic.
Landy