Ugly extreme spread........now what ?

[Travis H]

Finally bought a chrono to get serious about finding a 500yd deer load for my field rifle. THIS IS ON NEW BRASS . I found a load that shoots great at 100yds considering I'm just fire forming brass and making sure the barrel is broke in right. This string is shots 67 to 77 on a new barrel. Barrel has not copper fouled since round count 20.
Load is 41.8gns of RL16 behind a Berger 130 vld with cci br large rifle primers and Peterson LRP brass (new/unfired). Barrel was cleaned before this string was fired.

2805
2795
2787
2802
2798
2776
2827
2808
2814
2862

The barrel was getting pretty warm on the last 3 shots, but I didnt let any rounds cook in the chamber more than the time it took to chamber , square up in the graph window and squeeze the shot.
Am I looking for good ES too early in the process? Would you hunt for a better load, or relax and play with seating depths till I get the rest of this brass once fired, bumped, and weight sorted ? Oh, its s 6.5 creedmoor

Copper fouling to a certain point is not a bad thing. Actually helps in most cases. Ive found you can clean a barrel too much over not good enough.

 

[5.56×250]

Copper fouling to a certain point is not a bad thing. Actually helps in most cases. Ive found you can clean a barrel too much over not good enough.

I agree, in some barrels , copper fouling can help accuracy somewhat. But if a barrel doesnt copper foul, it's not one of those barrels that benefit from it. I just cleaned my barrel to make sure it was starting fresh. I had just shot 23 shots and wanted to make sure it was done breaking in. There was no copper apparent according to my copper solvent patches (no blue tint)