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Many good things written here. The only thing I can think of that was not mentioned was stock drop. Stocks with a lot of drop to work with metallic sights (such as Marlin lever actions) shoot better from a rest using your off hand to support and control the forearm. The same is true with hard kicking rifles. All of this is even more true with rifles that are both like an 1895.
For the purpose of sighting in a three shot group works best. I disagree with the advise to sight in only at 25 yds. That is fine if you are only going to shoot at 25 yds. My hunting rifles are zeroed at 100 yd. because that fits the ranges I hunt at. My rifles I don't hunt with are sighted in at 100 or 200 yds. depending on what I usually do with them.
The thing we shooter tend to do with the least information is evaluating groups. I use ten-shot groups to evaluate a load/rifle/shooter/conditions combination. The Speer manual suggests a minimum of seven, but I would rather work in tens. Less than seven is wasting your ammunition. I enter the X and Y (windage and elevation) coordinates of the ten shots into an Excel spread sheet I made. It tells me many things, but of importance here is the group sizes. Those ten shots make 120 three-shot combinations. That is a lot of info if you can grab it.
For example I have a Savage 99 G takedown in 300 Savage made in 1927 with a Marble Arms tang sight. The best load I've tested in it was the 150 gr. Sierra SBT/41.5 gr. IMR4320/W-W Super cases/WLR primers. The ten-shot group, which is also the worst three-shot group, measured 2.432". The smallest three-shot group measured 0.280". The average of all the three-shot groups was 1.548". Any of these groups could have been the first one you shot, and either of the extreme would have been quite misleading. An easy way to get this info from the ten-shot group is the two farthest shots in that group. They define your ten-shot group. A quick and dirty way to get your average three-shot group is to take the ten-shot group size and divide by 1.6. This is close enough to work with. If you want to make distinctions between loads that preform similarly you need to do this, e. g. should I load 41.5 gr. or 40.5 gr.
If your needs are no more stringent than can all my shots hit the paper plate at 100 yd. then you don't need this.
For the purpose of sighting in a three shot group works best. I disagree with the advise to sight in only at 25 yds. That is fine if you are only going to shoot at 25 yds. My hunting rifles are zeroed at 100 yd. because that fits the ranges I hunt at. My rifles I don't hunt with are sighted in at 100 or 200 yds. depending on what I usually do with them.
The thing we shooter tend to do with the least information is evaluating groups. I use ten-shot groups to evaluate a load/rifle/shooter/conditions combination. The Speer manual suggests a minimum of seven, but I would rather work in tens. Less than seven is wasting your ammunition. I enter the X and Y (windage and elevation) coordinates of the ten shots into an Excel spread sheet I made. It tells me many things, but of importance here is the group sizes. Those ten shots make 120 three-shot combinations. That is a lot of info if you can grab it.
For example I have a Savage 99 G takedown in 300 Savage made in 1927 with a Marble Arms tang sight. The best load I've tested in it was the 150 gr. Sierra SBT/41.5 gr. IMR4320/W-W Super cases/WLR primers. The ten-shot group, which is also the worst three-shot group, measured 2.432". The smallest three-shot group measured 0.280". The average of all the three-shot groups was 1.548". Any of these groups could have been the first one you shot, and either of the extreme would have been quite misleading. An easy way to get this info from the ten-shot group is the two farthest shots in that group. They define your ten-shot group. A quick and dirty way to get your average three-shot group is to take the ten-shot group size and divide by 1.6. This is close enough to work with. If you want to make distinctions between loads that preform similarly you need to do this, e. g. should I load 41.5 gr. or 40.5 gr.
If your needs are no more stringent than can all my shots hit the paper plate at 100 yd. then you don't need this.