Thread: What exactly is a MOA rifle??

Originally Posted by Puffin

It requires a confidence level given as a % for the shots comprising the group lying within 1 MOA, in combination with the number of shots taken to form that group. Without these two parameters or equivalent the definition becomes arbitrary.

An example that appears reasonably frequently online to demonstrate this underlines my aversion to 3-shot groups: a 3-shot group gives you 95% confidence that future shots won't impact outside a circle about 3 times bigger than that single group. So if a rifle shoots a single 3-shot 1 MOA group does that make it a 1 MOA rifle or a 3 MOA rifle ?

Which is why you use the results of multiple lower shot count groups from a barrel that is not intended for long strings of shots, as has been pointed out a number of times. There is absolutely no point going nuts and finding out the 'accuracy' if the result of finding out means it is no longer accurate. That would be about as useful as crash testing to destruction every car off the production line.