Our deceased friend, Dutch Schultz, listed these reasons in his publication:
The usual reason for random accuracy is;
1. Too thin a patch allowing the power of the powder to be a bit irregular in bypassing the
patched ball.
2. Too slick a patch lube that has the ball halfway downrange before the powder has finished
what it wants to do.
3. A varying effective size of the bore caused by differing amounts of hard crud to adhere to
the bore causing each shot to come, essentially, from a different sized barrel.
4. Off balance balls. Balls that contain an air bubble or a lighter weight inclusion that causes
them to spin off course, acting like a car wheel with a missing wheel weight.
5. Any inconsistency in the loading practice from shot to shot. Everything you do in loading
affects the flight of the ball. If each time you load there is a change, however slight, the ball
will go to a different place.
6. If you don’t wipe between shots, crud will build up till you have reduced the effective size
of your bore and can’t load without extra effort.
7. If your powder charge varies. This is the least likely as it is the first thing people are careful
about.
If you have not figured out how to get your rifle to give satisfactory groups while shooting
bench rest , your groups will only be worse when shooting offhand.
All of this may seem complicated but as you learn to conquer each variable you should notice
an improvement.
For instance, if you are shooting shiny, expensive swaged balls you can expect one flyer for
every five shots. If you weigh out these same balls and eliminate all those lighter than the
heaviest by one grains, you will have NO flyers. Self cast balls will run about five light weight
out of a hundred where swaged balls run about 20 to 22 balls light out of a hundred.
