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I don't think flyers should be discounted altogether, but I also don't think they should be given more weight than the other shots. That's why I'm dissatisfied with the Extreme Spread method and drawn to the Average Group Radius method. If you shoot a 25-shot group and measure the two widest shots, they will probably be fliers and all the other shots will be ignored.
Suppose you fire 9 shots into one tiny hole and the tenth shot lands 2 inches away. ES says that's a 2 inch group, same as a group in which the shots are randomly distributed over 2 inches. AGR will tell you that the first group is better because the lone flyer only increases the average by about 0.2 inches. For most purposes (e.g. prairie dog hunting), I'd rather have most shots going into one hole with an occasional flyer, than have them randomly distributed.
Suppose you're a bullseye-type shooter, where the target has scoring rings and you add up the number of shots in the 10 ring times 10 plus the number of shots in the 9 ring times 9 and so on. That's actually an approximation of AGR (assuming the point of aim coincides with the center of the group). All shots count with equal weight. One flyer won't completely blow your score if most of the shots hit the center.
Also, I recently learned that another name for AGR is Mean Radius. Googling for MR turns up more hits than AGR. Apparently, MR is used by many military organizations (e.g. the U.S. Army) and their vendors to rate the accuracy of small arms and ammo. I recall reading about a military test in which something like 100 rounds were fired at a target to measure the MR.
That brings up another point about AGR/MR. You only need one group if you fire enough shots. More shots make the result more reliable (as does firing more groups when using ES). If you get a flyer when shooting a group for AGR/MR, there is no need to groan and assume it's a blown group. It will increase the average some, but subsequent shots can shrink it back. If more shots produce more flyers, they will be counted appropriately.
The main problem is that you must be able to distinguish the individual bullet holes. The 100-round test I mentioned above was conducted at long range (600 yards I think) which was probably sufficient to keep the holes from merging. For those of us shooting 10 or 15 shots, I would think 200 or 300 yards would be sufficient. Express the result in MOA so groups fired at different ranges can be compared. If you're getting one ragged hole at those ranges, I don't want to hear any complaints!
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