MOA Measuring Question

[Hawkstp]

This is probably a bit of a newbie type question. When I hear people saying their gun shoots 1 MOA. What exactly does this mean?

To me it would mean shooting a 1" group at 100 yards, and yes I do realize that 1 MOA is really a hair over 1". It seems I have heard some people referring to a 2" group as bring 1 MOA. I guess because all the shots were within 1" of the aiming point.

So my question is. Is shooting a 1 MOA group, shooting a 1" group or a 2" group at 100 yards?

[joelogic]

1 moa is a 1" group at 100 yds, a 2" group at 200 yds, and so on. MOA is Minute of Angle so as distance increases the larger the area that 1 degree covers increases.

[StraightShooter]

You could shoot a 1000 inch group and still be shooting moa but you would be shooting at something over 100000 yards away.

[joelogic]

As it could be a .5" group at 50 yds.

[NeoWeird]

Generally speaking, it's the measurement of the ENTIRE group, from extreme ends, MINUS the diameter of the bullet (or rather half the diameter of the bullet, to get to the center of the impact, from each side, which equates to one whole diameter of the bullet).

They do this, because as someone pointed out, as you get closer the group needs to get smaller. At 50 yards, a 50 BMG group will measure larger than .5". That doesn't mean the gun is shooting over 1 MOA. Once you subtract the bullet diameter, that .6" measured group is really a .1" group and well below 1 MOA.

The best way to think about it is a pizza or a pie. You split it into 8 even pieces; the farther you get from center, or the origin, the larger the slice gets. When you shoot, it's like a giant pizza setup vertically with the muzzle of your gun being the point of the slice and the target way down range is the crust. Your bullet can spread more the further it goes and it will still be accurate to 1 pizza slice.

Except in real life the pizza is divided into 3,600 slices for MOA.

[Grayblue]

MOA is short for Minute of Angle. 60 minutes per 1 degree. So, it's 1/60 degree accuracy. Which happens to be approximately 1 inch at 100m.