65,
With respect, this is not supposed to be adversarial. Check your ego at the door please and help us, help you.
Reading the replies, no one is suggesting you cannot shoot, but without knowing all the facts it cannot be discounted as the reason. And what does it matter if it is your ability to shoot; we're all just avatars on a shooting forum? There is a lot of information missing and your claim to a 0.25" average out of an AR is extraordinary. Removing yourself from the equation and letting someone else shoot is a logical way to eliminate one possibility for the POI shift - I can see myself doing that in a similar situation. This given the reasons for where bullets go include the gun, ammo, rest, environment and shooter.
As for the buffers, I'm with B13, Montana and others on this; there is no way an 0.8oz increase in buffer weight will have that much influence on external ballistics. So I think there's a bit of confirmatory bias going on here. For the avoidance of doubt why don't you take both buffers down to the range and shoot some more groups. Swap the buffers while keeping everything else the same. Keep swapping until you prove/disprove your hypothesis - that the buffers are the cause for a 2" POI shift and shrinking the average group size by a factor of 3.
Full disclosure would be helpful. We still don't know at what range are you shooting these groups. Are you measuring centre-to-centre? Any photos of the gun and targets? Claims to an average group size of 0.25" (at 100) implies half are even tighter than 0.25", which is extraordinary out of an AR. The occasional group for sure, but claims to what the gun is capable of imply lots of groups have been fired to form an objective average, and not cherry-picking the best group. So how many shots are we talking about?
If you have kept the suppressor on for both buffer group sessions and shot the same load above then it could be other reasons, like shooter, rest, wind, and other parts of the gun.
I don't clean bolt guns until the groups widen either, but definitely clean suppressed autos every time; shoot 50+ rds and actions, magazines and spent cases get filthy quickly.
With respect, this is not supposed to be adversarial. Check your ego at the door please and help us, help you.
Reading the replies, no one is suggesting you cannot shoot, but without knowing all the facts it cannot be discounted as the reason. And what does it matter if it is your ability to shoot; we're all just avatars on a shooting forum? There is a lot of information missing and your claim to a 0.25" average out of an AR is extraordinary. Removing yourself from the equation and letting someone else shoot is a logical way to eliminate one possibility for the POI shift - I can see myself doing that in a similar situation. This given the reasons for where bullets go include the gun, ammo, rest, environment and shooter.
As for the buffers, I'm with B13, Montana and others on this; there is no way an 0.8oz increase in buffer weight will have that much influence on external ballistics. So I think there's a bit of confirmatory bias going on here. For the avoidance of doubt why don't you take both buffers down to the range and shoot some more groups. Swap the buffers while keeping everything else the same. Keep swapping until you prove/disprove your hypothesis - that the buffers are the cause for a 2" POI shift and shrinking the average group size by a factor of 3.
Full disclosure would be helpful. We still don't know at what range are you shooting these groups. Are you measuring centre-to-centre? Any photos of the gun and targets? Claims to an average group size of 0.25" (at 100) implies half are even tighter than 0.25", which is extraordinary out of an AR. The occasional group for sure, but claims to what the gun is capable of imply lots of groups have been fired to form an objective average, and not cherry-picking the best group. So how many shots are we talking about?
If you have kept the suppressor on for both buffer group sessions and shot the same load above then it could be other reasons, like shooter, rest, wind, and other parts of the gun.
I don't clean bolt guns until the groups widen either, but definitely clean suppressed autos every time; shoot 50+ rds and actions, magazines and spent cases get filthy quickly.