Really appreciate the feedback here. Thank you.
I'm 100% willing to accept that I need to practice, but here's the thing...
I missed another deer yesterday. Complete miss at 90yds.
Now, I'm not a fly by the seat of the pants guy. I've tested seven or eight different bullets with three or four powder combinations for each one over the last 5 years of owning this gun.
With my settled upon load of the Hornady monoflex 250 and 84 grains by weight of Blackhorn 209 I consistently shoot sub 1.5 MOA groups at 100 yards throughout the year INCLUDING a zero confirmation of three shots into a group at 120 yds on Nov 11 THIS YEAR to make sure everything was tight for the season.
After missing yesterday morning I went back to the house and shot these two shots, not off of a bench, just resting elbows on the backseat of the golf cart similar to resting elbows on the shooting bar from the tree stand where I missed. At 50 yards, I am almost 4 in off in both directions. (shooting at the middle)
The scope may have been bumped. I checked all the screws everything was tight.
I have found in testing with this gun that a clean Barrel is about an inch or two off from a dirty barrel. I have shot as many as 10 to 12 shots using Blackhorn 209 with no cleaning and never had any problem with anything being outside the group except for the first one on a clean barrel. I have always hunted on a dirty barrel.
However yesterday for some reason I could only make the shots go roughly where I wanted if the barrel was clean. I also noticed when cleaning that there were a little bits of unburned powder on the patches. Not something I have noticed before.
Then I remembered, a few weeks ago I opened a new can of BH 209.
Could I have a bad batch that isn't burning completely? In attempting to resight the rifle yesterday I was chasing myself all over the paper. Again, not usually a problem I have. Usually with just a couple of shots I'm dialed right in.
You know how BH is those little hollow tubes? Well when I clean the gun actually get some of those little particles on the patch. I've never noticed that before. In the past it's just dirty Barrel fouling, no little flecks left.
This is now the fourth terrible shot on an animal at under 100 yards I've had this year. I've never had anything like this before. I'm a better shot than that and this gun is better than that. Something is wrong.