Rifle shooting and pistol shooting are 2 completely different beasts. Therein lies the difference.
The handloading for each type of round follows what is required of the round. "Form follows function", as they say.
• In typical rifle shooting, whether hunting or competition, the average rifle will be fired (at most) 1) once every 2-5 minutes, 2) at targets that are placed at exceedingly large distances, and the 3) 'course of fire' may only require 2-5 rounds. Many hunters only fire 10 rounds per year per rifle. A lifetime of hunting may entail 200-250 rounds per rifle.
Therefore, handloading for the rifle round is a much slower process. Often involving precision measurements, neck turning, bushing neck sizing, precision brass, boat tail bullets, weighing each charge.... you get the idea. Thus, each round may consume 20-30 minutes to make. The goal is absolute accuracy.
• In typical pistol shooting, whether practice or competition, 1) the average pistol will be fired 200-400 times, 2) at targets that are placed at fairly close distances, and the 3) each 'course of fire' may require 10-40 rounds requiring multiple magazines. Many hand gunners fire 1000's of rounds per year per pistol. A lifetime of pistol shooting may completely wear out a pistol.
Therefore, handloading for the pistol round requires a much faster process, often involving progressive presses that make a new round every few seconds. Thus, the goal is perfect ammo fit and function. Good accuracy is assured by pretesting all the components and loads.
Bottom Line
We DO care about OAL, but for a completely different reason. In rifle loading you are trying to get the bullet's ogive as close to the rifling as possible for accuracy, which is an easy thing to do when working with a closed bolt and 20 minutes to make each round. But in pistol reloading we DO NOT have a luxury of a closed bolt. We are typically making a round every 1-3 seconds. As such there are ALWAYS manufacturing tolerances creeping in and so we end up with an acceptable OAL range in place of a single number. And we need to make absolutely sure that the pistol goes into battery on each one of those rounds, otherwise we can create an OOB condition that is a supremely large safety hazard for the shooter.
You are correct, ogive is a better way to measure bullet seating. But because the pistol reloader should be backing off Max Allowable OAL by 0.015" (a CZF suggested number) it completely erases the need for the 0.001" greater accuracy of the ogive measurement.
