I'd recommend the OP to check out the JP line of products. They do the whole "precision" ar thing better then almost any other manufacturers, they are designed from the ground up to be precision oriented.
Semi-auto Precision
- Thread starter redshooter
- Start date
I'd recommend the OP to check out the JP line of products. They do the whole "precision" ar thing better then almost any other manufacturers, they are designed from the ground up to be precision oriented.
There are actually very few guys (at the top of PRS-style shooting) who actually get paid to shoot. Pretty much everyone is paying for at least some of the cost out of pocket but guys are just super competitive and want to win. If guys thought the advantages of shooting a gas gun would give them an edge, you better believe they would be running one. As to why they just don't "work" as well for prs, I honestly don't know? There has to be some kind of intangible there, above and beyond the relative increase in skill required to run one. It would really be interesting to test out/compare running a gas gun really built for prs-style shooting (think current orthodoxy, ie 20+lbs shooting a 6mm) to a bolt gun of the same weight in the same caliber. Build it with a monolithic upper and a 26" barrel and a weight kit... my heaviest gas gun still weighs 10lbs less than my match rifles, haha.
Even in a sport where time manners, such as PRS where there is multiple targets to be shot in a very short period of time, they had to make gas guns their own separate class like tactical, because they are at a disadvantage to bolt guns.
There really isn't much advantage to a "precision" gas gun over a bolt gun. Bolt guns are easier to shoot, easier to make a lot more precise, and realistically a bolt gun can be shot just as fast as a gas gun when precision matters. At the end of the day, you still need to be watching impacts through the scope and adjusting follow up shots based on what you are seeing down range. Just volleying rounds down range as fast as a trigger can pull is fairly impractical and imprecise to put it mildly.
There's a lot of quirk to gas guns. Making them very accurate, and learning how to shoot them accurately can be a frustrating and costly endeavor. There's a reason why you never see any evidence of a gas gun being as accurate as a good bolt gun, not with any consistency anyways. Groups from a really good gas gun look like mediocre to average groups of a basic level modern precision rifle. And they can't touch what a really good bolt gun can do.
Seekins and JP enterprises make gas guns designed from the ground up to be more accurate then most, they do some proprietary things to their guns to make them more accurate. If you can get your hands on one of those, it may be worth checking out.
I get all that and you aren't wrong in what you've posted but that's not really what I meant by the "intangible" aspect. Yes good gas guns don't shoot as well as good bolt guns but as we know, that's not necessarily a really huge concern in a prs-type match. I know guys that have won national matches when their gun was shooting MOA. Getting a quality gas gun to shoot sub-MOA isn't real hard. So consider this, a gas gun that weighs the same as a match bolt gun, similar trigger, call it sub 3/4MOA accurate, shooting a suitable caliber and optimized with similar ergos to the contemporary chassis (full-length flat bottom/arca forend, properly balanced) would a high level shooter perform just as well, worse or the same as with his bolt gun? I don't know but I am kinda curious. Not curious to try myself as I'm perfectly happy with my bolt guns for match shooting but it's interesting to think about.
I see your point now, I kind of went off on my own tangent there.
I don't know the answer to your question, and I'm quite curious as well. The top shooters obviously don't see a benefit to semi's otherwise they would be running them. But now I'm curious as well, if you gave Jake Vibbert a gas gun, how would he place compared to how he normally places?
Not sure if we will ever find out, as these guys see no benefit in shooting a semi, so I'm sure they are going to continue to shoot bolt guns throughout their career.
No matter what rifle you shoot, and this includes bolt guns, your POI will change if you change the pressure that you load the bipod with, and it can move a pretty decent amount.
Cheek wield, hand grip, etc. will all influence POI to some extent, bipod loading is a big one. That's why it's important to be as consistent as possible from shot to shot.
Not just a gas gun quirk. I can easily change my POI by over a mil on my bolt gun just based on how I get behind the rifle and load the bipod. I'm sure a gas gun with a non-free floated barrel, where the barrel (or barrel/reciever junction) interfaces with the handguard will be impacted more, but it's something to be cognizant of on all rifles.
Also, looks like you have a nice shooting semi.
What holds an AR platform gas gun back in PRS style competition is;
- relatively slow lock time with a swinging hammer
- relatively heavy triggers
- as mentioned above, the influence that any type of forend pressure imparts on the upper/barrel union (maybe monolithic solves this?)
- the layout does not lend itself to being balanced ahead of the magazine well, which in turn does not allow even modified free recoil off typical props. Supporting the back half of the rifle will never get the same fast precision that you will get from a front heavy bolt gun balanced on a gamechanger type bag.
- relatively slow lock time with a swinging hammer
- relatively heavy triggers
- as mentioned above, the influence that any type of forend pressure imparts on the upper/barrel union (maybe monolithic solves this?)
- the layout does not lend itself to being balanced ahead of the magazine well, which in turn does not allow even modified free recoil off typical props. Supporting the back half of the rifle will never get the same fast precision that you will get from a front heavy bolt gun balanced on a gamechanger type bag.
I can definitely believe it with standard ar's in which the handguard interfaces with the barrel nut, or the barrel in any way.
I imagine a monolithic upper would somewhat mitigate that, or some of the designs whereby the hand guard is attached to the upper receiver instead of to the barrel nut.
My guess is inconsistency in applying the fundamentals. Last shot the bolt carrier isn't traveling forward, and that difference in the mass not traveling forward exploits your weakness in shooting fundamentals in a different way then the BCG mass moving forward.
Shouldn't make a difference if you are perfect at applying the fundamentals 100% of the time, but no one does
Semi-autos are not as near as forgiving as bolt guns, a lot more going on with them. Part of the reason why you never see semi-autos shoot as well and consistently as good as a good bolt gun.
Just load the last shot with a few more grains of powder
Yeah, Ive heard of that. Apparently even traditional ARs with a free float tube attached to the barrel nut will get some poi shift. Apparently guys down south were noticing that when setting up ARs with long, heavy barrels. Hence the monolithic uppers or uppers like Seekins' whereby the handguard attaches to the upper receiver instead of the barrel nut.
Definite factor if you're switching between those (or taking some long shots standing, or with left-arm-in-rifle-sling to stabilize probably pulling the front end left), but how okay are you if distant shots are consistently shot from the bipod?
