An interesting observation with Harris bipods

I shoot better rested on sand bags vs the harris bipod also. Maybe i am not good with the bipods.
In a hunting situation, they are good enough. Might not be for br shooting.
I see them as a tac bipod... You can easily do a 6 inch group at 200 yards on a harris. Technically, they work. They were never advertised as br bipods.
 
"...It's your rifle not the bipod..." More about bipods being lousy rests for load development shooting. Not solid enough. Sand bags are your friend for load development work.
"...The barrel channel is TOTALLY free floated to the front of the action lug..." That'd be an issue too. The area under the chamber needs to be bedded too. Changing barrels isn't a consideration.
 
Kryogen said:
I see them as a tac bipod... You can easily do a 6 inch group at 200 yards on a harris. Technically, they work. They were never advertised as br bipods.
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Sorry , but if the best you can do is a 3moa group off a Harris . It's not the bipod at fault it's your technique with using one


sunray said:
"... More about bipods being lousy rests for load development shooting. Not solid enough. Sand bags are your friend for load development work.
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Ill also disagree with this . Once again it's about technique with them , I do all my load development and shooting off bipeds (Harris and atlas) and a rear squeeze bag. I've tried sandbags and BR style rests and quite frankly my shooting goes for $hits. Yup I know it's about getting used to them and practice but so is using to learn a bipod properly .

But why "waste " all that ammo learning to use them develope a load then not shoot off it all the time, when I know my bipod shooting is as good as me and that rifle will ever do
 
I found the Harris bipods to be somewhat inconsistent as well. they are a well made bipod and serve the intended purpose, but I have found more repeatability in a versa pod. Plus if you are preloading your bipod, this will affect grouping, you should not preload any bipod.... might as well put a clamp on the rifle.
 
These were shot at 618 yards from a Harris. By NO means do I profess to be an authority on shooting. I tried but for some reason I couldn't get better results from a pedestal front rest, despite claims and advice from others. I don't know......I like it! And yes, I do put moderately heavy forward pressure on the bipod.




Rooster
 
Here is what I said:
I see them as a tac bipod... You can easily do a 6 inch group at 200 yards on a harris. Technically, they work. They were never advertised as br bipods.

ultimate_monkey said:
Sorry , but if the best you can do is a 3moa group off a Harris . It's not the bipod at fault it's your technique with using one
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First, I don't need you to be sorry about me, or tell me about my technique.
Then, I never said that the best I could do was a 3moa group. I said that you could easily do that.

What I meant is that they work and will allow you to shoot fine, but maybe they were not made for 1000 yards BR shooting, as they are not advertised for that purpose and I don't often see people shooting 1000 yards BR off an harris bipod.

That's all.
 
Think it has a lot to do with barrel length and positioning of the bipod on the stock.The wider the span from the bipod mount to muzzle the more difficult it is to shoot to rifles potential. Replace the long-barreled action with a short barreled action in the same stock and it will shoot great from bipod. When looking at stock configuration barrel length needs to be taken into account. In my experience a short barrel with a standard length stock will shoot great from bipod. Even benchrest stocks have different fore end lengths to accommodate the variety of barrel lengths from short range to 1000 yd.
 
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Kryogen said:
First, I don't need you to be sorry about me, or tell me about my technique.
Then, I never said that the best I could do was a 3moa group. I said that you could easily do that.
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I ment it as a generalized "you" directed at ony one shooting off one , not you as a specific person

My bad
 
sunray said:
"...It's your rifle not the bipod..." More about bipods being lousy rests for load development shooting. Not solid enough. Sand bags are your friend for load development work.
"...The barrel channel is TOTALLY free floated to the front of the action lug..." That'd be an issue too. The area under the chamber needs to be bedded too. Changing barrels isn't a consideration.
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Lol!
You make an awful lot of asumtions Sunray!

First, here is a picture of the first 4 groups fired after I switched to a Hart front rest:


http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums...0-06175gr190gr208gr176grLoads_zpseee52f3c.jpg

All loads were identical as the ones fired from the Harris bipod. Obviously the front rest made a serious difference.

Second: the barrel is totally free floated to the front of the recoil lug for a specific purpose (recoil lug is fully supported). This rifle is a switch barrel rifle (designed to easily switch barrels when I want a caliber change). If i bedded the chamber swell, the subsequent barrels that are fitted to this action wouldnt fit that bedding exactly "ADDING" to the issue. That is why the entire barrel channel is free floated. By evidence of the target, It shoots quite well this way.

Changing the barrel isnt a concideration!? i think you now know why it "IS" a consideration for this particular
Rifle.

Sand bags are great for load development yes, absolutely! Better than the harris bipod? Yes absolutely!

The whole point of this thread was to ask our fellow gunnutz if they have ever encountered a big change in accuracy with a given bipod. Not wether or not sanbags are better.

PLEASE READ THE ORIGINAL POST BEFORE RESPONDING! That way your response can contribute something worthwhile!

Thankyou for trying to help though!
 
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dthunter said:
This bipod had the same effect on another rifle.

The benchrest competition hart rest was positioned exactly the same point as the harris was attached.

Here is an interesting thought! This rifle stock has an anshutz rail on the fore end. If I position the bipod at different intervals along the rail groove, I wonder if it will find a "tuned spot?
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dthunter said:
The barrel is free floated with nearly a 16th of clearance.

Even under forward pressure there is NO change in clearance. This is one of the choate custom tactical stocks.
Super solid to say the least.
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If the bipod did the same thing to a different rifle, and if the bipod was positioned exactly the same on the rifle in question as the rest that made the rifle shoot better, i.e the exact same point of contact), wouldn't that clearly suggest it is the bipod? However, I'm not sure I would consider the contact point of a Harris (be it sling stud, pic rail or otherwise mounted) to be exactly the same as a proper front rest. How are you sure where the contact point is?

Also, not making a comment on Choate stocks in any way and I don't know the caliber of your rifle or the countour of the barrel you are using, but 1/16th isn't much of a clearance. Have you ever watched a slow motion video of how much a barrel can deflect while firing, especially if it is a thin profile? You might be really surprised.
 
MikeTheRock said:
If the bipod did the same thing to a different rifle, and if the bipod was positioned exactly the same on the rifle in question as the rest that made the rifle shoot better, i.e the exact same point of contact), wouldn't that clearly suggest it is the bipod? However, I'm not sure I would consider the contact point of a Harris (be it sling stud, pic rail or otherwise mounted) to be exactly the same as a proper front rest. How are you sure where the contact point is?

Also, not making a comment on Choate stocks in any way and I don't know the caliber of your rifle or the countour of the barrel you are using, but 1/16th isn't much of a clearance. Have you ever watched a slow motion video of how much a barrel can deflect while firing, especially if it is a thin profile? You might be really surprised.
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The position of the bipod is as logically close to the same position as I can achieve. The caliber in wuestion is 30-06, the the barrel is:

SHILEN SS SELECT MATCH CONTOURED BARREL - 30CAL, 10 TWIST, #7HV, 30" in length.

Yes, for the barrels flex during the firing sequence, that is always possible. There is a suprising amount of movement in that period of firing!
But, if the rifle barrel was contacting the stock when I was shooting with the harris bipod, then the barrel would still be contacting while firing the Hart front pedestal rest. This would not account for the dramatic decrease in group size. The only thing that did/was changed was the mechanism of support on the fore stock.

It would be interesting if positioning the harris at various points along the forestock would change anything. Might be a fun experiment!
 
dthunter said:
It would be interesting if positioning the harris at various points along the forestock would change anything. Might be a fun experiment!
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Been there - done that.

I found that mounting the bipod more forward can be detrimental to accuracy - (with a well free floated barrel) because of what I believe was fore end deflection. If the fore end is very stiff it is actually beneficial to have the bipod as forward as possible, but once you cross into fore end flex territory groups will open up and you will need to move the bipod further back. This will depend on the stock design and how much beef you have up front.
 
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BadAsMo said:
Been there - done that.

I found that mounting the bipod more forward can be detrimental to accuracy - (with a well free floated barrel) because of what I believe was fore end deflection. If the fore end is very stiff it is actually beneficial to have the bipod as forward as possible, but once you cross into fore end flex territory groups will open up and you will need to more the bipod further back. This will depend on the stock design and how much beef you have up front.
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Absolutely! I am presently using the choate custom tactical stock. It is VERY solid throughout the fore end.

Wish I could be shooting today!
 
But, if the rifle barrel was contacting the stock when I was shooting with the harris bipod, then the barrel would still be contacting while firing the Hart front pedestal rest. This would not account for the dramatic decrease in group size. The only thing that did/was changed was the mechanism of support on the fore stock.

It would be interesting if positioning the harris at various points along the forestock would change anything. Might be a fun experiment!
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You can't count on the stock touching exactly the same and have the same effect every time. This is the whole point of properly free foating. For instance, if you load the bipod more on one shot, it will impart more force onto the barrel since it is touching.

Still, curious to see what happens if you move the bipod fore/aft. But of course, if there is no change in groups you still won't know if it is the bipod issue or the stock touching. And if the groups tighten up you won't know what caused it either. You have to eliminate one variable at a time. But it is always fun trying!
 
It's not the bipod.

It's not the rifle.

It's not the shooter.

It's a combination of all three.

The moment you attach that bipod to the gun, they act as a single unit, shooter included. It has to be viewed as single entity during the shooting process. They all act together. Removing the bipod and going to sandbags certainly takes the bipod out of the equation, but several other variables change as well, probably most importantly being shooter position. Even if it feels the same, it very likely isn't, and that alone can change your grouping just as easily. For all we know, the gun is fine, the bipod is fine, the shooter is fine, but perhaps when you combine all three, something just isn't lining up right and causing wild shots. I wouldn't be surprised if just changing your shooting position, a taller or shorter chair for example, might mitigate the crazy shooting.

Until I hear that there was something mechanically wrong with the bipod or how it was attached, I wouldn't be blaming anything.
 
It will be fun finding out!

As far as the stock having enough clearance, i am more than sure it has.
BUT I can work out more material just to see. It cant hurt to have a little more room.

Also, I am going to try another bipod to see if anything changes.
Lots of things to try!
 
When you shoot off a hard bench with the bipod there is basically no cushion between the rifle and the bench. Imagine shooting the rifle with the forend sitting on the bench with no bag. In that situation you would expect the rifle to shoot horribly which is why you would never do it. Now if you take your rifle with the bipod and shoot prone off the ground I would be willing to bet you a large Timmies that it will shoot much better than it will with the bipod off the bench. The natural cushion of the ground explains this.

I develop loads using a Sinclair BR front rest and a bunny-ear rear bag. If I'm going to add a bipod afterwards I do so once I have a good load and check it from shooting prone on the ground.

Don't blame your bipod until you've shot an accurate rifle with the bipod attached from the ground.
 
BigUglyMan said:
When you shoot off a hard bench with the bipod there is basically no cushion between the rifle and the bench. Imagine shooting the rifle with the forend sitting on the bench with no bag. In that situation you would expect the rifle to shoot horribly which is why you would never do it. Now if you take your rifle with the bipod and shoot prone off the ground I would be willing to bet you a large Timmies that it will shoot much better than it will with the bipod off the bench. The natural cushion of the ground explains this.



I develop loads using a Sinclair BR front rest and a bunny-ear rear bag. If I'm going to add a bipod afterwards I do so once I have a good load and check it from shooting prone on the ground.

Don't blame your bipod until you've shot an accurate rifle with the bipod attached from the ground.
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Well I think you would owe me a timmies bud!

I have been shooting very accurate rifles for more than 20 years, and Ihave been shooting primarily from a bench for years. And I have posted Many a tiny group from 100-1760yards. All from a bipod directly on a bench.

It simply works period. Maybe not for everyone, but it has for me.
I have shot many times with very talented shooters, and they have seen the fruits of my labour.
But as I have said all along I will try another bipod when I get a chance.
I work away from home for extended periods, so it will take some time to check things out.
 
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