Curious what benchrest shooters have found works best for your grip, shoulder pressure and recoil management, for 22lr rimfire, rifle supported by front rest and rear bag on the bench. Context is 50m distance, match shooting, attempting consistent sub 1/2 inch groups, and mostly 10's and X's for score.
I continually experiment and continue to get good and bad results. No one method seems to be consistently the best, and sometimes everything falls apart and score suffers.
Shoulder pressure: I use this with alot of success. Some recoil is being absorbed but the rifle does ride the bags in recoil. I believe shoulder pressure also steadies the rifle during trigger pull, ignition, firing pin movement and recoil. But inevitably I get some fliers, and I think its because I changed the pressure slightly and the consistent muscle memory circuits have failed. On the fliers I notice the reticle ended up where the flier hit, so it clearly was my mistake. What do you do with shoulder pressure?
Free recoil: I usually do not have much luck with this method, although when its working it works good. However eventually the groups open up with fliers, and can't seem to return to accuracy, and I can no longer achieve consistency, so I go back to a stronger grip. Anyone use free recoil with consistent results, and if so does it require a very heavy rifle, and how heavy?
Death Grip: I find sometimes this works very well. There are variations depending on rifle, stock, rest or bipod, etc. But basically it is a combo of strong shoulder pressure, strong grip on the trigger hand pulling the rifle hard into the shoulder, and strong pressure leaning into the front rest or bipod. It controls the rifle for any mistakes with trigger pull. It absorbs recoil. Bag riding is extremely limited with most of the recoil being absorbed into the body, and there should be no torque movement seen in the reticle after the shot - that reticle should be almost exactly where you placed it before the shot. Works great when its working, then it inevitably falls apart and I have to loosen up and modify things yet again. I am guessing that the death grip muscle memory fails and the body starts pushing the recoil up, down, left and right causing bad fliers. Anyone use a "death grip", and any pointers to share?
Cheek pressure: I use only very slight cheek pressure, mostly to make sure I am centering my eye in the scope to eliminate parallax errors. I have tried no cheek pressure and face entirely off the stock, but I find that my ear muffs sometimes bump the stock comb accidently, and eye relief is difficult until I get really close to the stock and then there is an inadvertent knocking of the stock, ruining the shot. Sometimes even with the very lightest cheek pressure, I can see heart beat pulse movement through my 45x scope, which no doubt has been responsible for some poor shots. I have not been able to get the timing right for shooting between pulses. What say you for using cheek pressure on the bench?
The bizarre thing is that every method I have tried works for a while, scoring 10's and X's, and then it eventually falls apart.
Anyways, please let us know what works for your rimfire benchrest shooting.
I continually experiment and continue to get good and bad results. No one method seems to be consistently the best, and sometimes everything falls apart and score suffers.
Shoulder pressure: I use this with alot of success. Some recoil is being absorbed but the rifle does ride the bags in recoil. I believe shoulder pressure also steadies the rifle during trigger pull, ignition, firing pin movement and recoil. But inevitably I get some fliers, and I think its because I changed the pressure slightly and the consistent muscle memory circuits have failed. On the fliers I notice the reticle ended up where the flier hit, so it clearly was my mistake. What do you do with shoulder pressure?
Free recoil: I usually do not have much luck with this method, although when its working it works good. However eventually the groups open up with fliers, and can't seem to return to accuracy, and I can no longer achieve consistency, so I go back to a stronger grip. Anyone use free recoil with consistent results, and if so does it require a very heavy rifle, and how heavy?
Death Grip: I find sometimes this works very well. There are variations depending on rifle, stock, rest or bipod, etc. But basically it is a combo of strong shoulder pressure, strong grip on the trigger hand pulling the rifle hard into the shoulder, and strong pressure leaning into the front rest or bipod. It controls the rifle for any mistakes with trigger pull. It absorbs recoil. Bag riding is extremely limited with most of the recoil being absorbed into the body, and there should be no torque movement seen in the reticle after the shot - that reticle should be almost exactly where you placed it before the shot. Works great when its working, then it inevitably falls apart and I have to loosen up and modify things yet again. I am guessing that the death grip muscle memory fails and the body starts pushing the recoil up, down, left and right causing bad fliers. Anyone use a "death grip", and any pointers to share?
Cheek pressure: I use only very slight cheek pressure, mostly to make sure I am centering my eye in the scope to eliminate parallax errors. I have tried no cheek pressure and face entirely off the stock, but I find that my ear muffs sometimes bump the stock comb accidently, and eye relief is difficult until I get really close to the stock and then there is an inadvertent knocking of the stock, ruining the shot. Sometimes even with the very lightest cheek pressure, I can see heart beat pulse movement through my 45x scope, which no doubt has been responsible for some poor shots. I have not been able to get the timing right for shooting between pulses. What say you for using cheek pressure on the bench?
The bizarre thing is that every method I have tried works for a while, scoring 10's and X's, and then it eventually falls apart.
Anyways, please let us know what works for your rimfire benchrest shooting.
