Hey folks...

I'm looking for some advice on what I can use to mount my spotting scope to my shooting bench. Something with an adjustable height feature and something that will withstand the vibrations from the bench.

Any suggestions and/or recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks!

A high quality tripod might be more flexible for all kinds of surfaces. I'm very happy with a Manfrotto (I think it's named Bogen in the U.S.). They're of professional quality and possess an unbelievably smooth swivel head.

I use a similar tripod to Andre's, but mine is a small Slik that came with my Nikon spotter in a package that Nikon sells.
It works. After each shot, I just lean over and look through the spotter eye piece. The small tripod doesn't get in the way at all.

Don

Go for the tripod. If its being fixed somehow to your shooting bench its going to handle some dancing from the recoil

I use a small tripod as well...jim

I also use a small tripod. It will sometimes wobble a bit, but generally it works just fine.

Wow, I'm really suprised that the tripod is the popular choice.

When I go shooting, I see a lot of shooters with a setup like this:

I have a small CHEAP-ASS tripod that I was using but it kind of sucks, hence the reason I wanted to switch.

Maybe I just need to spend a little more and get a nice one.

But you can only put it on the edge of the bench with that set up.
I currently have a couple of very ordinary tripods. That work ok. I would prefer the Freeland tripod if I had to use a store bought tripod. One of my upcoming projects is to take an extra Hart Varmint bench rest base that I have and turn a shaft to fit it and install a Manfrotto head on it. That will make one tripod that I will never knock over.

I use an inexpensive camera tripod extended to the floor to the left of the bench.

Rich

The Sinclair benchmount is the nuts for shooting off a bench.





If you are primarily using it for bench shooting it's the one you want.
For feild use and competition use I have a good tripod but since I do a lot of bench shooting I probably use the Sinclair bench mount 10 to 1 amount of time compared to a tripod. If you can only afford one buy a good tripod since you can use it anywhere, if you can swing two buy a tripod and the bench mount and you'll end up using the bench mount a lot more often................................DJ

99.5% of my shooting is off a bench. Very little otherwise at this point. Glad to hear it is worth the rather pricing tag it has.

I've seen some guys who have homemad units that are not as pretty, but just as functional. I was thinking along that route too.

I've talked a couple other shooters into the Sinclair benchmount unit. So far all have loved it. If you do 99.5% of your shooting off a bench I reccommend you get one. It's not cheap, good stuff never is, but it costs less than a lot of tripods of equal quality.........................DJ

This might be a throw back to the 60's, but you see a lot of stands similar to the one below being used over here.



I suspect this one is DIY effort, but I've seen quite a few commercially made versions at various ranges..

Th idea is that those legs will slide "under" the rifle and so position the scope nearly above the action where is can be easily used...

I've got both, and DJ's right (as usual) the Sinclair is really nice if you're on the bench a lot. I move around a fair bit at the range though, and actually use my tripod more...

It's a RayVin---Sweet!



Ray-Vin.com