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I've always taught hunters against the practice of having the barrel of a rifle resting directly against something such as a log or shooting sticks when firing. Over the years I've heard many times that it would throw off the barrel harmonics and subsequently send bullets in wild directions (or at least out of the kill zone). It seems like I even remember a bad experience or two related to a barrel touching something, but I don't recall the exact instance. At any rate I was shooting a couple guns at the range this afternoon and decided to do a few very simple tests at 100 yards with rests directly touching a rifle barrel. With a relatively accurate Remington 721 chambered in .222 Mag I fired four different groups: 1. Off benchrest with the forend directly on a 4" x 4" wooden block (as a control). 2. Off the benchrest with the barrel directly on the same 4" x 4" wooden block. 3. Sitting with the forend directly on two-legged rubber coated aluminum shooting sticks (as a control). 4. Sitting with the barrel directly on two-legged rubber coated aluminum shooting sticks. To my great surprise - by far the smallest group was with the barrel directly resting on the wooden 4" x 4" (It was actually 4 bullets touching and another about 1/4" away). The group with the forend on the block was about average for that rifle. The group with the forend on the sticks was a bit smaller than with the barrel resting on the sticks, but even with the barrel directly on the sticks it was plenty acceptable for hunting accuracy (1.25 to 1.5"). The point of impact was very similar for all four groups (+/- 1/2"). With the barrel touching directly on the rest I purposely moved the rest point a bit between shots so I wasn't inadvertently creating an artificial "sweet spot" for the harmonics. I'm really surprised by these results. I would have expected the group with the barrel directly on the block to at least have a different point of impact by several inches (and most likely shoot a large group). Has anyone else experimented with this? Is it possible a larger caliber would have shown more of a difference? Maybe I should stop being concerned about clients resting their barrels directly on the sticks or a log? | ||
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Sounds like the rifle likes a bit of upward pressure on the barrel. Some do, some don't. | |||
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Gee, Kyler. Now you've got me wondering as well. I would have thought the weight on the barrel would cause more of an upward bend in the barrel, as well as opening the group up if you didn't rest the barrel at exactly the same place for each shot. dang! May be an NRA article in this? BY the way, how are your hogs? !!? | |||
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I read other tests of barrel touching objects at normally ranges out several hundreds of yards hardly any differant was noticed. | |||
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Keep no doubts, try it for yourself. Just another way to confuse the public, go ahead and try. | |||
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try it with a 300 wm | |||
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Is the barrel sporter-weight or heavy? TomP Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when wrong to be put right. Carl Schurz (1829 - 1906) | |||
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Each barrel is different and there's no formula for predicting results ! | |||
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Of course any conclusion with a sample size of one (rifle) is pretty dubious, so I know this simple test doesn't hold much weight. But this one result sure surprised me. I can't make this my life's work to try every possible combination, I just thought it might help to mention it. Greg, Great to hear from you. The pigs are doing well. I just got a new place to guide on and so far it's been going very well. Barrel in my test is a factory sporter, not heavy. Factory bedding in wood stock. I realize that in general barrels/rifles/loads vary tremendously. But given this one result I have a hard time believing there could be no commonalities where absolutely no predictions could be made regarding the barrel touching an object when firing. Heavy vs. light contour barrel? Pressure bedded vs. free-floating? Small vs. large caliber? Stock material. Action type. Velocity. Recoil. Etc. Does anyone else have specific results they care to share? Would someone else waste a few rounds on this test? We might all learn a bit from it. | |||
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Very interesting results. If you have something that recoils more, like a 30-06 or 300 Mag, and then maybe a big bore, it would be very interesting to see how they fared with the same tests, particularly with regard to point of impact changes. Regards, Chuck "There's a saying in prize fighting, everyone's got a plan until they get hit" Michael Douglas "The Ghost And The Darkness" | |||
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I went to a high-power match once, in ignorance, and shot a Mini-14 with the sling swivel hung from the barrel (the stock condition). Oops. Later on, put a real swivel on the stock, not that it made for an accurate Mini-14. TomP Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when wrong to be put right. Carl Schurz (1829 - 1906) | |||
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I will try this with my 376 steyr after i work up my new load... Mike Legistine actu quod scripsi? Never under estimate the internet community's ability to reply to your post with their personal rant about their tangentially related, single occurrence issue.  What I have learned on AR, since 2001: 1. The proper answer to: Where is the best place in town to get a steak dinner? is…You should go to Mel's Diner and get the fried chicken. 2. Big game animals can tell the difference between .015 of an inch in diameter, 15 grains of bullet weight, and 150 fps. 3. There is a difference in the performance of two identical projectiles launched at the same velocity if they came from different cartridges. 4. While a double rifle is the perfect DGR, every 375HH bolt gun needs to be modified to carry at least 5 down. 5. While a floor plate and detachable box magazine both use a mechanical latch, only the floor plate latch is reliable. Disregard the fact that every modern military rifle uses a detachable box magazine. 6. The Remington 700 is unreliable regardless of the fact it is the basis of the USMC M40 sniper rifle for 40+ years with no changes to the receiver or extractor and is the choice of more military and law enforcement sniper units than any other rifle. 7. PF actions are not suitable for a DGR and it is irrelevant that the M1, M14, M16, & AK47 which were designed for hunting men that can shoot back are all PF actions. 8. 95 deg F in Africa is different than 95 deg F in TX or CA and that is why you must worry about ammunition temperature in Africa (even though most safaris take place in winter) but not in TX or in CA. 9. The size of a ding in a gun's finish doesn't matter, what matters is whether it’s a safe ding or not. 10. 1 in a row is a trend, 2 in a row is statistically significant, and 3 in a row is an irrefutable fact. 11. Never buy a WSM or RCM cartridge for a safari rifle or your go to rifle in the USA because if they lose your ammo you can't find replacement ammo but don't worry 280 Rem, 338-06, 35 Whelen, and all Weatherby cartridges abound in Africa and back country stores. 12. A well hit animal can run 75 yds. in the open and suddenly drop with no initial blood trail, but the one I shot from 200 yds. away that ran 10 yds. and disappeared into a thicket and was not found was lost because the bullet penciled thru. I am 100% certain of this even though I have no physical evidence. 13. A 300 Win Mag is a 500 yard elk cartridge but a 308 Win is not a 300 yard elk cartridge even though the same bullet is travelling at the same velocity at those respective distances. | |||
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In general, the lighter weight the barrel and the heavier the caliber, the more difference that barrel contact (or other factors which alter the dynamic forces on the gun) will make. Yes, it is surprising that very little difference showed up with a Rem 721 in .222M. However, the barrel on a Rem 721 is fairly heavy and stiff, the the .222M is a relatively light cartridge. Try it with a .30-06 featherweight mountain rifle. The most significant difference will not necessarily be the tightness of the group, but its center relative to shooting the rifle in a "normal" way. Benchresters even claim that holding the gun looser or tighter makes a difference in impact point. Their business is literally splitting hairs, however, so I'm not sure this has much relevance to a hunting rifle. In a somewhat related vein, I have found no detectable difference in group size or point of impact when using a recoil-absorbing metal benchrest (with sandbag contact points) as compared to allowing a rifle to free-recoil while sitting on top of the same sandbags. In fact, with hard-kickers, it is naturally somewhat easier to achieve good groups using the recoil-absorbing rest. | |||
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I too have always been taught to never rest the barrel directly on anything. This may warrant some experimenting of my own... _______________________________________________________ Hunt Report - South Africa 2022 Wade Abadie - Wild Shot Photography Website | Facebook | Instagram | |||
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I have an aquaintance who tries to hunt. He was having difficultly sighting in his rifle prior to season and aked me to come to the range with him. Prior to going to the range we checked over his scope mounts and guard screws& everything was tight. Got to the range and he couldn't keep his group inside a foot round circle@ 100 yds. I noticed he was resting the barrel not the forarm on his sandbag. I asked him to try another group with the forearm only on the sand bag and the group proply shrunk to about 2 inches. Not saying every rifle will do the same thing but in my 45 years of hunting and reloading just about every rifle tested had the groups open up or the POI move by several inches when the barrel was touching something. Heavy barrels, light calibres and lots of forend pressure would likely have less of an affect if the barrel touchs. Lighter barrels,heavier calibres and free floated barrels would likely have the most affect on POI. | |||
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Snowman: Good point on the floated barrel. It would certainly stand to reason that a rifle with a floated barrel would exhibit more diversion from the norm than one with a tightly bedded barrel. Of course, the old 721 used a bedded barrel, so that hypothesis seems consistent with Kyler's observations. | |||
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If you ever watch the guys shooting the Buffalo rifle type matches they have the barrel resting on the cross sticks | |||
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Those are single-shot actions with the forearm hung on the barrel -- entirely different from a bolt action where the forearm doesn't attach to the barrel in any way and the barrel is supported primarily by the bedding of the action. | |||
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My conclusion is that your rifle just like that upward pressure. I have tried a similar informal test with a Rem 700 243 Win. the rifle shot 3" high if the fore end was on the rest and the groups were 2". If i rested it on my palm over a rest, it shot to zero and gave 0.75" groups. On the other hand my Sako 280 Ackley Imp shoots the same groups with fore end on rest or in my palm but the POI is higher if fore end is on rest. "When the wind stops....start rowing. When the wind starts, get the sail up quick." | |||
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Stonecreek, I had an intersting experience along these lines a couple of weekends ago. A friend & I were shooting at 300 & 400 yards. He was shooting a new load for a new gun - a Tikka .300wsm. He was shooting a middle-weight book load with a 180 gr. Accubond. Shooting off the hood of his truck, he was able to put two rounds TOUCHING at 400 yards. Wow! I was shooting a new load in my .270 wcf - a 150 gr. Partition; my friend in MN put this together for me with RL17. It showed sub moa when my friend in MN shot it, but I wasn't shooting it well at all off the hood of the truck. Point is this, when my friend shot it (the guy who was shooting well at 400), the Point of Impact at 300 yards changed about 6" from where I was shooting it!!! This with no change in the scope, of course. We shot a few times like this, to verify that the same gun/same load for him shot 6" higher poi than when I was shooting! The difference? He's about 6'2" 225; I'm 5'8" 150. All I can think is that the "moment of recoil" was just different for the two of us??? Wierd, huh?  friar Our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain. | |||
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Okay, while there seems to be lots of keyboard experts here... I see a lack of actual tests, so I made a bit of time today to run some more tests. They are somewhat inconclusive, but still surprising in my eyes. 1. Browning A-bolt in .300 Win. Mag. factory medium weight barrel (bedding will barely pass the "dollar" floating test) (3-shot groups at 100 yards) Forend directly on wood about 5/8" group. Barrel directly on wood about 1.5" group. Note: While the group was larger, it's still marginally acceptable for hunting accuracy. BUT the group shot with the barrel directly on the wood was 4" higher (unacceptable!). 2. Ruger #1V in .22-250 factory heavy barrel (forend pressure bedded) (3-shot groups at 100 yards) Forend directly touching wood 1" group. Barrel directly touching wood 1.5" group. Note: The point of impact was about 1/2" higher for the barrel touching wood. (this rifle is not terribly accurate so this is unfortunately not bad for this particular gun). 3. Winchester Model 70 in .416 Rem. Mag. (forend pressure bedded) (4-shot groups at 100 yards) Forend directly touching wood 1.5" Barrel directly touching wood 1.5" Note: Group with barrel touching wood was centered about 1.5" higher, but a couple shots from each group nearly overlapped so within a "minute of buffalo" in my eyes. I don't know if this proves anything. Maybe just that each guns varies as some suggested. With the only rifle that was floated being thrown off the most drastically it could lead you to think that its a problem for floating barrels, but a sample of one rifle isn't worth much. I think I'm going to stick to recommending that people don't touch their barrel on anything, BUT these tests sure didn't consistently show the universal drastic point of impact shift and group opening that I thought they would. That's it for me - I'm not going to try every possible combination out there. But it would be nice if a few other folks could post some simple tests of their own. A couple more tests with floated barrels might be helpful. It's just a few rounds and only took me 20 minutes or so from start to finish so I would think some other people could try this and report back. Thanks, Kyler | |||
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The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Hunting American Big Game Hunting Rifle barrel touching directly on the rest... (A few more tests added)
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