I need your advice guys. The gun is a custom .308 with NF NX8 scope, hawkins rings, manners EH4 stock with élite shell (so there is a carbon fiber shell), defiance action and a 22 bartlein medium profile barrel. It weights around 11 lbs and i kept it reasonably light because I use it for hunting. At the range it shoots amazingly well, from prone and from a bench, with and without bipod. The last three Times i went to the range i was shooting some RWS factory ammo which the rifle shoots regularly in one rugged hole, no joke. Many times when I shoot the third, fourth or fifth round, i can’t literally see the new hole. It’s even difficult to estimate how largenare these groups because you literally don’t see bullet impacts since they are one over the other. BUT, i fired two times in field conditions and the results were bad. The first time i just shot 2 rounds to check zero and they went more than 1 MOA high so today i went at a range in the same mountains where i hunt where you can shoot prone from gravel, thinking it was a good way to try the behaviour of the rifle in a not solid and quite uneven terrain: disaster. Shooting prone, being decently comfortable, i shot around 60 shots and groups opened up from 0.3 to 1.5 moa more or less, with just a single 4 shots group which was 0.4 MOA and a 3 shots group which was 0.5. I tried Leaning bipod legs on a front fixed surface to push them, i tried to load the bipod more and i tried with different rear rests. At the end i noticed that bipod (harris) was digging into the ground resulting in very inconsistent recoil impulse despite my effort to keep the same exact position behind the rifle. Loading the bipod a bit (something i don’t like to do while hunting and which is difficult to do with a harris) helped a bit but groups remained around 1 moa. The spread of the groups was both vertical and lateral, maybe a little bit more vertical but not much so. Then i tried 9 shots in a row from a bench, same identical shooting range and target: 2 fliers and the other 7 shots literally in the same hole, divided into 2 groups which were not in the same exact poi but 1/2 MOA one from the other. The poi didn’t shift much during all the session, remaining centered on my zero overall. The total max spread of all the 60 shots was a little bit more than 2 MOA during all day, considering i switched from prone to bench and including all the “experimental” groups which i did.
1) has this much of an opening of groups to be expected when shooting with the bipod resting on gravel (maybe the worst front test for the bipod) or this change in accuracy has to be due to something else? I am pretty sure that on grass or more consistent dirt results would be better but here in Italy is very difficult to try it. I want to understand if this has to be expected or if this rifle for some reasons is less forgiving in regard to not ideal recoil management due to uneven or yielding terrain
2) a half moa gun, assuming at least that the crosshair doesn’t move on the target, which kind of Max group spread is expected to produce in field conditions, prone and with a bipod resting on gravel or on a similar not consistent surface?
3) I would get better results and less accuracy loss using another bipod (not a harris) with more play in its legs so i can load it and this way the terrain could impact less on the accuracy of the rifle? In this case which are pros and cons of other types of bipods?
I should add that the scope seems not to be the issue (tracks well, never lost zero even despite a solid bang it took the other day), the rifle is reliable and well balanced, all screws are tight to specs and the ammo are of the same lot
1) has this much of an opening of groups to be expected when shooting with the bipod resting on gravel (maybe the worst front test for the bipod) or this change in accuracy has to be due to something else? I am pretty sure that on grass or more consistent dirt results would be better but here in Italy is very difficult to try it. I want to understand if this has to be expected or if this rifle for some reasons is less forgiving in regard to not ideal recoil management due to uneven or yielding terrain
2) a half moa gun, assuming at least that the crosshair doesn’t move on the target, which kind of Max group spread is expected to produce in field conditions, prone and with a bipod resting on gravel or on a similar not consistent surface?
3) I would get better results and less accuracy loss using another bipod (not a harris) with more play in its legs so i can load it and this way the terrain could impact less on the accuracy of the rifle? In this case which are pros and cons of other types of bipods?
I should add that the scope seems not to be the issue (tracks well, never lost zero even despite a solid bang it took the other day), the rifle is reliable and well balanced, all screws are tight to specs and the ammo are of the same lot
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