Benchrest shooting
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Benchrest shooting is a sport in which very accurate rifles are shot at paper targets from a rest or bench from a sitting position. Benchrest shooters are notoriously detail-oriented and constantly trying to further the accuracy potential of the rifle through experimentation. Nearly all benchrest rifles are custom made, and many shooters do their own gunsmithing, and nearly all handload ammunition tuned to their rifle.
[edit] Types of competition
There are two major types of competition. One type is group shooting, in which the object is to place five shots on a target as close together as possible. The second is score shooting where the object is to hit a small dot on five individual targets. Benchrest shooters try to achieve extreme rifle accuracy; a good 100 yard group will have 5 bullets hitting within .100" of each other center to center. Distances range from 50 yards with rimfire rifles up to 1,000 yards and beyond with highly specialized centerfire rifles.
[edit] Equipment
Since benchrest is a sport requiring the highest possible precision, the highest precision equipment is required if a shooter is to be competitive. The rifle is the most obvious cost; top guns are custom built, and can cost thousands of dollars. Handloading equipment is also essential for centerfire shooters (rimfire rounds are generally not handloaded) to allow tuning the ammunition to the rifle. For most rifles, rests are required to provide a stable shooting surface, and most shooters use some method of judging the direction and/or velocity of the wind on the range.
[edit] Rifles
Rifles are usually custom made with extreme accuracy in mind. Shooters might use heavy stainless steel barrels, scopes with up to 45 power magnification, and handmade stocks of graphite, fiberglass, or carbon fiber. Triggers are usually set to a pull of only a few ounces.
Benchrest shooting grew from varmint hunting, where the shooters would aim for highly accurate rifles, using mostly .22 caliber cartridges. Initially, competitors could use just about any gun they wished. Eventually, classes of guns were created to enhance the sport's competitiveness. Hence, in centerfire group shooting, you'll have "Light Varmint" (maximum 10.5 pounds overall), "Heavy Varmint" (13.5 pounds overall), "Sporter" (10.5 pounds, and .243 caliber or greater), and "Unlimited" classes. The Unlimited class comes very close to living up to its name--just about any single-shot rifle qualifies, up to, and including, the unique "rail guns", which are rifles with a built-in machine rest. With rifles such as these, it would seem that there is no skill involved, but that is not the case. The long ranges (100 and 200 yards or meters being the most popular) common to benchrest matches involve careful reading of wind conditions to compensate for bullet drift, and the rifles and ammunition must be of the highest possible quality. Many competitors build their own rifles, and nearly all handload their ammunition to tune it to the rifle.
Precision sights are also a requirement. High quality aperture iron sights could be used, but nearly all benchrest events allow telescopic sights. High magnification scopes are generally preferred; magnifications of 24x, 36x, or higher are common when allowed. Generally scopes will have finger adjustments, to allow the scope to be easily adjusted for shooting conditions.
[edit] Ammunition
Only the most consistent and efficient cartridges can provide the necessary accuracy for benchrest shooting. The .222 Remington, a popular varmint cartridge of the day, dominated the benchrest world from its inception until around 1975, when the wildcat 6 mm PPC, based on a modified .220 Russian case (which is in turn a boxer-primed derivative of the military 7.62 x 39 mm), took over as the most accurate cartridge. Today, the 6 mm PPC and the Remington BR line of cartridges (based on the 3.08 x 1.5", a shortened, small primer pocket .308 Winchester) are tops in the field.
Except where competition rules stipulate factory-assembled ammunition, benchrest shooting relies exclusively on handloaded ammunition, which is user-assembled round by round with painstaking precision. Benchrest shooters' primers, powders and bullets must be of the highest quality available if they are to achieve the shot-to-shot consistency necessary for competitive performances. Many use Very Low Drag (VLD) competition target bullets.
[edit] Rests
Unlimited class rail guns are just barrelled actions clamped directly to a machine rest, no additional rests are needed; the base of the railgun provides adjustable feet to provide a stable position on the bench, and the rifle is aimed with horizontal and vertical adjustments built into the rest.
All other rifle types have recognizable stocks, and are generally rested on sandbags. To eliminate as much shooter error as possible, the rifle is gripped only with the trigger hand, and the sandbags provide all the additional support. The stocks of benchrest rifles are designed with flat sections to rest on the sandbags, so the rifles will freely recoil backwards when fired. By allowing the rifle to move freely backwards, the shooter hopes that the movement under recoil will be as consistent as possible.
[edit] Wind flags
Wind flags are placed on the range between the shooter and the target, and allow a skilled shooter to judge the amount of correction that needs to be made to hit the target. Flags can be home built[1] or purchased. They generally consist of a wind vane to indicate wind direction, and a cloth or plastic streamer to indicate wind speed (the higher the wind, the greater the angle of the streamer). Multiple flags are usually used, and they are placed at intervals along the path of the bullet from rifle to target. Commercial wind flags may also have a propellor to help judge the wind at higher speeds.
[edit] Competitions
Probably the most prestigious benchrest competition is the Supershoot, usually held the week before Memorial Day in "sunny northern Ohio" (an ironic statement given that conditions are generally either rainy or frosty). Approximately 360 shooters from around the world will gather to see who can shoot the smallest average of Light Varmint (5 groups each at 100 and 200 yards) and Heavy Varmint (5 groups/100/200).
[edit] External links
- A series of articles by Daniel Lilja of Lilja Precision Rifle Barrels, maker of barrels used by many benchrest world record holders
- Benchrest Central, a website with benchrest shooting information, forums, and links to benchrest organizations and retailer
