Benchrest shooting

A BCM Europearms single shot benchrest rifle.

Benchrest shooting with a Mauser rifle. This is an example of the non-competitive use of benchrest techniques. Neither the rifle, the rest, nor the bench shown would be found in formal competition. They show, rather, adaptations of benchrest ideas for the more common hunting rifle.

Rifles are usually custom-made with extreme accuracy in mind. Shooters might use heavy stainless steel barrels, scopes with high 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. For example, the two long-range classes are a 7.7 kilograms (17 lb) maximum Light Gun and an unlimited weight Heavy Gun. Short range (91 to 274 m (100 to 300 yd)) centerfire group shooting encompasses the "Light Varmint" (maximum 4.8 kilograms (10.5 lb) overall), "Heavy Varmint" (6.1 kilograms (13.5 lb) overall), "Sporter" (4.8 kilograms (10.5 lb), and 6.2 millimetres (0.243 in) 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 "rail guns", which are rifle barrels and mechanisms built into a machine, or return-to-battery (RTB) rest. With rifles such as these, some initially argued that no shooting skill was involved and was simply a test of the gunsmith's craft. However, shooting an RTB rifle requires a set of skills different than conventional marksmanship. What is removed with the return-to-battery rifle is the need to physically aim the rifle for each shot, and evaluation of how any mirage will affect the shot. Judging the wind is as difficult and important with RTB rifles as with the other rifles. Given their mechanisms, it is arguably harder to compensate for ever-changing wind conditions when using a machine rest; the usual technique is to wait for what seems to be an identical condition rather than holding for the wind. Holding for the wind is quite common with the Light and Heavy Varmint rifles, and does offer certain advantages.

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. However, claims of the superior position of machining over marksmanship skills in RTB rifle shooting are bolstered by the fact that 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 24×, 36×, or higher are common when allowed. Generally, scopes will have turret adjustments to allow the scope to be easily adjusted for various shooting conditions.

For benchrest shooting, scopes with a second focal plane (SFP) reticle and click adjustments of 1⁄8 moa (approximately 0.036 mil) are most commonly used. Scope models with 0.025 mil and 0.05 mil adjustments are also becoming more available. Lower adjustment values make it possible to more finely adjust the sight towards the center of the target, but at the cost of more adjustments to keep track of. Some also participate with sights intended for hunting or practical long-range shooting (i.e. PRS). Sights intended for practical long-range typically have a reticle in the first focal plane (FFP) and coarser 1⁄10 mil adjustments.

The 6mm BR to the left and 6mm Dasher in the middle are common benchrest cartridges, here compared to a .308 Winchester cartridge to the right.

Only the most consistent and efficient cartridges can provide the necessary accuracy for benchrest shooting. Initially, many chamberings were tried, with the .219 Donaldson Wasp probably being the most common. The .222 Remington dominated the benchrest world from the mid-1950s 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 7.62×39mm), took over as the most accurate cartridge. In today's benchrest competitions, short-range group is mainly shot with the 6 mm PPC, while short-range score sees more rifles chambered in the .30 BR. In 550-metre (600 yd) benchrest, the 6 mm BR Norma and a wildcat based on it, the 6 mm Dasher, are currently the most common chamberings. There is no dominant chambering in 910-metre (1,000 yd) competition; choices range from the 6 mm BR and Dasher through the .338 Lapua, with a host of 6 mm, 6.5 mm, 7 mm, and .30 caliber chamberings.

Except where extremely rare competition rules stipulate factory-assembled ammunition, benchrest shooting relies exclusively on hand-loaded 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. Most short-range benchrest shooters use precision target-grade bullets made by custom bullet makers. Long-range shooters split about evenly between factory-manufactured and custom-manufactured bullets. Initially, very-low-drag (VLD) bullets were preferred for long range, but both the difficulties in consistent manufacture and fussiness in consistent loading of VLD bullets have led to some compromise designs that have the promise of more consistent performance.

Unlimited class rail guns are just barreled actions (the top) that ride directly on a machine rest (the base), 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 base.

All other rifle types have recognizable stocks, and are fired from dual sandbags; a front bag on an adjustable mechanical platform (some costing half as much as the rifle) and a special rear bag. The stocks of benchrest rifles are designed to rest on the sandbags. With short-range rifles and the lower-recoiling long-range rifles, many competitors shoot "free recoil," where the rifle is not touched at all, save for the finger on the trigger. The sandbags provide all the support. By allowing the rifle to move freely backward, the shooter hopes that the movement under recoil will be as consistent as possible. A few short-range rifles and long-range rifles with heavy recoil must be firmly held, even though the aiming is still done with the positioning of the rests.

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 place each shot precisely on the target. Flags can be home-built [12] or purchased. They generally consist of a wind vane to indicate wind direction, and a cloth (or plastic) streamer and/or propeller to indicate wind speed (the higher the wind, the greater the angle of the streamer or speed of the propeller). Multiple flags are usually used, and they are placed at intervals along the path of the bullet from rifle to target.