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308 not obeying laws of physics, groups dropping, calling the physics police

Competitors who use bags for all of their shooting understand that the rifle needs to be able to slide smoothly in both bags, without any catching or interlock with the stock, even if they are holding and shouldering the rifle. It is not controversial at all. It is part of the ABCs of shooting off of bags..really basic. Having said that, removing the stud may not solve his problem. Typically, I see shooters that are not getting the most out of a given rifle and load have multiple issues. By looking at the whole situation and addressing all of them at once, we are able to make a lot of progress in a very short time. When there are multiple issues, all contributing to an outcome, working on them one at a time may not work, because the problem is a result of all of them to one degree or another.

One time a friend was having problems putting a group together with a custom rifle and what I believed to be excellent loads. He was my boss and I was at the range on company time specifically to help him get ready for a big out of state hunt. The rifle had a custom action and stock, with a fine trigger and scope. The load looked like it wanted to work. After he had tried to shoot a group twice with a flier. I asked him if he wanted some help. He said that he did. I did several things. I moved the front rest back quite a bit so that the rear of the front bag was about 3 1/2 inches from the front of the action. His adjustable cheek piece was jacked up way too high, with his face pushing down on it. I had him lower it until until it just grazed his cheek when he was behind the scope. He had his thumb behind the tang and I had him put it beside the stock to remove that down force, and I had him pull the rifle back into his shoulder with moderate pressure with the second and third fingers of his trigger hand and make sure to have the middle of the first pad of his trigger finger on the trigger and pull straight back. I also had him release any grip of the last two fingers of his trigger hand. After he got comfortable with that setup, he put the next four shots into 5/16" at 100 yards from a 7mm WSM shooting 175 gr. SMKs. Problems solved.
 
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I've read your other thread and this one also, and that's what got me thinking about last trip to range and that target. I'll take a look at some targets from 260 and 6.5 to see if I notice the same pattern or not.
FWIW I'm not a competitor just a hunter, and I too have a sling stud on my stock as i do when hunting. Curious to see if removing it would change things on paper.

Next trip to range is a seating depth target, I'll be leaving stud in place. I'm a firm believer in only changing 1 thing when testing to know results of improvement or not. If you change multiple items at once makes it hard to determine which 1 worked.

If that stud is hitting there aint a load out there that wont be improved by removing it. Its not like its a change that may affect your grouping like changing sand or removing a magnetospeed- its guaranteed gonna be an issue and shouldnt even be in the elimination of variables process.
 
^^^^^I'm down to try it if it's gonna improve groups at the range. But being this far into load development should I wait until after seating depth test?
 
^^^^^I'm down to try it if it's gonna improve groups at the range. But being this far into load development should I wait until after seating depth test?
If this was a race car that you were tuning, would you change a flat tire? Having a stud contacting a bag is a similar issue.
 
Harmonics is probably the issue. I would just ignore it and dial the loads in. For instance with a .308, Sierra 168, Hornady 168g and 208g all shoot close with the 208 slightly lower. The same day firing the 208g loads, I was dialing in 200.20x (200g) Bergers. From slower to over 100 fps faster, they all shot about 2" low and 3+" to the right at 215 yards while staying at or under 1/2 MOA. The only difference was the bullet and amount of powder.
 

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