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Bipod Loading/Feet Considerations?

Gargoyle

Finder Outer
I currently use an Atlas CAL with Hawk Hill Customs talon spike feet. I relax into the bipod to take up slack in the gun. Then I focus on pressing the grip with my finger tips straight into my shoulder. It's working, but I see skid feet on some ELR rigs and like the idea of that too. So, my question is, is bipod loading, that takes up all slack/movement of recoil better than just focusing on the linear pressure backwards into the shoulder and let the feet slide backwards on those skids?
 
I think it may involve more.
What your used to shooting, and the surface your on.

I have an Atlas knock off.
My best groupings come with the spiked feet and either firm ground, or a wooden bench top.
When using the rubber feet i don't feel i load the bipod enough, and i'm just chasing the rifle around.
 
Been shooting before "loading a bipod" was a thing and have no issues hitting targets and don't load. Most people think they have to push a rifle to load it. You don't. It's a very slight barely noticeable slack take up. If you need a block or strap in front of you to stop the rifle from moving from loading then you are pushing the rifle and not loading.

I use a Harris BRM-S with rubber feet as I have for many years and have no issues shooting accurately with it on any surface I have shot it on. No matter the feet or loading or not you are still getting the recoil coming back on you into the shoulder. Comes down to proper marksmanship more than loading or feet.
 
I shoot a lot of different rifles prone and use four different bipods. I find each rifle is somewhat different in what it likes. In general it seems the lighter weight rifles and/or lighter calibers shoot better with less shoulder pressure and the heavier ones shoot best with more. I have tested each extensively shooting groups at 1k to see what gives the least vertical. On the ones that like more shoulder, I put just enough shoulder into the butt to keep the rear of the rifle from dropping off the shoulder, then pull the bag in to steady it. If i give any more input things tend to get squirrely for me.
 
Been shooting before "loading a bipod" was a thing and have no issues hitting targets and don't load. Most people think they have to push a rifle to load it. You don't. It's a very slight barely noticeable slack take up. If you need a block or strap in front of you to stop the rifle from moving from loading then you are pushing the rifle and not loading.

I use a Harris BRM-S with rubber feet as I have for many years and have no issues shooting accurately with it on any surface I have shot it on. No matter the feet or loading or not you are still getting the recoil coming back on you into the shoulder. Comes down to proper marksmanship more than loading or feet.
I too use the Harris BRM with no swivel on both of my Sendero taper barreled custom S A Rem 700s. I have the B & C M-40 stock on both of them. I shoot from a level bench and find that both rifles .308 and 260AI shoot to my satisfaction without pushing hard against any kind of stop in front of the feet but as you stated barely take up the slack.
 
Little old posting, but I have found trying to rely on the rear bag too much for rear support is disaster. Establishing NPOA with body, relaxing, but not pushing into the bipod, and then only using the rear bag to input micro vertical adjustments seems to keep the group small.
 
I shoot a lot of different rifles prone and use four different bipods. I find each rifle is somewhat different in what it likes. In general it seems the lighter weight rifles and/or lighter calibers shoot better with less shoulder pressure and the heavier ones shoot best with more. I have tested each extensively shooting groups at 1k to see what gives the least vertical. On the ones that like more shoulder, I put just enough shoulder into the butt to keep the rear of the rifle from dropping off the shoulder, then pull the bag in to steady it. If i give any more input things tend to get squirrely for me.
My experience has been same. I barely touch the gun and let it free recoil in my 6.5C and in 33XC I shoot better with a bit of shoulder into the stock. Not sure what is the reason for this...if someone has a hypothesis, please share.
 
I shoot fclass using a bipod with sliding feet, and with heavy bullets it will torque off to the side a bit; obviously there is no ability to load the bipod at all. For field shooting targets and hunting I use a Harris with Hawk Hill feet, do not load it, and the recoil is straight back to facilitate spotting impacts without problem; including a 300WM. In both cases I strive for NPA, good shoulder contact without pressure, and a light grip. Of course that's not always possible in the field when fighting the clock.
 
My experience has been same. I barely touch the gun and let it free recoil in my 6.5C and in 33XC I shoot better with a bit of shoulder into the stock. Not sure what is the reason for this...if someone has a hypothesis, please share.
Being an engineer, I feel that this is due to the Newton's second law, which says the mass of the bullet x the acceleration of the bullet in the barrel create a primary recoil impulse which the rifle and/or shooter must absorb.

Accelerations are fairly constant (varying less than 20%), but the bullet mass varies pretty signficantly between small calibers and larger ones. If your shouler pressure is lacking on a bigger primary recoil impulse, the rifle will move more and if on a bipod, will start to rock.

This primary impulse happens when the bullet is still in the barrel, unlike muzzle pressure/blast which happens after the bullet has exited. This movement during primary impulse is what we are trying to manage and have the rifle move as little as possible and straight back. To little and things get wild. Too much and the rifle wants to jump firward or sideways.

That's my attempt at an explanation.
 
I think if loading a bipod shot better or easier for that matter then shooting with sliding feet like on a Phoenix bipod everyone shooting FTR would be shooting Harris/Atlas bipods and loading them. There is just so much less "human" interference when you shoot a FTR / sliding feet type bipod properly imo. If you have to lie there for a minute and wait for the wind while loading a bipod I can see all sorts of things happening, yes shooting something like a 215gr or 200.20x Hybrid of a sliding bipod with barely no shoulder pressure takes a bit of mastering
 
I typically use an over-sized LRA "traditional" bipod with a large rear bean bag in F-TR matches, and I heavily pre-load it. I also own a Duplin ski-/sled-type bipod and eared rear bag that I use occasionally during practice. IMO - either type can work equally well. Any differences in overall performance are most likely decided by the individual and their personal preferences. If you like using one style of bipod better than the other you are likely to shoot better with it.

Both types of bipod have caveats to their use. In simplified terms, the key to using a pre-loaded bipod is applying equal pressure during every shot. If uneven pressure is applied to the buttstock, excessive vertical dispersion will be the likely result. In the case of the ski-/sled-type bipod, it is critical that the rifle/bipod track straight rearward during the recoil impulse. If it does not, excessive lateral dispersion will be the likely result. This means that body and rifle alignment is also critical, perhaps even more so than with a pre-loaded "traditional" bipod. Of course, the proper use and caveats involved with getting the most out of each type are a little more complicated than I have outlined here, but you get the idea. Either type can work very well, but the proper postition and usage of each must be practiced/learned.

With respect to the OP's question, I think it would largely hinge on the type of ski feet used. Most F-TR shooters using a ski-type bipod have feet that are thin and somewhat elongated front to back, like a ski or sled runner. Because of this, they tend to track pretty straight front to back if some reasonable surface is used underneath the bipod such as indoor/outdoor carpet, etc. I have a set of Atlas bipod replacement ski feet that are more or less round flat circles with turned-up edges, perhaps about the size of a quarter in diameter. In my hands, these types of "feet" do not tend to track straight back at all and can easily move side-to-side in an undesirable manner during the recoil impulse, certainly not nearly so well as an elongated ski or sled-runner type of foot. In other words, they did not naturally seem to "guide" straight back in my hands. In fairness, once I observed how they behaved, I did not put further effort into learning how to possibly control them, so I can't tell you with certainty it cannot be done. Regardless, it would probably have taken a lot more work for me to do so than with an elongated ski or sled-runner type of foot that already "wants" to track fairly straight.

Along that same line of reasoning, I have heard a few shooters state that they actually allow the rubber feet on their traditional bipods to slide backwards across the benchtop during the recoil impulse when shooting off a bench. I would never even attempt to shoot a traditional bipod that way, but they claim it works well for them, so my opinion really doesn't count for very much. At the end of the day, you have to make whatever bipod setup you choose work the way you want it to. Further, there can be a lot of latitude as to how much you can accomplish with any of the possible setups in that regard, as long as you are willing to devote sufficient practice and attention to how to make a given setup work the way you want it to work. The caveat to that is that some systems may take a lot more work to master than others.
 
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