Many years ago, after doing a lot of .22 RF bench shooting, a friend had a 6PPC built by a notable smith. He did really well with it, but by the time that his first barrel was wearing out he had lost something in average group size. He had a couple of new barrels chambered, with no luck, and even ordered a new rifle, thinking that something had gone wrong with his, with no luck. Finally, I asked him if he wanted me to help him figure it out. I went over everything he was doing and carefully watched him shoot. It turned out that there were about a dozen little things that had added up to the accuracy loss, and once they were attended to, his old groups came back, with his original rifle with a new barrel. The OP has asked the impossible, because we have too little information from him to properly figure anything out. To do this on a forum would require more work than most would want to put in, asking a long list of questions, and assuming that the answers were accurate. IMO this needs some one on one time looking at the whole picture. On the free recoil thing. I know of some very good shooters that do not use that method. IMO it is the most equipment intensive shooting style. Rifle balance, and bags need to be perfect to get the best results. A long time back, after tuning up my rig so that it would shoot free, I taught myself to shoot just as well in contact with the rifle, because with a windage top I was slower free, and in some situations where I wanted to run, using the other style had advantages. This is not as simple as one would think. I discovered that there are some rules for shooting contacting the rifle. It took some trial and error to figure them out.