Buttplate Pressure/Sling Tension and Effect on Hold

[Dave IRL]

I've been working with a SCATT recently and it's been revealing some pretty disturbing things. In prone, my hold is quite big, moves quite quickly and is somewhat erratic, with a large, regular pulse which leaves the ten ring by several millimetres. Now, obviously, I'd like to shrink that hold, lose the pulse and slow all the movement down. The SCATT showed me what I had a certain amount of suspicion of, that my prone position isn't as solid as it should be.

I have a reasonable amount of sling tension and a position comfortably north of the 30 degree minimum. I'll try upload photos as I'm currently awaiting an email with some. I use a moderate grip on the pistol grip, nothing severe, but not featherweight either. My butt length is comfortable in terms of the reach to the trigger when the rifle is in my shoulder and the length between the surface of my buttplate and the front of my pistol grip is almost exactly the same as the length from the front of the pistol grip to the handstop.

When I get into position and lift the butt of the rifle into my shoulder, the butt comes up and meets my shoulder without disturbing it. It has been suggested to me before that I should have enough tension that lifting the rifle into my shoulder requires that the shoulder be opened back and then closed around the rifle, with the rifle offering firm resistance. In my current position, while the rifle is solid in the shoulder, it doesn't push hard backwards either. As the relationship between the shoulder, the trigger hand elbow and the pistol grip is good, should I move the handstop forward to extend the distance between handstop and buttplate surface, and increase pressure here, and will it help to shrink the hold?

I intend to experiment with trying to bring the sling tension to the outside of the arm, rather than the centre, but am not sure about how to select the correct height for the sling on the arm to minimise the effects of pulse, and any guidelines here would also be appreciated.

Dave

[ABoyd57946]

Hello Dave,
One thing that helped tighten my prone was lengthening the buttstock rather than moving the handstop or shortening the sling. See p.189 of Ways of the Rifle 2009 for a detailed explanation as this explains it better than I as to why. This increased shoulder pressure and in dry firing with my scatt tightened me up some in my traces.

A second thing I still am working on was reducing muscle tension on the rifle in prone to almost slumping on the rifle in position. This is a work in progress but seems to be helping me in scatt dry firing drastically reducing my L values. I need to live fire test this but prelim live fire indicates my hold is tighter.

Hope this helps, kind regards, Tony

[ABoyd57946]

In error I omitted one thing re my sling. I use about a 40 degree arm angle and my sling is as high as I can get it. My body is straight behind the gun. Kind regards, Tony