Shooting Rest

[DBinNY]

Thanks for the explanation Ed.

[ET]

Jan 24, 2009 16:45:12 GMT -5 DBinNY said:

Thanks for the explanation Ed.

You're quite welcome and hope there was something positive or useful from what I presented.

Ed

[Richard]

With E.T.'s welding skills and his new little lathe, WATCH OUT! ;D
Nice rest Ed.
Richard

[nwhs1969]

I have tried a lot of different rest over the past 40+ years that I have been target shooting and hunting. Good old sand bags on top of a good solid bench work awful well.

I will have to say though, I now use a Caldwell Lead Sled, weighted with 50 pounds of lead shot, on top of a Caldwell Stable Table Shooting Bench. It is the best set-up I have ever used.

I just recently purchased the Caldwell Stable Table and I love it. They have not been out too long. Here is a link to it:

www.battenfeldtechnologies.com/caldwell/catalog.asp?product=Stable-Table

My now 13 year old Grandson started shooting his 45 caliber muzzleloader at the age of 11 off the lead sled with 50 pounds of lead shot on it. The felt recoil of the 45 caliber muzzleloader on the lead sled was 0.

My Grandson is a great shot with any gun, and the lead sled helped a lot by taking all the recoil out of his first shooting experience with a muzzleloader. This was his first ever year of hunting and at the age of 11, he took 25 squirrels, a 6 point buck and a turkey. I would consider that as a grand slam for his first year of hunting.

I saw him take a 22 rifle from the lead sled at 25 yards and put 9 out of 10 shots in one ragged hole. "I still have the target that I saved." Probably better than I can do right now! I am very proud of him. He is just a little lazy though trying to get him going hunting sometimes. You know how a 13 year old is sometimes.

Anyway, I highly recommend the lead sled and any good solid table or bench. You can't go wrong. Just my 2 cents worth.

[artjr338wm]

I have two recoil absorbing/dampening rests.

Rest No-1 is made by and called the "Benchmark Shooting Rest". I bought this rest at least 15 years ago to help me deel with the recoil of 12ga magnum Foster and Sabot slugs as well as 12ga 3" and 3.5" magnum turkey loads. It is basicly a "T" shaped rest with two height adjustable front saport legs made out of wig nutted 3/8" bolts and a third 3/8" bolt serves as the rear saport leg. The rest has a fine adjustment for elevation but no adjustment side to side.

I modified this rest over the years to accept a 25lb bag of shot and replaced the rear bolt with a rabbit ear bag filled with "heavy sand", and replaced the front padded rest with a owl ear bag. This rest makes shooting my slugs and belted magnums a quite enjoyable experience. But what this rest has over my Lead Sled DFT, is I experence zero POI change from shooting off the rest as compaired to shooting without it free hand or with sticks, sling or any other feild type shooting form.

Rest NO-2 is a Caldwell Lead Sled DFT I bought on sale for $179.00. This rest works gr8 at giving you a rock solid shooting plat form that is both windage and elevation adjustable. Its only significant draw back I found was when shooting my 338wm off of it to sight in, that once I shot my 338wm off of my Stony Point shooting sticks, my POI had shifted six inches to the right with no change in elevation. I confirmed this as absolutely true by first shooting off the DFT then the next shots off the SP sticks.

So now I do all my load development shooting off the DFT and then use the BSR to set my hunting zero.

I am not the first person to experince a POI difference when using the DFT.