What do you use for bench rest shooting with your AR-15?  I want to sight in a scope, but my AR-15 does not work with the bench rest I have.  The pistol grip handle hits the frame of the rest.  Any suggestions?

You need a front rest and rear sandbag set up.

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forget about buying some fancy gun rest and rear rest......simple and easiest solution is to go get some dry bean, like blackeye peas, cut off a pair of old blue jean pant legs. sew the beans in the pant legs, and you'll have 2 easily carried "sandbags".


simple is better, I laugh at the guys at the range you look like half-ass astronauts with all these bench rest vises and gear. yeah they shoot great with a rifle clamped in, but who wouldn't......but have them shoot normally using just a bag and hand to rest the rifle, and their groups look like a shotgun pattern.....you don't need to practice breathing control, trigger squeeze and all the other little things that take into account accurate shooting, when you got your rifle clamped in a vise.

If you are testing out handloads for potential accuracy, or sighting in a rifle, such gizmos are wonderful.  The less handling of the rifle you do the better, after all, are you testing the shooter's ability or the rifle/ammo combination?

Once you are confident you have the most accurate ammo as is practical, THEN you can practice your shooting technique.  It really helps when you are confident that if you do everything right, the gun will print on target.

Before I realized this, I thought I was just a bad shot.  I was taking what looked like great shots at paper, but was getting worse then 1 MOA performance.  I started benchresting the gun and realized that regardless of technique, some loads simply won't shoot straight.

I still don't have a lot of gee-whiz rifle rests or even a very sturdy table.  But, guess what?  I really do need to invest in better benchrest equipment.  Even though I have seen the light, I still have a long way to go in isolating the human error from my load testing.