Bench shooting vs freehand

[Montezumasdaddy]

Do you guys usually see much difference in your POI when shooting from a bench as opposed to shooting freehand? Here's my situation: Living in the frozen wasteland of northern Wisconsin usually we're not able to get to the range when I want to pattern my turkey gun so for years I have patterned usually just resting the front of my gun on the deck rail at my camp. I put a Tru Glo fiber optic sight on my 835 and had to adjust the POI way right to get it shooting on the bullseye. This worked great for 4 years, killed 4 birds. Last year my dad put in a range at our camp with a nice shooting bench on it so last year I started patterning from there. I ended up having to move my POI to the left, opposite of the way I had to move it shooting from the rail at camp. Last year I missed a bird at 42 yards. We had 30 mph winds that day so at the time I thought that might have something to do with the miss, or I just made a bad shot. Fast forward to this spring. I go and shoot at my camps range from the bench and my first two shots were pretty close, center of the pattern were within a couple inches of my POA. I decided to shoot one freehand and it was way left. My arm was really hurting from the first two shots so I just attributed it to a bad shot on my part. Yesterday I go out hunting and missed a bird in the morning, fairly easy shot at 40 yds. I was surprised but, things happen. A couple hours later I get in position to ambush a tom walking down the edge of a field at 30 yards. I had the front of the gun resting on a limb and squeezed off a good shot. The bird jumps to the side and flies away. Now I'm thinking something is wrong. I go to my brothers house and we shoot my gun behind his house using his shooting stick and my POI is way left again!!!! For some reason when shooting from a bench my POI is quite a bit to the right  compared to using a stick or freehand. Is this common? Does anyone else have this problem? Am I doing something wrong? In the future I won't shoot from the bench when patterning my guns but I'm just wondering whats going on. I appreciatte any input, thanks.

[njdevilsb]

I've never had a problem doing it that way.  I always have some kind of steady rest when I sight in my gun.  This year it was just a couple of heavy sweatshirts on top of a plastic 55 gallon drum, last.  I have been fortunate to not have missed a bird the last few years, and I shoot at them just with my elbow on my knee.  A steady rest or free hand or very little rest, they all seem to shoot the same for me if I do my part.

[ILIKEHEVI-13]

Here's what I use.  It's called a Benchmaster.  Works great for shotguns.   

[ILIKEHEVI-13]

Now when I am shooting it I put the gun in it like this. 

[davisd9]

When I pattern I do not use a vise or a solid bench.   I want it as close to a real hunting situation as possible.  I am known to pull mu gun right so if I set up on a solid bench or in a vice I will mess up cause that is out of the equation.  You may be doing the same thing.  Try sighting it again freehand or on the previous rail and see what happens.  It sounds to me you are pulling or jerking in a hunting situation and when you sight it on a solid bench you do not have that pull in the shot which changes the POI.  Good Luck!

[redarrow]

Im thinking that on a rest you are pretty solid and the gun hits pretty much where you are aiming. Then shooting freehand you have developed a style of holding the gun canted left or right a bit which will change everything. In that case I would just sight in freehand.You can buy a small stick on level to glance at before firing that will clearly show if you are canting.

[ILIKEHEVI-13]

When you shoot a gun off of a stationary rest like the one I posted, you know for sure where the center of your pattern is hitting.  Shooting offhanded should still come close to centering your pattern over what your aiming at provided that you hold steady and your aim is true.  Canting a shotgun a little left or right will have hardly any effect at all on your pattern hitting off from your target.  The same can be said for a scope that is put on a rifle crooked.  It has no effect on the center of your crosshair.  The gun may recoil a little different than from the rest, but it should be very close to what your getting off the rest for results. 

[Longshanks]

When you shoot a gun off of a stationary rest like the one I posted, you know for sure where the center of your pattern is hitting.  Shooting offhanded should still come close to centering your pattern over what your aiming at provided that you hold steady and your aim is true.  Canting a shotgun a little left or right will have hardly any effect at all on your pattern hitting off from your target.  The same can be said for a scope that is put on a rifle crooked.  It has no effect on the center of your crosshair.  The gun may recoil a little different than from the rest, but it should be very close to what your getting off the rest for results.  

 That is the way i go about it.  Find out where the gun shoots and go from there. The difference is minimal from stationary to free hand unless someone has a bad habit shouldering the gun or snatching on the trigger.  Fix the gun then fix the shooter.  Starting out free hand you never know what you have.

P.S. Nice equipment

[drenalinld]

The last step for me before hunting with any gun is to test it in hunting situations and sight in to those. The gun will recoil differently when only against your shoulder as opposed to in a lead sled or similar device. They definitely react differently when allowed to rest on a hard surface. I try to put some cushion on rests or bipods to simulate the cushion of the palm.

[turkey_slayer]

Whenever your shooting heavy recoiling guns, changing the way you hold it on the bench versus in the field can change the POI.  Shooting heavy recoiling slug guns or rifles such as 375 H&H ect the correct way has always been to hold the forearm and pull down and towards you snug against the shoulder instead of free recoiling like you would with light recoiling rifles.  If you line it up using one of those techniques but use the other technique in the field you can change the POI quite a bit

I sight my shotgun off my caldwell "the rock" allowing the gun to free recoil cause when I'm in the field the forearm is either resting on my knee or I have my hand in between my knee and the gun but do not use it to grab the forearm.  Using this system my POI is the same whether shooting off the bench or shooting in a hunting situation.  Never rest the barrel on anything!  Sounds like to me you are inconsistent from the bench to the field either by holding it different or pulling instead of squeezing the trigger.  Pulling the trigger can cause the gun to shoot to the right for a right hand shooter.

[3" 870 Shell Shucker]

I pattern my guns freehand, from a seated position.

[goblr77]

I pattern my guns freehand, from a seated position.

I do too.

[allchokedup]

This is what I use and it works great for me. It takes out a lot of guess work and gives me confidence when I go hunting.

[chatterbox]

I pattern my guns freehand, from a seated position.

I do too.

Same here. I have short arms, so getting my arm around a rest is tough. I also find muzzle jump is far less when shooting from a seated, relaxed position.
I use my gobbler lounger which puts me in a perfect shooting position. This is what I use when I hunt, so it only makes sense to me to shoot out of what I would use in the woods.

[squid]

Your experience sounds similar to something I just discovered recently.  I've been chasing turkeys for over 25 years now and never had too many problems with missing them until the last 5 years.  I had 1 to 2 misses a year over the past few.

The difference was 5 years ago I started to shoot my guns with performance chokes.   It wasn't until this year that I did some testing and figured out why I may have had so many misses recently.

!!  Tight choke.  I'm putting 90%+ of my pattern in a 14" circle at 40 yards.   Leaves little margin for error. !!

So off to the range I went to test my theory.   I used a lead sled and started shooting.   What I found was that I could torque or cant the gun enough that even though the rifle like sights lined up, I could move that pattern easily 12" in any direction.  This was while being clamped in a lead sled, taking shooter error out of the equation.   Many of the shots I take at birds I am all contorted and often in a very awkward position.   Sites lined up, but missed birds obviously due to torque, aka a non properly shouldered weapon.

Enter the Eotech Holosite!   I chose this site due to it's parallax free design,  Did the same tests in the lead sled, and with this site, no matter how I torqued the gun, it hits where the red dot is aiming at.

After spending hours on the range (and about 100 rounds) I have come to the conclusion that many of my misses were caused by a under performing sighting system combined with a super tight pattern.   Since putting the holo site on my gun I am three for three and if I miss now, it is all shooter error.

Spend some time over the summer at the shooting bench, oh and I did a lot of shooting with low base cheap shells to test the theory before trying it with mag turkey loads.