drover, I use a terry cloth hand towel on my front rest, same as I do with my Kimber Montana rifles. As you stated, it allows the rifles to recoil freely without hanging up on the bag. It will certainly improve the groups. I shot mine the first time without the hand towel and afterwards noticed the checkering had little pieces of some kind of debris caught up in the checking from the front leather rest.
I don't mess around with that kind of crap. Different strokes I guess.. A 22lr doesn't recoil enough to make any kind of difference in regards to that type of stuff. Maybe I'll try a terry cloth between the stock and bi-pod.
