I recently had a 7-08 "mountain rifle" built. 7lbs 3oz scoped. This thing is tough to shoot consistently. I've been working up loads for it and have found a couple that shoot really nice sub 1" groups, but I'm getting frustrated with the fliers that I know are me. What's some of the tricks for shooting these lightweights well?
My Ruger Ultralight in .308 took a bit of taming. I had it bedded and barrel floated but it still shot into two inch groups. But then I read a Craig Boddington book about dampening the foreend with thin barrels. I cut several strips of bike tube rubber (1cm x 4cm approx) and packed that in the channel between the barrel and the fore end. I think it took three strips. That calmed it down and tightened up groups. It now shoots an inch at 100m with 130gn Speer HPs and 150gn Hornady SPs. And I hold the fore end on the front rest. That was about 20 years ago and I meant to have it professionally bedded at the tip, but the bike tube rubber strips are still there doing the job nicely.
