I had a Ruger in 260. It shot Ok, but not great, so it was a fix or replace issue with me. I'd been reading about Tikka rifles, so I went to the store for a scratch and sniff. I like the look and feel of them, so I tried to order one in 260. Nope. Not offered in 260. Well dang. Finally I had a 308 rebarreled and had a #4 contour custom barrel put on it. Wow, what a shooter. Amazing. Why bed a rifle that shoots that good?
It's interesting to me that there are a few guys that think that a rifle just HAS to be bedded. Would it be smart to bed a bad shooting rifle? Why not determine just how well it'll shoot right out of the box before you start dragging out the bedding compound. My Tikka shoots so well that I'm not changing ANYTHING. And it shoots better than my bedded Sako AV and better than my bedded Ruger 77V in 220.
HAS isn't an operative word, tho bedding is a good idea in the majority of cases in my nearly 60 years of hunting and a decade as a now former gunsmith.
Yes, it IS smart to bed a bad shooting rifle. It often helps. Sometimes it doesn't. But it is in the book for eliminating possibilities. It often changes a bad shooter or so-so to a good shooter. My Ruger 77V in .25-06 shot 5 inch groups factory stock, factory ammo. I went to neck-sized handloads and got MOA. Never did mess with the factory stock. I often wonder what the thing would have done had I bedded it... but making consistent one shot kills out to in excess of 500 yards sort of mutes the question... never should have sold it...
So bedding isn't always THE answer. But it's usually t the first thing I look at after scope and screw integrity. Eliminate bad ammo, bad screws tension, bad scope, and bad bedding, and that pretty much leaves the barrel!
Keep in mind that however well fit routered recoil lug/receiver relief done, it isn't as perfect a fit as form-fit epoxy!
You likely don't hunt in wet weather from your post. Bedding the action and a couple inches of barrel on a wood stock, and free-floating the barrel will prevent moisture accumulation during the hunt from changing the pressure points on the rest of the barrel. The best option for wet weather hunting is of course synthetic stocks. Of the dozens of rifles I have bedded, wood or "drop-in" synthetic stocks, every single one of them has shown an increase in consistent accuracy (group size on the bench) to some extent, ranging from slight to impressive unless the bbl was efed.
That said, if you have an un-bedded dry-weather tack-driver that won't be used under harsh conditions, don't mess with it! Don't fix what ain't broke, or at least not in need of improvement.
If I lose a little bit of group size from dry stock bench rest groups to assured multi-round all-weather consistency albeit with a reasonably larger group, I will take it! Under practical field conditions for big game, a bit larger bench group just does not signify. Confidence in consistency under all conditions does. My RU77 .338 Mag (bedded/free-floated) commonly finishes moose season with the butt about 3/32nds larger than the recoil pad due to moisture accumulation. But group-size and POA don't change. The entire barrel channel and receiver area interior is bedded and sealed with epoxy, with the receiver screws column bedded with epoxy.
There are "better" ways of achieving the same results (such as metal pillar bedding the receiver screws) but mine have worked...
Your point of first shooting the factory rifle before bedding- if one decides to bed - is well taken. An initial benchmark is a must! Otherwise one doesn't know if gaining or losing... or, depending on circumstances, if bedding is even a desirable thing.
Every single one of my hunting rifles is bedded to advantage, with the exception of my Dad's 1927 manufactured Win '94, which shoots inch groups with open sights at 50 yards. That's my walk-about rifle, by the way. Haven't killed a damned thing with it since 1966.
But I could.
