PRS Talk Positional elevation issues

Been there and still fight that battle myself. When I see shots go high I go straight to the assumption that it was my screw-up by letting the muzzle flip high, not anything wrong with the rifle system. Here's my mental cues and training focus, just writing them out is a good exercise for myself...

Am I connected to the rifle? Buttstock pulled into shoulder lightly, good positive control of the rifle.
Cheek weld is just a light touch, don't lean my face hard on the cheek rest, don't push it down or to the side.
NPA, reticle stable on target as I press trigger.
Press the trigger straight back, visualize guiding the rifle with my trigger finger on a straight back recoil path into my shoulder,
Mentally prepare for the tracking of recoil, rifle sliding into the shoulder and coming to rest. Don't try to push back into the gun with my shoulder, don't grab hold of it with my hands/grip.
Don't flinch, don't tense, don't blink. So hard to hold yourself accountable on this, especially as the shooting positions get wobblier. Keep yourself honest with dummy rounds, have a friend watching you, film yourself in slow motion. What you think is a good trigger pull might not be.
Train on wobbly positional stuff to keep yourself honest, the more stable positions will seem much much easier.

You're not going to shoot the same zero throughout all positions. Shooters have known this for a long time. Service rifle shooters have different zeros for different positions.

Specifically what you're describing is due to angle of departure. In anything besides a prone position your body isn't providing the same resistance to recoil and the gun moves rearward before the bullet exits the muzzle. AB has a video demonstrating it but Angle of departure was taught in sniper schools since the 90's. It's the same phenomenon as being able to see slightoy lower Chrono numbers when shooting sitting at a bench vs prone.

One thing I do to mitigate this is I zero with a neutral bipod load. If you zero with a firm and rigid hard load that POI will be lower than a neutral or rifle on barricade kneeling position. Almost every other position you shoot will impact higher.

You should try shooting a 10rd dot drill prone, off a barricade and bag, and from a tripod.

Every time i go to the range i confirm zero and then will practice this atleast twice to make sure im making good NPA and positions. If your zero is off from one to the other id adjust it. There is no since in having elevation issues on 80% of stages when most places only have 1-2 stages for prone or modified prone. Just my $.02

Most of the time when i see people who error high shooting positional its from either zero'ing with a hard/forward load into the rifle like mentioned above or they simply have their cheek piece too high and have to put a lot of downward cheek pressure to get behind the scope. in prone its mitigated because the rear of the rifle is supported by a bag/ground...but remove that support and the pressure is going to go somewhere. You should be able to tell during recoil also...if your muzzle tends to point up during/after recoil, youre driving the back end down

Lots of great advice already, I'll be exploring adding some of them to my own training or shot process. That said, one suggestion I'll add is to consider the downward pressure you're putting into the rear bag in prone. If you're letting the bag carry most of the weight of the rifle, or even pressing it downwards with your grip or cheek, then the buttstock can't travel downwards as much as it will in positional. If this is the case, a way to get more consistency between the two positions is to establish your rifle-to-shoulder connection in the prone without the bag, then bring the bag in just to stabilize wobble.

Phil Velayo and @ChrisWay both have a fair amount of content out there describing this technique. The "no bag" drill, where you shoot in the prone without a rear bag, is a great way to practice the proper connection; I'd be curious if your POI in that drill matches your positional POI. If so, you're placing too much of the rifle buttstock weight on the bag.

I am a firm believer in the KRAFT Drill. It will tell you your weak spot or spots.

I also zero with a bag instead of a bipod and then verify that zero from a kneeling position &/or standing position. I have a 1" dot drill target I use. It has a .5" and 1" circle with a fine dot in the middle. 2 Shots will do the trick. 25 circles on a page. Bench zero on 1 row, Kneeling on another and Standing on another.

The KRAFT drill 4 position target does just as well.

bbyars said:

Click to expand...

I'm over here thinking "oh man, I think we have a barricade that looks exactly like that at the local range! That's awesome, I can practice on.. huh, same elevated platform too, that's neat.."
It then dawned on me that this is just filmed the 1k range I have a membership at never expected to see that on here!

Remove the cheek riser completely and see where you are impacting on positional shots. I bet the cheek riser is still the culprit.

It's the angle of departure changing from the lack of a rear bag to counter recoil

cheek riser as some others have said, and/or buttstock not high enough in the shoulder pocket or midline is what I would try first.