Re: The legend of the 1/2 MOA Savage
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: cstmwrks</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
To date I've never caught a glimps of trace. Even my buddy seldom sees the trace. For the most part we both work off the low tech method of dust kick up at the impact point.
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Make sure make a sandsock and integrate it into your shooting. The rear bag isolates your muscles and pulse from the stock so where your pulse sends the reticle up and down 3/8MOA, with the sandsock, wobble zone might be 1/8" or less. The sandsock is critical to precision shooting and that's why every serious precision shooter has one.
Sandsock (basic description)
They don't have to be sand- the guy below, says field corn, I use light dried beans. Sand works better, but I don't want to carry 5 lbs of sand if I can use something lighter that works 80% as well.
<span style="font-weight: bold">On Trace</span>
Trace you can spot sometimes even inside 300 meters, but certainly should be able to spot almost always (except on very windy days) at 300-900M.
If you have a spotting scope worth a crap, position yourself just right and rear of the shooter as close to the bore axis as possible, set the scope to ~18 power (somewhere in the 16-20x range), focus on the target, or bring it back just about 1/3 of the way toward your location, so the target is just barely blurred. Mount the spotter in a tripod that is firmly mounted so that there is no shake in the scope [this might take some rigging of your tripod but it is critical], then look through the scope with both eyes open, not touching the scope with your forehead, cover your non scope eye with your hand, but don't close either eye.
You should see it. The brake won't help because blast will cause you to want to close your eye. Sound suppressors for this reason really make seeing trace more reliable and easy, but that doesn't mean it can't be done all the way up to 50BMG without a can. With the 50 you just get behind the shooter sitting so you're looking over the gun, rather than off to the side getting your world all fucked up by the blast and flying dirt and grass.