The goal of this wall of text is to help people get more hits in challenging practical conditions, when prone shooting isn't an option. The topic of tripods is sort of contentious in the precision rifle community at the moment, and I'm sure this post will be too. I've seen some crazy claims on the internet (1/4 MOA accuracy from a tripod 
) that I don't believe, and I'm sure some people won't believe this. That's ok. go try it for yourself.
In any event, I don't want to call it a fad because I don't think it's going away, but it is getting more popular as people get better at it.
People have been shooting off of tripods for a long time, but it wasn't really a hot topic, because they kind of sucked at it and weren't practical unless you were going to be stuck in one spot for a while and knew about where your target would be. As some products like the hog saddle and pig saddle came on the market, it was suddenly a lot cooler, and everybody wanted to post pictures of their rifles clamped on top of a tripod. Many of you may remember the picture of the snipers at the 2011 superbowl that got a lot of attention.
IMHO, those are great products, but they suffered from tripods that had a lot of flex and stocks that weren't designed to be squeezed in a vice. They also support only the rifle (not your body, which is still standing and wobbling) and they are not easy to make very fine adjustments in the point of aim, though that is a function of the tripod (typically the ballhead) not the hog saddle itself. The net result is nobody used them in matches because it could take minutes to set up a shot, and shooting under 2 MOA still required skill and some luck.
For about a year, a company named Really Right Stuff, has been marketing their products to shooters. Their tripods' absurdly high quality is matched only by their absurdly high price. The stiffness in their carbon fiber legs made it so you could easily and quickly throw the front of your rifle on whatever barricade you have at hand, and support the rear of the stock with a leg of the tripod (not shooting off the top, no clamp involved other than your support hand.) In 2016 PRS matches, I'd say you pretty much had to have access to one of these tripods (either your own, or a friend in your squad who would share) to be competitive. Though, they were banned at many matches because it was such an advantage, it was considered cheating. You can see an example of this technique in my good friend Scott's video at about 2 minutes in.
But continuing to progress... the question became how to completely support the rifle when you don't have a barricade for front support? There are a couple improvements to the basic hog saddle concept. One is the RRS vice grip, which is a little higher quality, and the other is direct attachment to the rifle. Stocks like Accuracy International's AX can attach directly to the ballhead or leveling base now, with no clamp needed. Other chassis do the same, and pretty much anything with keymod or picatinny rails on bottom can as well (great solution for AR15s).
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However, all of these still hold the gun in one spot, usually in the middle around the center of gravity (hopefully, if the magazine isn't in the way), which is not nearly as stable as two spots, one on each end, as you would typically see shooting from the prone or bench when the rifle is supported by bipods or bags in the front and rear.
So... I've been experimenting with shooting off two tripod legs, with the front of the stock near the bipod supported by one leg, and the rear of the stock supported by another. The obvious advantage is stability, and disadvantage is you don't have the range of height. i.e. I can't shoot over a 5' tall obstacle without touching it, but since I can't ever remember needing to do that, I'll take the trade.
Several months ago, I asked both RRS and MPA to make sort of a shelf that would attach to the front leg for support. They're great guys but taking their own sweet time, so I assembled a simple ascender style pully with a flush cup to attach to the front of the rifle. And I simply hold the rear leg with my support hand, and hold the butt of the stock to it with my thumb. I'll play with this until I can get around to 3d printing a front shelf/clamp.
With a little practice, it takes me about twice as long to set up as if I were shooting prone, for say, a 1 MOA target. i.e. 13 seconds vs 7 seconds, starting from standing with all gear in hand. Follow up shots are very fast. It's not exactly a portable benchrest, but it's dang close.
Here's a picture of the setup in my backyard dry fire practice playground, where I've been messing around with the technique for a few months.
Past couple of weekends, I've been shooting with it in the field too. Last time I took all shots inside 700 for the day from the tripod, with no prone shots. I was 2/2 on IPSC head at 605, and also 1/1 on a reduced IPSC head at the same distance, though there was some luck involved
I don't remember exactly but think I was 1/1 on a 6" circle at 540 yrds and 0/1 on the ruler.
Today, I decided to take some pics. To make it more practical, I started in the middle of a patch of waist high cuckleburrs. If you were really shooting at a practical target, there wasn't a place within 100 yards where you could take an actual prone shot. Traditional alternatives would have been olympic style kneeling, or some very tall shooting sticks. I could hit the body of these targets kneeling, but I would never try a head shot that way.
While it's a little hard to tell how high the vege is from the pic perspective below, my rifle is on the ground just right of the tripod, and the weeds are about half the height of the tripod.
In the right image below, you can see the target (black silhouette, behind the white hostage) through the scope, just high right of the crosshair (low left of the cow, which was not there when I took the shot). And how the front of the rifle is resting against the leg, held up by the rope. The left bipod leg is hooked over the front of the tripod leg to prevent the gun from swinging to the rear. Although elevation is adjustable by pulling the rope more or less, the rifle is right at the junction of the top and middle leg sections in order to clear the vegetation.
The top left image is a close up of the target through the scope and the bottom left is from a few feet in front of the targets. The impact shown is the first (and only) shot (cold bore and all that) from this distance.
Limits thus far...
The above target was about 1 MOA (head is just shy of 3" square). I felt like I could hold wherever I wanted on the head, and the wobble was maybe half the size of the target. It was basically like a prone shot. My guess is I could have gone 10 for 10 on that. I did follow it up with a hit in the middle of a full size IPSC head at about 417 yards.
But then I moved back so that the target was about 560 yards away to see if I could hold a nearly 1/2 MOA target. That area was just high grass, and so I moved down the tripod near the junction between the middle and bottom legs. My wobble there was just a little larger than the head, and I only got 1 hit out of 4 attempts, but at least I didn't hit the hostage. (though, I think I missed on wind on the first shot, and forgot to put my ear plugs in and was deafened by the brake (I normally shoot suppressed and don't need ear pro) so I was pretty unfocused after that.)
After missing, 3 of 4, I wanted to make sure the problem was my position and not my rifle/ammo or wind call, so I moved up about 20 yards to a place I could take a prone shot and immediately got a hit right in the center, next to the 300 yard impact. (the long hit off the tripod is down near the neck)
So there are a lot of people working on tripod shooting these days. I'd definitely recommend experimenting if you are into practical shooting. My personal goal is to get fast enough I could use this in a match. We will see.
) that I don't believe, and I'm sure some people won't believe this. That's ok. go try it for yourself. In any event, I don't want to call it a fad because I don't think it's going away, but it is getting more popular as people get better at it.
People have been shooting off of tripods for a long time, but it wasn't really a hot topic, because they kind of sucked at it and weren't practical unless you were going to be stuck in one spot for a while and knew about where your target would be. As some products like the hog saddle and pig saddle came on the market, it was suddenly a lot cooler, and everybody wanted to post pictures of their rifles clamped on top of a tripod. Many of you may remember the picture of the snipers at the 2011 superbowl that got a lot of attention.
IMHO, those are great products, but they suffered from tripods that had a lot of flex and stocks that weren't designed to be squeezed in a vice. They also support only the rifle (not your body, which is still standing and wobbling) and they are not easy to make very fine adjustments in the point of aim, though that is a function of the tripod (typically the ballhead) not the hog saddle itself. The net result is nobody used them in matches because it could take minutes to set up a shot, and shooting under 2 MOA still required skill and some luck.
For about a year, a company named Really Right Stuff, has been marketing their products to shooters. Their tripods' absurdly high quality is matched only by their absurdly high price. The stiffness in their carbon fiber legs made it so you could easily and quickly throw the front of your rifle on whatever barricade you have at hand, and support the rear of the stock with a leg of the tripod (not shooting off the top, no clamp involved other than your support hand.) In 2016 PRS matches, I'd say you pretty much had to have access to one of these tripods (either your own, or a friend in your squad who would share) to be competitive. Though, they were banned at many matches because it was such an advantage, it was considered cheating. You can see an example of this technique in my good friend Scott's video at about 2 minutes in.
But continuing to progress... the question became how to completely support the rifle when you don't have a barricade for front support? There are a couple improvements to the basic hog saddle concept. One is the RRS vice grip, which is a little higher quality, and the other is direct attachment to the rifle. Stocks like Accuracy International's AX can attach directly to the ballhead or leveling base now, with no clamp needed. Other chassis do the same, and pretty much anything with keymod or picatinny rails on bottom can as well (great solution for AR15s).
[resize=500]
[/resize]However, all of these still hold the gun in one spot, usually in the middle around the center of gravity (hopefully, if the magazine isn't in the way), which is not nearly as stable as two spots, one on each end, as you would typically see shooting from the prone or bench when the rifle is supported by bipods or bags in the front and rear.
So... I've been experimenting with shooting off two tripod legs, with the front of the stock near the bipod supported by one leg, and the rear of the stock supported by another. The obvious advantage is stability, and disadvantage is you don't have the range of height. i.e. I can't shoot over a 5' tall obstacle without touching it, but since I can't ever remember needing to do that, I'll take the trade.
Several months ago, I asked both RRS and MPA to make sort of a shelf that would attach to the front leg for support. They're great guys but taking their own sweet time, so I assembled a simple ascender style pully with a flush cup to attach to the front of the rifle. And I simply hold the rear leg with my support hand, and hold the butt of the stock to it with my thumb. I'll play with this until I can get around to 3d printing a front shelf/clamp.
With a little practice, it takes me about twice as long to set up as if I were shooting prone, for say, a 1 MOA target. i.e. 13 seconds vs 7 seconds, starting from standing with all gear in hand. Follow up shots are very fast. It's not exactly a portable benchrest, but it's dang close.
Here's a picture of the setup in my backyard dry fire practice playground, where I've been messing around with the technique for a few months.
Past couple of weekends, I've been shooting with it in the field too. Last time I took all shots inside 700 for the day from the tripod, with no prone shots. I was 2/2 on IPSC head at 605, and also 1/1 on a reduced IPSC head at the same distance, though there was some luck involved
I don't remember exactly but think I was 1/1 on a 6" circle at 540 yrds and 0/1 on the ruler.Today, I decided to take some pics. To make it more practical, I started in the middle of a patch of waist high cuckleburrs. If you were really shooting at a practical target, there wasn't a place within 100 yards where you could take an actual prone shot. Traditional alternatives would have been olympic style kneeling, or some very tall shooting sticks. I could hit the body of these targets kneeling, but I would never try a head shot that way.
While it's a little hard to tell how high the vege is from the pic perspective below, my rifle is on the ground just right of the tripod, and the weeds are about half the height of the tripod.
In the right image below, you can see the target (black silhouette, behind the white hostage) through the scope, just high right of the crosshair (low left of the cow, which was not there when I took the shot). And how the front of the rifle is resting against the leg, held up by the rope. The left bipod leg is hooked over the front of the tripod leg to prevent the gun from swinging to the rear. Although elevation is adjustable by pulling the rope more or less, the rifle is right at the junction of the top and middle leg sections in order to clear the vegetation.
The top left image is a close up of the target through the scope and the bottom left is from a few feet in front of the targets. The impact shown is the first (and only) shot (cold bore and all that) from this distance.
Limits thus far...
The above target was about 1 MOA (head is just shy of 3" square). I felt like I could hold wherever I wanted on the head, and the wobble was maybe half the size of the target. It was basically like a prone shot. My guess is I could have gone 10 for 10 on that. I did follow it up with a hit in the middle of a full size IPSC head at about 417 yards.
But then I moved back so that the target was about 560 yards away to see if I could hold a nearly 1/2 MOA target. That area was just high grass, and so I moved down the tripod near the junction between the middle and bottom legs. My wobble there was just a little larger than the head, and I only got 1 hit out of 4 attempts, but at least I didn't hit the hostage. (though, I think I missed on wind on the first shot, and forgot to put my ear plugs in and was deafened by the brake (I normally shoot suppressed and don't need ear pro) so I was pretty unfocused after that.)
After missing, 3 of 4, I wanted to make sure the problem was my position and not my rifle/ammo or wind call, so I moved up about 20 yards to a place I could take a prone shot and immediately got a hit right in the center, next to the 300 yard impact. (the long hit off the tripod is down near the neck)
So there are a lot of people working on tripod shooting these days. I'd definitely recommend experimenting if you are into practical shooting. My personal goal is to get fast enough I could use this in a match. We will see.
