To follow on from Simmo's post.
I shoot a standard S400 off the bench at Buxted and I was getting a lot of flyers on AA452's. Worse with JSB's.
As has already been said, benchrest shooting is pretty well established at Buxted, therefore there was lots of good advice.
Lead the barrel, clean the barrel, find the sweet spot, establish a routine, find the right pellet, inhale and hold, exhale and hold, head position, body position, wear the right/same clothes, clean the gun, do this do that .......
...... and then it happened ....... someone gave me half a dozen expensive wad-cutters he used in his FWB and the results were amazing.
I was inspired, I ripped the gun to bits, polished guides and hammers, cleaned things, oiled others. No moderator, no stripper, no muzzle break, shot 'em straight out of the pipe. Twenty quids worth of select H & N flat-tops . I never shot so good .. except ... the pellets appeared to be striking the cards and rolling on impact, on the card-board backing, tearing an irregular hole. No good for the .22 guage as it was dropping straight through. This unusual pattern occurred at points where the target holder wasn't quite aligned, which was pretty much most of them.
Alignment was never an issue for FT diabolo's, they just shot up the target mount. It has been suggested the rifle's power may be down, so it'll get chrono'd ASAP.
Obviously the first set of targets were no good and had to be repeated.
Back on the AA452's and guess what my 10 and 10x averages are just the same, but the flyers are down to 10mm and not 10cm.
However, I did my cards with a moderator fitted next month without and a rabbit's foot in each hip pocket.
You just can't buy luck or accuracy either for that matter.
ATVB.
Gary.