Joe no disrespect but the Green Frog asked you how many 250's have you shot at 200 yds and it appears your reply was diverted to what you have personally accomplished at 100 yds? I modified a Caldwell BR front rest to rotate a flat aluminum plate that incorporates double ball bearings and yes I use a Bob Sled attached to the barrel so I do indeed agree with you that it is indeed an improvement if one holds  the tolerances to the modification as close as is humanly possible. Any unrestrictesd or uncontroled movement ( any thing being loose ) on ones front rest will send shots into unknown territories.

I sure hate to jump in on this one but

250 @ 100 is one thing 250 @ 200 is a whole different game.  Target might be scaled however conditions make a world of difference as distance gets longer.

I have never seen a 250 @ 200 some have been fired at matches I normally attend but never when I was there  It's probably the ultimate single shot bench rest achievement and requires every component tuned to the max.  Rest is a key part of the task.

Boats

I heartily agree with boats! Much of what I have learned about shooting has come from watching other shooters and a little experimentation on my part. One of the folks I use to watch closely was Lowell Hamilton, and particularly his bench equipment, if Lowell did it then I knew it must be good, but then there are shooters like Donn Hanks who seem to do well regardless of what equipment they use, so much of it is skill.

Bob

Patience and wind reading are the two critical ingredients for fine rest shooting. Most of us all ready have a rifle capable of giving us groups small enough to score a 250. I have spent more time learning to read the wind than anything else since I started to seriously shoot plain based bench rest. When I first started I thought that “reading the wind,” meant learning where small changes in the wind would take your bullet. I got charts and studied where wind from a direction would take a bullet. I have busted more targets than I care to count because I thought I knew where the wind would put my bullet. 
For us the key is learning where to put your flags on a course. If you don’t put your flags where they will read the changes on the course than you can’t shoot the condition. Unfortunately, for me this is still a trial and error kind of thing. I always start with my probe at about 25 to 30 feet and a flag just far enough behind that so my tails won’t foul in the probe. Then I start to look for things at the sides of the range that will change the flow of the wind given the prevalent general direction. Than when you shoot you start to try and find out why a good shot went well outside the group. This is where collaboration helps if there is something that you missed another shooter may have picked up on a change in condition at a point on the course that you missed. Than you either need to move one of your flags of make a mental note to start watching the flag that picked up on the change. I know that is a lot of plates to keep spinning but that is the game. 
  The real revelation for me was in a bull session when Jerry DeVauderill said that the real key to his wind reading ability was patience. He told me he has ben known to wait for over a couple of relays for his condition to come back. It’s not about pulling a shot when a condition changes. It’s about having the patience to wait for your condition to shoot. This is a skill that I still struggle with.
40 Rod

[quote author=34305F526F64000 link=1267717673/37#37 date=1269006134]Patience and wind reading are the two critical ingredients for fine rest shooting. 
 The real revelation for me was in a bull session when Jerry DeVauderill said that the real key to his wind reading ability was patience. He told me he has ben known to wait for over a couple of relays for his condition to come back. It’s not about pulling a shot when a condition changes. It’s about having the patience to wait for your condit

[b]I've seen Jerry take about forever to get the next shot off, particularly at Old Colony. Somewhere we lost any notion of time or timed matches-a lot-in the ASSRA. 
joe b.[/b]

Somewhere we lost any notion of time or timed matches-a lot-in the ASSRA.
joe b.[/b]

Joe if you study Schutzen matches there were no stringent time limits. So nothing has been lost. If anything we have increased the use of time limits. 
You are still thinking CBA and modern BR and military style shooting.

  Joe.

.

yawn