Did not mean that to come across as snooty - admittedly, a little disparaging of these strap-on wonders adorned with six to eight rounds of ammo - but not snooty.
I have the same reaction watching someone frantically fiddling around with an adjustable stock on a tricked out clays gun while I’m holding serve with a 100- year-old SxS.So to set the record straight, I think I have exactly one truly “bespoke” rifle or shotgun (stocked by the maker to my specific measurements). All the others are, one way or the other, “off the shelf” or originally bespoke for others.
LOP - length of pull - whether a shotgun or rifle is the most critical measurement for me to ensure instinctive alignment. That is easily achieved on most wood stocks. On a rifle, trigger pull is the second most critical factor. Perhaps because I shoot a lot of different rifles, Drop at heel and resulting “cheek weld” is a very distant third. Within reason - I simply adjust weld rather than worry about adjusting the rifle.
One of the most common issues that can make that difficult or impossible is scope positioning. As noted above by others, I see a lot of folks attempting to use rifles with scopes mounted too high - often compounding the problem with ridiculously large objective lenses. Also, many pre-WWII rifles were built with only open sights in mind, so their drop can be excessive by modern standards - particularly European rifles where the usual shooting stance was a bit more erect than here. Assuming it is properly set up, a typically created human being should be able to easily use any modern scoped rifle.
I assume from your posts that you are a relatively new shooter. The single biggest favor you can do yourself is range time - the second is to filter a lot of “advice” - to include from me!
Many people don’t really know a lot about shooting, but most have strong opinions. If getting a formal instructor is not an option, I would urge you to find a mentor - someone who clearly knows what they are doing and seems to be able to do it with the fewest gimmicks. Too often new shooters quickly find themselves chasing their tails forever trying the latest recommendation - when what they really need is range time (lots of range time) to turn breathing control, trigger release, and follow-through into unconscious, locked-in muscle memory. I wish you luck on your journey.
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Bound to come in a camo pattern as well.
