How to Choose the Best Shooting Sticks for Hunting?
What is essential to understand when choosing a shooting stick for hunting is what conditions the hunter or shooter usually faces, how much time, and whether there will be any time before firing at all to extend the shooting stick. Besides, also consider the following factors in choosing the best shooting sticks for hunting.
Types of Shooting Sticks
- Tripods – have three points of shooting stick, stable in all directions of possible swing and tilt. As a rule, they have 3- legs with 3- sections each (in the legs with manual extension), which will take a little more time to set and extend the legs, and 2- sections in the legs with an automatic extension of the legs.
- Bipods – have 2- legs, like high bipods, resistant to swinging and tilting in two planes, for example, to the right and the left, but will have to be supported from falling forward and backward.
- Monopods – 1 leg, quickly move apart and fold but are unstable on their own. They are convenient for use in walking hunting when you need to move and aim prey at a distance constantly.
Shooting Stick Types
1. Automatic
Such shooting sticks have a trigger – you press it, and it moves apart by itself. Expanding such a shooting stick and bringing it into a working position takes a minimum of time. It is only necessary to push the legs of the shooting stick apart with the movement of the boot (if a tripod or bipod).
They are assembled just as quickly – you pull the trigger, lower the upper part down – the shooting stick is assembled for all-about everything a couple of seconds. They usually have 2- knees on each leg.
The disadvantages of such shooting sticks are that they are heavier than shooting sticks with manual expansion. When folded, they are more than a meter long.
2. Manual
With the manual extension, disassembly will take a minute – one and a half, depending on skill. Each leg has 3-knees. When extended, each knee is secured with either a collet swivel clamp (Primo’s legs) or a snap-on petal clamp (Vanguard legs).
The petal clamp will be a little simpler, but you can clamp the collet tighter even after many years of use and wear of the eccentric fasteners. Both are held tightly. The disadvantages of the shooting sticks are the time to move.
The advantage of the shooting stick is its compactness and low weight. When folded, it is about 80 cm long, weighs from 400 to 900 grams.
Shooting Stick Material
Shooting sticks are made of duralumin pipes, either round or with a complex profile to increase their rigidity. The coating is anodized, abrasion-resistant, the plastic parts have a rubberized base, very tenacious to the grip with the hand so that they do not slip out.
When choosing a shooting stick for shooting, the manufacturer’s fame is no longer worth paying attention to. With the current high level of competition, all modern industrial shooting sticks have high reliability and approximately the same weight, strength, and stiffness parameters.
It is worth paying more attention to functionality, the number of shooting stick legs, and the mechanics of its disassembly. But you need to know the manufacturers to buy an obvious fake but to purchase high-quality factory-made goods.
Final Verdict
If the hunt is mainly for running, it is better to take a monopod – a shooting stick with one leg. At the same time, if the terrain is wooded, high grass, then a shooting stick with manual legs spread, and legs will have to be spread apart in advance, will cling to grass and branches – it is better to get an automatic one.
If the hunt is mainly from an ambush or on a room during a driven hunt and the transitions are not significant, then you need to take a tripod. Well, if the hunt is mixed, without significant transitions, but shooting at an unexpectedly appeared animal is possible, or a decision is made to make a corral, and the firing position will be on the field. It is better to take an automatic shooting stick.
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