I went out and bought a Ruger American Predator in 6mm CM. I originally bought a Vortex Viper 6.5-20 with Warne rings. Shot it and had it sighted in within 4 shots and was hitting clover leaf groups at 100. Since I wanted to play around with it up to 1000 years I got to thinking that I would be better off with a FFP optic instead of the SFC Viper. So I went and returned the Viper and got the Vortex Venom 5-25Ă—56 FFP and a new set of Warne rings to accommodate the bigger tube.
Since I had the old scope off I decided to try and lighten the trigger pull so I backed out the set screw a few turns. There was never any evidence of the stock hitting the barrel on the stock or the barrel but I checked again and ran a dollar down with no resistance. Screwed down Action lugs to 65 inch lbs. Took the new Warne rings and seated them as far forward so they sat right up against the rail. Tightened the side lugs on the rings to 65 inch lbs. Set the new scope in place and tightened ring caps criss cross pattern 16 inch pounds.
Shot it with 4 different types of ammo and it was terrible no matter what type ammo. Groups were no smaller than 4 or 5 inches at best. So after shooting about 10 rounds I knew something was wrong. So I took everything back apart. I Sanded down everything on the stock channel from the Lug forward so absolutely nothing was making contact. I adjusted the trigger pull screw back in. I made absolute sure the 2 contact points on the action were both contacting the stock lugs and tightened action lugs back to 65 inch pounds. Checked all 4 rail screw and made sure they were all at 16 inch pounds. Flipped the rings and swapped them re-torqued all fasteners to correct specs. Cleaned the rifle just in case. Went to shoot and again out of 2 different match grade ammo and 2 different hunting rounds nothing would group better than 4". I originally shot my first good shots with Harris Bipod and coat for a rear bag. With the new setup I tried taking the bipod off, tried it on, tried with same exact coat for rear bag, went out and bought a rear bag, shot from prone, shot from bench and nothing is working. This thing went from shooting great with a decent scope to shooting like dog **** with an even better scope.
I have a total of 80 rounds through this rifle and it will not shoot. I can shoot a sling shot better than this rifle. Is there anything I'm missing or might have overlooked? Any ideas where to go from here?