You will find that the front support must be higher than the rear. To achieve this, simply boost the front sandbag with a couple of boards, a cement block or whatever else is handy, as long as it's stable. The key is to try to keep the gun as low to the bench as possible.

The bench should be shaped so that there is a "wing" along your right side (for right-handed shooters). This allows you to support the rear of the rifle while your body is positioned correctly for shooting. Snug yourself into the bench so that your chest is pushing against it both in the front and on the side wing. This will wedge you into a "corner" and will make you more solid. The trick is to eliminate all movement.

You should not be supporting the rifle in any way; let the sandbags do that. If they are properly adjusted, you can look through the scope and see the crosshairs on the center of the target. The only reason you need to touch the gun is to pull the trigger.

One accuracy-robbing problem is parallax in the scope. To check for this, put your rifle on the sandbags with the crosshairs on the target at 100 yards or whatever distance you scope's parallax is preset for. Let the sandbags support the gun and, without touching the rifle, move your head back and forth, up and down behind the scope to the full limits that allow you to still see the crosshairs on the target.

The crosshairs should remain in position on the target. If they appear to move, you have a parallax problem, and the gun will never shoot to its potential with this scope. If the scope is adjustable for parallax you might be able to correct it; if not, return the scope to the factory for repair.

Too many hunters tend to look at their muzzleloaders as second class firearms and put cheap scopes on them. That's a big mistake for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that muzzleloaders have a lot of recoil and can cause a poor scope to lose zero or break. I have seen some scopes slip their zero a bit with every shot, which will open groups up. Cheap scopes also tend to have more parallax problems.

But even a good scope can fail. I was shooting with one of the top scope brands the other day, trying out a new model. The scope was adjustable for parallax, but the best I could adjust to was five or six inches at 100 yards--totally unacceptable. They sent me a new scope of the same model and it is fine. The first one was simply defective.

Be realistic. Obviously, if the groups are five or six inches at 100 yards you should try to correct the problem. But if your gun is shooting 21?2-inch groups at 100 yards, be happy--go hunting.