Quick follow up... Thanks for all the advice. I did 2 things: trigger work, and shot several hundred rounds of Remington, Federal, Winchester and some handloads from a friend. My best groups have been less than 1". The worst groups are 1.25 - 1.5". I had a couple of fluke groups under 1/2" and I had an occassional flier that was out of my group by 2-3", but for the most part things stayed consistently between 1 and 1.5".

The one other thing that may have helped was that I went from sandbags to a bench rest. My plan is to have the barrel floated, have the recoil pad replaced and take a look at some basic handloading equipment.

By the way, remington ammo still shot poorly out of this rifle. Federal premium was the most consistent overall, and one handload that my friend put together gave me a couple of groups small enough that I had a couple of holes touching.

Thanks for your advice. I'm on my way.

The best way to shrink your groups is to start reloading your own ammunition.Even a beginner at reloadingcould easily cut your groupswhen compared to factory ammunition. I recommend lookinginto an RCBS Rock Chucker reloading kit, get a Lymans reloading manual and have fun. Two of the keys to successful reloading are to use quality bullets and the right powder. With your 30-06 an excellent place to start would be Reloader 22 powder and Nosler bullets.

Welcome to the forum Adirondack! I'm glad you could get this thing figured out. There's lots of good advice on this site - use it!