Long Distance Shooting

[eldermike]

Thank you Shortwave.
A thing I learned myself through teaching archery to others is how quickly people progress when they learn a system of fundamental things in a sequence that ends in a shot. Most kids that are coached can quickly outshoot adults because they don't know how to mess up a shot. They start with feet, then shoulders and head position, they raise the bow arm and pre-draw, focus on a spot, they extend to full draw with total focus, and release. Bingo, arrow in the same spot. The adult says: I can't see the sights and the target and they shoot 4 feet over the backstop or hit the ground in front of the target. So, I take the sights off and start from the feet. They look at me like I am from a different planet.

A machine will shoot to the same spot every time. Become a machine. A machine runs a program in a sequence that ends in a shot. Do that.

Then the sights become useful once you learn to shoot.

 

[Crazy88Fingers]

Thanks for all the input thus far, there's some good stuff in here. I usually shoot at a standard NRA bullseye target with a 6" shoot-n-see pasted in the middle. At 15 yards I can see the target and the red dot in the middle. Making out the little .357" holes is a bit tougher though.

I suppose I could work on my fundamentals a bit more. I've tried the coin on the barrel trick, and that helped a lot. I'll have to try taping a laser to it as well.

And I really need to find some good grips! Everything I try on these wheel guns is either way too small or seemingly sized for Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

 

[MrBorland]

Using an appropriate NRA bullseye target is good, but personally, I recommend against using Shoot-N-Cs - They just scream at you to look at the target while shooting, and/or between shots, either of which is a real accuracy killer.

Don't worry about the target (remember, it's just a recording device); execute the fundamentals well and consistently, and the target will take care of itself. You could also practice by getting rid of the target entirely if it helps you put your mental focus on the front sight and your trigger pull.

I suppose I could work on my fundamentals a bit more.

Not trying to be flip, but if you want to improve your shooting, you'll absolutely need to work hard on your fundamentals. Without that, everything else is really just a "trick", and there are no real tricks to shooting well.

 

[shortwave]

All so true eldermike.

Having shot firearms as well as archery for many years, it never fails that if the equipment is right and my shot strings go haywire, there is something in the basic fundamentals that I have started doing wrong.

Although there have been a few times in which there was something wrong with my equipment. Just had it happened to me with my T/C Encore. This thing had been crazy accurate for the last 4-5yrs. All of a sudden, I'm hitting all over with no pattern whatsoever shooting off sandbags. Thought it was my loading, thought it was me flinching, thought is was something I was doing wrong and drove myself crazy for two days trying to figure it out.

I was shooting off of sandbags and just couldn't get a decent group at 100yds.

On the third day, I'm out shooting and am quite frustrated trying to diagnose the problem. I took a shot and stood the rifle upright to swab the bore. By chance when I was swabbing, I noticed the buttstock flexing ever so slightly every time I pushed the ramrod down the bore. Upon inspection, the buttstock screw had loosened up just a little letting the barrel, buttstock alignment change just a small amount every time I took a shot.

Tightened buttstock screw and the thing went back to driving tacks.

Spent 2 1/2 days and a lot of led downrange trying to diagnose something I was doing wrong when the first thing I should have done was check my equipment to rule it out as being the problem. Something I know better then to do.

 

[Mike / Tx]

Excellent post on the fundamentals eldermike. At a range I used to shoot at before it closed there were quite a few BR shooters as well as a couple of instructors. One of the most repeated phrases out on the firing line was, "The name of the game is the same", in reference to doing the same thing each and every shot.

While it sounds a bit silly for grown men to toss that around there isn't much of anything that isn't more true when your trying to put each shot into the hole the previous shot went through.

Crazy88Fingers, you mention your targets being the shoot-n-see type pasters in the middle of the NRA. I can tell you that there are MUCH better things to use until you get the groups your looking for. I have used everything from magic markers to HiViz paint to give me a better sight picture through the years. What I use the most often now is the Hoppes 100yd sighting target. I like it mainly due to the big 1" wide 6"x6" square surrounding the smaller 2"x2" square. This really works well for me as the front sights on most of my handguns fit good inside the squares at different ranges, and they stand out in a contrasting manner that helps me align things.

It may or may not work for you, but you might do a little looking at some of the free target sites and try out a few different ones to see. Even black on white works if you find the right one. I like the squares but some find the circles better suited. It's definitely worth a few pieces of copy paper, and a little ink to try out.

 

[JohnKSa]

Making out the little .357" holes is a bit tougher though.

You can shoot a target or you can score a target, but you can't do both at once if you want to do either one well.

Get yourself some NRA-D1 targets (the original style with the scoring rings very lightly marked--not the ones with the black scoring center) and shoot them at distances far enough out that you can't see the scoring rings. This will help you stop wasting effort trying to see bullet holes and keep you focused on your sights and trigger control.

If I'm shooting a gun I'm familiar with I can keep all my shots within a 6" circle at 7 yards...

At 7 yards, with a decent gun and decent ammunition for it, slow-fire groups should not be larger than a couple of inches. If the shooter can see the sights reasonably clearly and is aligning them properly and consistently then the problem is trigger control and/or recoil anticipation.

I use two different methods for convincing shooters of this truth.

One is to randomly load a dummy round into the magazine or to leave one chamber empty in a revolver. The shooter can see the flinch when he/she pulls the trigger and the gun doesn't fire. It's usually an eye opener.

The other method is to have them hold the gun and align the sights but keep their finger off the trigger. Then I pull the trigger for them. The tiny groups that result are very effective in terms of convincing the shooter that he/she is flinching or yanking the trigger.

 

[motmot]

I've always liked shooting pistols at long distances so I keep working on getting better at it. Once I started reloading and was able to control the consistency of my ammo without spending a fortune, that removed one variable. Next was learning the gun. Same gun every day, day after day. As one earlier post said it's a machine that does what you tell it to, trick is to become part of that machine and do the same thing every time. Doesn't matter if you're shooting backwards thru your legs, if you're holding, aiming, and squeezing the same way on every shot the result will be the same. Like I said earlier I like to shoot at clays sitting about 100yds out on a hill and this worked for me. My front site (fixed iron sights) is bigger than a clay at 100yds so I filed it to a sharp point to sharpen my focus. More precisely I filed off the right side at an angle until my file just touched the top left side of my sight. This effectively moved my shot right to compensate for what my fixed sights (or I) were originally doing and gave me a much more detailed focus. At 25yds I don't aim for the Coke can, I aim for the "O" on the Coke can. Works really well on my old surplus rifles too.