Off-Hand
and Trick Shooting
By Paul Vallandigham
If there is an art to rifle shooting, it is only because we don't train
to shoot rifles with open sights, from our two legs, standing, as was
the practice 65 years ago. When WW II broke out, Americans were proud
of the fact that they had learned to shoot rifles at an early age. Even
with the population shifting from the rural area to urban settings, high
schools, scout camps, 4-H clubs and the like provided ranges where the
fundamentals of marksmanship were taught, so the average draftee entering
the service then had at least basic skills at rifle shooting.
Much has changed since then, not the least of which is the prevalence
of scoped sights on hunting rifles. These were originally offered to
aid in identifying the target, and what was beyond it, for safety reasons,
and to aid in bullet placement. A telescopic sight assists in treating
wild animals to a quick and humane kill. Scopes have since become a substitute
for practicing marksmanship fundamentals.
If you want to learn
about properly shooting a rifle, I recommend joining the NRA and buying
the books they offer about these skills. The books are absolutely terrific,
and will teach you the basics. What I want to do here is teach you
some of the "tricks" of shooting rifles,
so that you can have more fun shooting. The more shooting you do, the
better you will get.
I began my formal shooting by joining a Black Powder Rifle Club about
30 years ago. They needed a lawyer to help them with their incorporation
paperwork, and I was a friend of one of their officers who had met me
at a local trap shoot.
I went to one of
the club's demonstrations, where they were doing some "trick" shooting.
In this case, they were splitting the round ball on the edge of an ax
blade, and breaking two clay trap targets, one on either side of the
axe blade. This I wanted to do.
I later watched some of their shooters cut playing cards on edge with
their round ball, and years later participated in a candle-snuffing contest.
In this event you blow out the candle flame with your ball, without cutting
the wick, or the candlestick. I wanted to do those, too.
Along the way, we shot at all kinds of small targets, including raw
eggs, swinging from a line, clay targets on a line, bottle cap sized
targets nailed to the backstop, etc. We broke cookies, and wafers, and
rolled our share of pop cans, and bounced them too.
The fundamentals of shooting a rifle can boil down to stance, aiming,
trigger squeeze, breath control, and follow through. Most shooters screw
up because they haven't a clue about a proper stance.
To shoot a rifle accurately, you have to mount it to your shoulder.
Balance the forend on either the palm of your off hand, or on the web
of the offhand. Stand so that the bones of your body, and not the muscles,
support the weight of the rifle. Muscles fatigue, and when they are strained
you develop shakes, which destroy your ability to hold a sight picture.
Assuming you are right handed, and that you want to hit the edge of
an ax-blade so that you split a round ball fired from a muzzle loading
rifle to break two clay birds at one time, here is what you do.
Stand sideways, looking
over your left shoulder at the ax. Before lifting your gun to your
shoulder, you want to walk back and forth and finally just move your
head back and forth to find that spot where the edge of the ax "disappears" from
your view. If the ax is sharp, you can't possibly see the edge of the
ax at any distance, facing it. When you find that spot, hold your eyes
and head on it, and move your left foot so that you are comfortably
looking at the ax with your body angled slightly toward the target.
Then, and only then, mount the rifle to your shoulder. Move your back
foot, right or left until your weight is evenly distributed and you feel
balanced, comfortable. Normally, your feet will be spread slightly wider
than the width of your shoulders.
Now, aim the gun at the ax, and close your eyes. Slowly count to five.
Open your eyes. The front sight of your gun will probably have moved
to the right or left of the ax. Move your rear foot in the direction
you need to put the sight back on target. If, for example, the front
sight has moved left, move your rear foot left a couple of inches, or
whatever is needed to bring the sight back on the ax.
Put the gun down and breathe deeply, and exhale to get rid of the lactic
acid in your arm muscles. Roll your head around to give your neck muscles
a rest. Take a deep breath and let it out. Then mount the gun to your
shoulder again, aim at the ax edge, and again close your eyes. Count
to five. Open your eyes and see how close to the ax edge your sights
are now. Make another adjustment. Keep doing this until you naturally
are pointing the rifle at the target.
The purpose of closing your eyes is so that your muscles will force
you to balance your body while holding the gun. Your body will tell you
when you are forcing a shot, if you will let it speak to you. The point
of this is to find that position where the gun is being supported by
your skeleton (bones) and not your muscles. (Your muscles have other
work to do shooting; I will get to that later.)
Some shooters find it best to hold a rifle with their left hand turned
forward, with the forestock resting on the web of the hand between the
thumb and forefinger, with the back of the hand tugged tight against
the front of the trigger guard. This allows the gun to feel more muzzle
heavy, and allows the front sight to appear to move less in relation
to the target and the rear sight. By moving the hand back to the front
of the trigger guard, people with short biceps are more likely to be
able to pull that supporting arm into their ribs, and take the strain
off their back and abdominal muscles.
Most target shooters rest the forearm of the rifle on the left palm,
allowing the gun to rise up, and sometimes off the hand, in recoil. Some
will curl their fingers into a fist, and rest the forend of the stock
on their fist, to give added length to their forearm, and insure that
they do not pull a shot by grabbing the forestock when the gun is fired.
These techniques are not very suitable for hunting, where it may be necessary
to swing the rifle along with a moving animal.
If you are shooting a gun that kicks hard, you can grab the gun firmly
with both hands. Pull the stock back into your right shoulder with your
trigger hand and then use an isometric exercise to control recoil by
pushing forward with the hand grasping the forestock, so that the muscles
in your upper back flex and go into tension before you fire.
Think of drawing the string on a bow and arrow, and you get the idea
of how to make this work. The right shoulder takes part of the recoil,
and the left hand, wrist, and the shoulders take the rest, in a rocking
motion that has to be seen from behind to be believed.
Once you are pointing the gun consistently at your target, you are ready
to load the rifle and fire. But first, a word about breathing, trigger
pull, aiming, and follow through.
Aiming iron sights,
or "open sights" is not as difficult as
people try to make it. Target shooting coaches have a mantra they mutter
to their students, which is, "Front Sight, Front Sight, Front Sight!" Aiming
a rifle requires you to concentrate on the front sight. That means you
simply look over and through the rear sight, even if it is just a notch,
and concentrate on the front site.
For beginners, it is easier to show them how to shoot iron sights if
they first use a rear peep (aperture) sight. A peep sight is usually
mounted on the rear of the action, nearer to the eye than a typical open
rear sight. You look through the aperture, and concentrate on aligning
the front sight with the target. Your eye will naturally look through
the center of the peep sight. With on open rear sight I pretend that
the rear sight is a peep sight that got a close hair cut! I use the open
sight the same way I would shoot a peep sight. It works.
Of course, to hit anything, the sights have to be zeroed for the gun
and load that you are shooting. You will also have to decide whether
you want to use a six o'clock hold or a dead on hold when you zero the
sights. The former is generally used for target shooting, where the range
and the size of the target are known in advance. A dead on hold is generally
more appropriate for a hunting rifle.
By "six o'clock" we
are referring to the old style, dial clocks still found in government
buildings, like schools. 6 o'clock is at the bottom of the clock face,
and we refer to holding on the bottom edge of the bull's eye by referring
to this as a 6 o'clock hold. The rifle is zeroed so that the bullet
hits the center of the target when using this 6 o'clock hold, which
means that it is striking well above the top of the front sight. The
reference to a dial clock will also come in handy when we talk about
field conditions, such as shooting in the wind.
Now, no one can stand on their own two feet and hold the front sight
of a rifle perfectly still. This is hard enough to do when sitting at
a shooting bench with the rifle resting on sandbags, front and back.
Don't even try from an unsupported position. So how do you hit anything
if the front sight is wobbling all over the place?
Control the wobble
by making your own wobble, that's how. By that I mean move the sight
back and forth in an exaggerated lazy figure eight, which looks like
an infinity sign, or the number "8" laying
on its side with the top sides of the two open loops collapsed. Or, think
of a pendulum in a Grandfather clock, swinging back and forth from side
to side. This is what you do with your rifle to control the movement
of the front sight.
As you are moving through the lazy 8, you will cross the 6 o'clock position
twice, once from the right and once from the left. Most right handed
shooters will find it easier to time the release of their shot if they
plan to begin moving the trigger when it is in the 4 or 5 o'clock position,
heading towards 6.
Left handed shooters will generally like to begin their release at 8
or 7 o'clock, going toward 6. Whatever you do, your timing is designed
so that the sear is released and the gun fires when the front sight is
at 6 o'clock to the target, or dead center if you are shooting a gun
set up for that sighting arrangement.
For game shooting, most shooters prefer a dead on setting of their sights.
A 6 o'clock hold works for practice, and trick shots. You will use muscles
in your hands and arms to make that front sight swing back and forth
in a steady cadence, and it will help you concentrate on looking at the
front sight, not the rear sight and not at the target.
Controlling your breathing is the next big thing that you need to practice
in order to become a good shot. Take deep breaths to load your blood
with oxygen, and remove lactic acid when you exhale. The extra oxygen
helps your circulatory system feed your muscles with oxygen, but reduces
the amount of jumping your muscles will do every time your heart beats.
By mildly hyper-ventilating before you take aim, you can reduce the number
of breathes you need to take per minute, and thereby extend the amount
of time between breaths, when your body is the most calm.
When you are ready to shoot, have the gun mounted to your shoulder and
the sights aimed at the ax, take a deep breathe, and then let about half
of it out. Hold the rest of it until after your shot. Now, begin to count
seconds in your head. You do not want to shoot before you reach the count
of four, or after seven seconds have passed since you took the breath.
This window, 4 to 7 seconds, is when your body is the calmest and your
sight picture will be disturbed the least by your heart beat. If you
have not fired by the count of seven, remove the gun from your shoulder,
relax, rotate the head to relax your neck muscles, close your eyes to
relax them, breathe in and out to rid your muscles of lactic acid and
load your blood with oxygen. Start over.
This is the procedure used by one-handed pistol shooters. Breath control
is very important to shooting a handgun one handed. The only difference
in how a pistol shooter presents his gun to the target has to do with
stance, since he is only using one hand to hold the firearm.
Pistol shooters shooting bullseye targets tend to set their sights so
that they can leave a space of at least 1 inch under the bottom of the
bullseye of their target, so that the top of their front sight does not
creep up into the black bullseye when shooting. Rifle Shooters can use
this same aiming technique, if it works better for them. That usually
depends on their individual eyesight.
Trigger squeeze is very important to accurate rifle shooting. The reason
for squeezing the trigger gently (rather than just pulling it back when
you want to shoot) is so that you will not know exactly when the sear
engagement is going to release. That way you don't anticipate the shot
and pull off target, or flinch, in anticipation of the recoil or sound
of the gun firing.
There are several ways to squeeze the trigger. Since we are talking
about off-hand shooting, so let me suggest three methods.
The first involves using the strong (shooting) hand to grasp the rifle
stock on the pistol grip, or neck of the stock. The index finger extends
forward and into the trigger guard to the trigger, where the pad on the
first joint of the finger, or the first joint itself (depending on the
reach to the trigger and the size of your hands), touches the center
of the trigger. If you can pull the trigger straight back towards your
body, you are the least likely to jerk the gun or spoil your sight picture
when the gun goes off. Don't use your thumb to grab or twist the stock
to help control recoil. That will throw the shot away from where you
thought you were aiming. This is essentially how almost all hunters squeeze
the trigger in the field.
The second method you can use shooting off-hand is to put your right
thumb behind the trigger guard, and your index finger on the trigger.
Then you simply pinch the two digits together to fire the gun. This works
at the range with light recoiling rifles, but is impractical in the field
as it decreases your control of the rifle during recoil and it is the
strong hand, gripping the neck of the stock, that swings the rifle on
moving game.
A variation on these two approaches is to put your index finger in the
trigger guard so that the bottom side of the finger is on the trigger
guard, with the pad of the trigger touching the point of the trigger,
and not the middle of the trigger. To shoot, you simply roll the finger
towards you, pushing the trigger with a rolling motion. The latter two
methods make it less likely that you will know when the shot will go
off.
Finally, some people put more than one finger into the trigger guard,
so the action of bringing the fingers down to be in a straight line pushes
the trigger aside and fires the gun. This technique is far easier to
use when shooting from a rest than off hand. But it does work. It obviously
depends on the size of your fingers, the width of your hand, and the
inside diameter of the trigger guard on your rifle.
Follow through is what gets good shooters into a slump, more than anything
else they don't do. Follow through means leaving the gun on your shoulder
and keeping your face on the stock after the gun fires, and through the
recoil cycle so that you bring the gun back down out of recoil to the
target again. Follow through keeps you concentrating on that front sight
through the shot, so you actually see the flame coming out the muzzle
of the gun and in front of the front sight before the barrel rises in
recoil. If you practice follow through religiously, you won't jerk a
shot off target.
Sometimes you will
be shooting in windy conditions, and because open sights are not easily
moved for windage, you will have to learn to " hold
off' into the wind. If the wind is blowing from your left, or 9 o'clock,
you might want to hold off the center of your target some amount to compensate
for the fact that the wind will drift the bullet to the right as it travels
from the muzzle of your gun to the target. Instead of holding at 6 o'clock
low, you might want to move your sight over to 6:30 low, or 7 o'clock
low, depending on how fast the wind is blowing, and the range to your
target. This is holding off into the wind.
There is a different place to hold each gun, and cartridge or load,
depending on where your target is in relationship to the direction of
the wind, and its velocity. This is where you will employ those muscles
we try not to use in holding the gun, to make a shot. Because wind velocity
and even direction can change, we don't change our sights, or set our
feet to shoot into the wind. Rather, we set our feet normally, and simply
move the gun into the wind for the shot.
Because we were almost
always shooting these "trick" shoots
before crowds at public demonstrations, we kept the targets close enough
so that the audience could see, over our shoulders, what we were shooting
at. People were always shocked when we were splitting the ball on the
ax blade, or slicing playing cards in half.
Wind conditions were
not very important until you got your targets out to 20 yards or so.
Even then, you did not have to hold off much. When using muzzle loading
rifles, people would ask us, "Are you actually
firing something out of those guns?" with a look of sheer horror
at the idea that this was not a Hollywood stunt trick. They would accuse
us of cutting the card with a scissors before we put it out to be shot,
until we placed the split card on top of another card in the deck to
show the doubter that about a half inch of the card was missing altogether!
I always practice my skills first with one of my .22 rimfire rifles.
The ammo is cheaper, there is no recoil, and all the skills I need to
shoot that gun accurately at any distance transfers to my centerfire
rifles, both black powder and modern cartridge guns.
To be a good off-hand shooter, simply staple paper plates to your backstop
and shoot for the center of the target. After the first shot hits, aim
your next shots to hit that hole in the target.
When you start making very small groups off-hand at close range, move
the target back. When you can keep the bullets hitting inside your fist
at 100 yards, you are a good shooter, but don't quit there. Keep moving
back. It will take a lot of practice, but one day you will find yourself
shooting again at 100 yards, after shooting at much longer ranges, and
you will be shocked how small that 100 yard group has become.
Always challenge yourself. Practice shooting at targets at twice the
distance at which you expect to take game shots, and then limit yourself
to that half distance for all shots at live animals. Of course, in the
field, even if you are a crack shot shooting offhand, as an ethical hunter
you will always use a rest when it is available to support the rifle.
No animal worthy of your time hunting deserves to suffer because you
thought you could make a shot. Save the off-hand bragging for the target
range and for survival situations where you have no choice of shots.
But practice correctly, every time you go out to the range.
The secrets to shooting playing cards in half with a .50 caliber muzzle
loading rifle are the same as making a good shot on any target with any
rifle. You have to mind the fundamentals, beginning with your feet, and
ending between your ears. Fine shooting is a mental game, not a physical
one. The physical part is the element you can overcome by practicing
the fundamentals.
Now, in regards to
splitting cards, that .490 diameter round ball I shoot in my .50 caliber
rifle is over twice as wide as a .22 caliber bullet. That gives me
an edge, as I have a wider margin of error, width wise, when I am trying
to hit the edge of a card that is maybe .005 " thick.
And, if you have a .62 caliber rifle that shoots well, you have a bigger
margin of error, and thus an advantage over me.
We mount the cards on the end of a stick, either in a slot cut into
the stick with a saw, or in a wire coil of spring wire. If you are standing
facing the card at the right spot you will not be able to see the card's
edge, or any other part of the card, just as you won't be able to see
the edge of the ax I described above.
So, what do you aim at? I aim at the top of the stick, or at the coil
spring wire that is holding the card, and then cant my gun up, so that
my front sight is on top of my rear sight, and not nestled down in the
bottom of it as it would be if I were going to shoot at bullseye targets.
This makes the shot go high, above my aiming point, and cuts the card
at a slightly upward angle.
So What? The card is still cut. And, if I am the one placing the card
out there to shoot at, I will tip the card forward so that my ball will
cut the card even across the card, and the audience will never know what
I have done!
The stick with the card is normally put in the ground at about 25 feet,
because the audience behind the shooting line can't see anything if it
is much further away. We can hit it at longer range, but no one can see
the card if you move it back farther.
The range only matters a little, but how the card is mounted does affect
whether you can cut the card entirely in half. Some clubs use a 2 x 4
and cut a slot across the width of the piece so that the entire bottom
edge is held in a straight line for the shooting. This keeps the card
from warping, or being bent in the wind. If the card is bent, you only
cut it half or 3/4 of its width. Again, this is not a contest at your
club, but a demonstration of fine shooting before an audience.
We keep the ax and stump close to the shooters for the same reason.
If we do take this event to our club range as a novelty match, it is
often moved back to longer range.
The "secret" of
snuffing candles is to understand how a flame works, and then use a
similar aiming technique used to cut cards. If you look at a candle
flame, you can see a long cone of air in the center of the flame, just
above the wick. The burning gases come together above this cone, where
the hottest part of the flame is located.
A bullet snuffs out
a candle not by pushing the flame away from wick with its mass, but
by " sucking" out the heat of the flame
with the vacuum behind the bullet, as it passes through the hottest part
of the flame. To hit the top of the flame, raise that front sight up
in the notch of your rear sight, aim at the base of the flame, and squeeze
off your shot. The ball will go through the top of the flame, and suck,
or "snuff" out the candle flame. Just don't miss.
These are the kinds
of "trick" shooting that you can practice
on your own range, at short distances, to help you become a better shooter.
When you get good at fundamentals using a .22 rifle, then try it with
a centerfire rifle using reduced loads. Try these with cowboy action
style lever guns and pistol ammo for a lot of fun. Then you can move
up to commercial loads or full power reloads as a warm up for your hunting
trips.
Challenge yourself. If you get to the point where shooting these small
targets off-hand becomes easy, then find a smaller target. I like empty
.22 casings. Put them on a cross bar (NOT the target frame at the rifle
range!), and move farther and farther back, until they are hard to see
without sunlight gleaning off their sides. When you can hit those tiny
targets using iron sights at 25 yards or more, consistently, you are
ready to make longer shots. And you are one of the better off-hand shooters
in America.
I once saw a " manually challenged" man
shoot at a public range west of Chicago. Because of birth defects or
some illness, his hands were curled inwards. A friend had to load and
hand this man his rifle, a Garand M-1, .30-06, with an aperture rear
sight and a post front sight, while the man was in a sitting position.
He proceeded to shoot the wires holding some gear blanks against the
backstop at 100 yards, used for high powered, informal plinking.
Granted, he was not
shooting off-hand. But the target was 100 yards away, and the wire
was no more than 1/4" in diameter! He aimed for
and hit the wire where it was tied to a hole in the top of each target.
He was cutting down the targets one after another until a range officer
stopped him. The range was closed for most of an hour while the staff
went out and put the targets back up.
At the time, I was angry that he was destroying range property and ruining
the opportunity for us other shooters to shoot. But, I can now look back
and admire just how good a shot this man was. And, I remember that not
very many shooters out there that day begrudged him for cutting the wires.
Instead, more than one shooter walked by to see what he was shooting
and went away muttering about how someone could do that with iron sights!
Once you get good at shooting iron sights off-hand, you are ready to
shoot that scoped rifle you put together for big game hunting. Don't
be surprised to see those cross hairs wiggling all over the target as
you look through the scope. If you employ the fundamentals I have discussed
above, you can shoot a scoped rifle almost as well off-hand as you could
from a rest.
Control the "wiggle" of
those cross hairs the same way you controlled the jiggle of the front
sight when shooting iron sights. Time your trigger squeeze so that
the cross hairs are back on target when the shot is fired. And, you
will really understand the benefit of counting to that 4 to 7 window
when you shoot a scoped rifle, as well as the time you spend getting
your stance correct.
Fortunately, we now have schools where rifle training is again offered,
such as Gunsight, in Arizona, or Thunder Ranch, now located in Oregon.
These courses require the shooter to take 500 rounds of ammo with him,
to be shot over about 5 days on the range. When is the last time you
shot that much ammo out of your rifle in so short a time? The ranges
will run from 50 yards to 600 yards. And, you will be able to hit targets
at those distances by the end of the course.
and Trick Shooting
By Paul Vallandigham
If there is an art to rifle shooting, it is only because we don't train
to shoot rifles with open sights, from our two legs, standing, as was
the practice 65 years ago. When WW II broke out, Americans were proud
of the fact that they had learned to shoot rifles at an early age. Even
with the population shifting from the rural area to urban settings, high
schools, scout camps, 4-H clubs and the like provided ranges where the
fundamentals of marksmanship were taught, so the average draftee entering
the service then had at least basic skills at rifle shooting.
Much has changed since then, not the least of which is the prevalence
of scoped sights on hunting rifles. These were originally offered to
aid in identifying the target, and what was beyond it, for safety reasons,
and to aid in bullet placement. A telescopic sight assists in treating
wild animals to a quick and humane kill. Scopes have since become a substitute
for practicing marksmanship fundamentals.
If you want to learn
about properly shooting a rifle, I recommend joining the NRA and buying
the books they offer about these skills. The books are absolutely terrific,
and will teach you the basics. What I want to do here is teach you
some of the "tricks" of shooting rifles,
so that you can have more fun shooting. The more shooting you do, the
better you will get.
I began my formal shooting by joining a Black Powder Rifle Club about
30 years ago. They needed a lawyer to help them with their incorporation
paperwork, and I was a friend of one of their officers who had met me
at a local trap shoot.
I went to one of
the club's demonstrations, where they were doing some "trick" shooting.
In this case, they were splitting the round ball on the edge of an ax
blade, and breaking two clay trap targets, one on either side of the
axe blade. This I wanted to do.
I later watched some of their shooters cut playing cards on edge with
their round ball, and years later participated in a candle-snuffing contest.
In this event you blow out the candle flame with your ball, without cutting
the wick, or the candlestick. I wanted to do those, too.
Along the way, we shot at all kinds of small targets, including raw
eggs, swinging from a line, clay targets on a line, bottle cap sized
targets nailed to the backstop, etc. We broke cookies, and wafers, and
rolled our share of pop cans, and bounced them too.
The fundamentals of shooting a rifle can boil down to stance, aiming,
trigger squeeze, breath control, and follow through. Most shooters screw
up because they haven't a clue about a proper stance.
To shoot a rifle accurately, you have to mount it to your shoulder.
Balance the forend on either the palm of your off hand, or on the web
of the offhand. Stand so that the bones of your body, and not the muscles,
support the weight of the rifle. Muscles fatigue, and when they are strained
you develop shakes, which destroy your ability to hold a sight picture.
Assuming you are right handed, and that you want to hit the edge of
an ax-blade so that you split a round ball fired from a muzzle loading
rifle to break two clay birds at one time, here is what you do.
Stand sideways, looking
over your left shoulder at the ax. Before lifting your gun to your
shoulder, you want to walk back and forth and finally just move your
head back and forth to find that spot where the edge of the ax "disappears" from
your view. If the ax is sharp, you can't possibly see the edge of the
ax at any distance, facing it. When you find that spot, hold your eyes
and head on it, and move your left foot so that you are comfortably
looking at the ax with your body angled slightly toward the target.
Then, and only then, mount the rifle to your shoulder. Move your back
foot, right or left until your weight is evenly distributed and you feel
balanced, comfortable. Normally, your feet will be spread slightly wider
than the width of your shoulders.
Now, aim the gun at the ax, and close your eyes. Slowly count to five.
Open your eyes. The front sight of your gun will probably have moved
to the right or left of the ax. Move your rear foot in the direction
you need to put the sight back on target. If, for example, the front
sight has moved left, move your rear foot left a couple of inches, or
whatever is needed to bring the sight back on the ax.
Put the gun down and breathe deeply, and exhale to get rid of the lactic
acid in your arm muscles. Roll your head around to give your neck muscles
a rest. Take a deep breath and let it out. Then mount the gun to your
shoulder again, aim at the ax edge, and again close your eyes. Count
to five. Open your eyes and see how close to the ax edge your sights
are now. Make another adjustment. Keep doing this until you naturally
are pointing the rifle at the target.
The purpose of closing your eyes is so that your muscles will force
you to balance your body while holding the gun. Your body will tell you
when you are forcing a shot, if you will let it speak to you. The point
of this is to find that position where the gun is being supported by
your skeleton (bones) and not your muscles. (Your muscles have other
work to do shooting; I will get to that later.)
Some shooters find it best to hold a rifle with their left hand turned
forward, with the forestock resting on the web of the hand between the
thumb and forefinger, with the back of the hand tugged tight against
the front of the trigger guard. This allows the gun to feel more muzzle
heavy, and allows the front sight to appear to move less in relation
to the target and the rear sight. By moving the hand back to the front
of the trigger guard, people with short biceps are more likely to be
able to pull that supporting arm into their ribs, and take the strain
off their back and abdominal muscles.
Most target shooters rest the forearm of the rifle on the left palm,
allowing the gun to rise up, and sometimes off the hand, in recoil. Some
will curl their fingers into a fist, and rest the forend of the stock
on their fist, to give added length to their forearm, and insure that
they do not pull a shot by grabbing the forestock when the gun is fired.
These techniques are not very suitable for hunting, where it may be necessary
to swing the rifle along with a moving animal.
If you are shooting a gun that kicks hard, you can grab the gun firmly
with both hands. Pull the stock back into your right shoulder with your
trigger hand and then use an isometric exercise to control recoil by
pushing forward with the hand grasping the forestock, so that the muscles
in your upper back flex and go into tension before you fire.
Think of drawing the string on a bow and arrow, and you get the idea
of how to make this work. The right shoulder takes part of the recoil,
and the left hand, wrist, and the shoulders take the rest, in a rocking
motion that has to be seen from behind to be believed.
Once you are pointing the gun consistently at your target, you are ready
to load the rifle and fire. But first, a word about breathing, trigger
pull, aiming, and follow through.
Aiming iron sights,
or "open sights" is not as difficult as
people try to make it. Target shooting coaches have a mantra they mutter
to their students, which is, "Front Sight, Front Sight, Front Sight!" Aiming
a rifle requires you to concentrate on the front sight. That means you
simply look over and through the rear sight, even if it is just a notch,
and concentrate on the front site.
For beginners, it is easier to show them how to shoot iron sights if
they first use a rear peep (aperture) sight. A peep sight is usually
mounted on the rear of the action, nearer to the eye than a typical open
rear sight. You look through the aperture, and concentrate on aligning
the front sight with the target. Your eye will naturally look through
the center of the peep sight. With on open rear sight I pretend that
the rear sight is a peep sight that got a close hair cut! I use the open
sight the same way I would shoot a peep sight. It works.
Of course, to hit anything, the sights have to be zeroed for the gun
and load that you are shooting. You will also have to decide whether
you want to use a six o'clock hold or a dead on hold when you zero the
sights. The former is generally used for target shooting, where the range
and the size of the target are known in advance. A dead on hold is generally
more appropriate for a hunting rifle.
By "six o'clock" we
are referring to the old style, dial clocks still found in government
buildings, like schools. 6 o'clock is at the bottom of the clock face,
and we refer to holding on the bottom edge of the bull's eye by referring
to this as a 6 o'clock hold. The rifle is zeroed so that the bullet
hits the center of the target when using this 6 o'clock hold, which
means that it is striking well above the top of the front sight. The
reference to a dial clock will also come in handy when we talk about
field conditions, such as shooting in the wind.
Now, no one can stand on their own two feet and hold the front sight
of a rifle perfectly still. This is hard enough to do when sitting at
a shooting bench with the rifle resting on sandbags, front and back.
Don't even try from an unsupported position. So how do you hit anything
if the front sight is wobbling all over the place?
Control the wobble
by making your own wobble, that's how. By that I mean move the sight
back and forth in an exaggerated lazy figure eight, which looks like
an infinity sign, or the number "8" laying
on its side with the top sides of the two open loops collapsed. Or, think
of a pendulum in a Grandfather clock, swinging back and forth from side
to side. This is what you do with your rifle to control the movement
of the front sight.
As you are moving through the lazy 8, you will cross the 6 o'clock position
twice, once from the right and once from the left. Most right handed
shooters will find it easier to time the release of their shot if they
plan to begin moving the trigger when it is in the 4 or 5 o'clock position,
heading towards 6.
Left handed shooters will generally like to begin their release at 8
or 7 o'clock, going toward 6. Whatever you do, your timing is designed
so that the sear is released and the gun fires when the front sight is
at 6 o'clock to the target, or dead center if you are shooting a gun
set up for that sighting arrangement.
For game shooting, most shooters prefer a dead on setting of their sights.
A 6 o'clock hold works for practice, and trick shots. You will use muscles
in your hands and arms to make that front sight swing back and forth
in a steady cadence, and it will help you concentrate on looking at the
front sight, not the rear sight and not at the target.
Controlling your breathing is the next big thing that you need to practice
in order to become a good shot. Take deep breaths to load your blood
with oxygen, and remove lactic acid when you exhale. The extra oxygen
helps your circulatory system feed your muscles with oxygen, but reduces
the amount of jumping your muscles will do every time your heart beats.
By mildly hyper-ventilating before you take aim, you can reduce the number
of breathes you need to take per minute, and thereby extend the amount
of time between breaths, when your body is the most calm.
When you are ready to shoot, have the gun mounted to your shoulder and
the sights aimed at the ax, take a deep breathe, and then let about half
of it out. Hold the rest of it until after your shot. Now, begin to count
seconds in your head. You do not want to shoot before you reach the count
of four, or after seven seconds have passed since you took the breath.
This window, 4 to 7 seconds, is when your body is the calmest and your
sight picture will be disturbed the least by your heart beat. If you
have not fired by the count of seven, remove the gun from your shoulder,
relax, rotate the head to relax your neck muscles, close your eyes to
relax them, breathe in and out to rid your muscles of lactic acid and
load your blood with oxygen. Start over.
This is the procedure used by one-handed pistol shooters. Breath control
is very important to shooting a handgun one handed. The only difference
in how a pistol shooter presents his gun to the target has to do with
stance, since he is only using one hand to hold the firearm.
Pistol shooters shooting bullseye targets tend to set their sights so
that they can leave a space of at least 1 inch under the bottom of the
bullseye of their target, so that the top of their front sight does not
creep up into the black bullseye when shooting. Rifle Shooters can use
this same aiming technique, if it works better for them. That usually
depends on their individual eyesight.
Trigger squeeze is very important to accurate rifle shooting. The reason
for squeezing the trigger gently (rather than just pulling it back when
you want to shoot) is so that you will not know exactly when the sear
engagement is going to release. That way you don't anticipate the shot
and pull off target, or flinch, in anticipation of the recoil or sound
of the gun firing.
There are several ways to squeeze the trigger. Since we are talking
about off-hand shooting, so let me suggest three methods.
The first involves using the strong (shooting) hand to grasp the rifle
stock on the pistol grip, or neck of the stock. The index finger extends
forward and into the trigger guard to the trigger, where the pad on the
first joint of the finger, or the first joint itself (depending on the
reach to the trigger and the size of your hands), touches the center
of the trigger. If you can pull the trigger straight back towards your
body, you are the least likely to jerk the gun or spoil your sight picture
when the gun goes off. Don't use your thumb to grab or twist the stock
to help control recoil. That will throw the shot away from where you
thought you were aiming. This is essentially how almost all hunters squeeze
the trigger in the field.
The second method you can use shooting off-hand is to put your right
thumb behind the trigger guard, and your index finger on the trigger.
Then you simply pinch the two digits together to fire the gun. This works
at the range with light recoiling rifles, but is impractical in the field
as it decreases your control of the rifle during recoil and it is the
strong hand, gripping the neck of the stock, that swings the rifle on
moving game.
A variation on these two approaches is to put your index finger in the
trigger guard so that the bottom side of the finger is on the trigger
guard, with the pad of the trigger touching the point of the trigger,
and not the middle of the trigger. To shoot, you simply roll the finger
towards you, pushing the trigger with a rolling motion. The latter two
methods make it less likely that you will know when the shot will go
off.
Finally, some people put more than one finger into the trigger guard,
so the action of bringing the fingers down to be in a straight line pushes
the trigger aside and fires the gun. This technique is far easier to
use when shooting from a rest than off hand. But it does work. It obviously
depends on the size of your fingers, the width of your hand, and the
inside diameter of the trigger guard on your rifle.
Follow through is what gets good shooters into a slump, more than anything
else they don't do. Follow through means leaving the gun on your shoulder
and keeping your face on the stock after the gun fires, and through the
recoil cycle so that you bring the gun back down out of recoil to the
target again. Follow through keeps you concentrating on that front sight
through the shot, so you actually see the flame coming out the muzzle
of the gun and in front of the front sight before the barrel rises in
recoil. If you practice follow through religiously, you won't jerk a
shot off target.
Sometimes you will
be shooting in windy conditions, and because open sights are not easily
moved for windage, you will have to learn to " hold
off' into the wind. If the wind is blowing from your left, or 9 o'clock,
you might want to hold off the center of your target some amount to compensate
for the fact that the wind will drift the bullet to the right as it travels
from the muzzle of your gun to the target. Instead of holding at 6 o'clock
low, you might want to move your sight over to 6:30 low, or 7 o'clock
low, depending on how fast the wind is blowing, and the range to your
target. This is holding off into the wind.
There is a different place to hold each gun, and cartridge or load,
depending on where your target is in relationship to the direction of
the wind, and its velocity. This is where you will employ those muscles
we try not to use in holding the gun, to make a shot. Because wind velocity
and even direction can change, we don't change our sights, or set our
feet to shoot into the wind. Rather, we set our feet normally, and simply
move the gun into the wind for the shot.
Because we were almost
always shooting these "trick" shoots
before crowds at public demonstrations, we kept the targets close enough
so that the audience could see, over our shoulders, what we were shooting
at. People were always shocked when we were splitting the ball on the
ax blade, or slicing playing cards in half.
Wind conditions were
not very important until you got your targets out to 20 yards or so.
Even then, you did not have to hold off much. When using muzzle loading
rifles, people would ask us, "Are you actually
firing something out of those guns?" with a look of sheer horror
at the idea that this was not a Hollywood stunt trick. They would accuse
us of cutting the card with a scissors before we put it out to be shot,
until we placed the split card on top of another card in the deck to
show the doubter that about a half inch of the card was missing altogether!
I always practice my skills first with one of my .22 rimfire rifles.
The ammo is cheaper, there is no recoil, and all the skills I need to
shoot that gun accurately at any distance transfers to my centerfire
rifles, both black powder and modern cartridge guns.
To be a good off-hand shooter, simply staple paper plates to your backstop
and shoot for the center of the target. After the first shot hits, aim
your next shots to hit that hole in the target.
When you start making very small groups off-hand at close range, move
the target back. When you can keep the bullets hitting inside your fist
at 100 yards, you are a good shooter, but don't quit there. Keep moving
back. It will take a lot of practice, but one day you will find yourself
shooting again at 100 yards, after shooting at much longer ranges, and
you will be shocked how small that 100 yard group has become.
Always challenge yourself. Practice shooting at targets at twice the
distance at which you expect to take game shots, and then limit yourself
to that half distance for all shots at live animals. Of course, in the
field, even if you are a crack shot shooting offhand, as an ethical hunter
you will always use a rest when it is available to support the rifle.
No animal worthy of your time hunting deserves to suffer because you
thought you could make a shot. Save the off-hand bragging for the target
range and for survival situations where you have no choice of shots.
But practice correctly, every time you go out to the range.
The secrets to shooting playing cards in half with a .50 caliber muzzle
loading rifle are the same as making a good shot on any target with any
rifle. You have to mind the fundamentals, beginning with your feet, and
ending between your ears. Fine shooting is a mental game, not a physical
one. The physical part is the element you can overcome by practicing
the fundamentals.
Now, in regards to
splitting cards, that .490 diameter round ball I shoot in my .50 caliber
rifle is over twice as wide as a .22 caliber bullet. That gives me
an edge, as I have a wider margin of error, width wise, when I am trying
to hit the edge of a card that is maybe .005 " thick.
And, if you have a .62 caliber rifle that shoots well, you have a bigger
margin of error, and thus an advantage over me.
We mount the cards on the end of a stick, either in a slot cut into
the stick with a saw, or in a wire coil of spring wire. If you are standing
facing the card at the right spot you will not be able to see the card's
edge, or any other part of the card, just as you won't be able to see
the edge of the ax I described above.
So, what do you aim at? I aim at the top of the stick, or at the coil
spring wire that is holding the card, and then cant my gun up, so that
my front sight is on top of my rear sight, and not nestled down in the
bottom of it as it would be if I were going to shoot at bullseye targets.
This makes the shot go high, above my aiming point, and cuts the card
at a slightly upward angle.
So What? The card is still cut. And, if I am the one placing the card
out there to shoot at, I will tip the card forward so that my ball will
cut the card even across the card, and the audience will never know what
I have done!
The stick with the card is normally put in the ground at about 25 feet,
because the audience behind the shooting line can't see anything if it
is much further away. We can hit it at longer range, but no one can see
the card if you move it back farther.
The range only matters a little, but how the card is mounted does affect
whether you can cut the card entirely in half. Some clubs use a 2 x 4
and cut a slot across the width of the piece so that the entire bottom
edge is held in a straight line for the shooting. This keeps the card
from warping, or being bent in the wind. If the card is bent, you only
cut it half or 3/4 of its width. Again, this is not a contest at your
club, but a demonstration of fine shooting before an audience.
We keep the ax and stump close to the shooters for the same reason.
If we do take this event to our club range as a novelty match, it is
often moved back to longer range.
The "secret" of
snuffing candles is to understand how a flame works, and then use a
similar aiming technique used to cut cards. If you look at a candle
flame, you can see a long cone of air in the center of the flame, just
above the wick. The burning gases come together above this cone, where
the hottest part of the flame is located.
A bullet snuffs out
a candle not by pushing the flame away from wick with its mass, but
by " sucking" out the heat of the flame
with the vacuum behind the bullet, as it passes through the hottest part
of the flame. To hit the top of the flame, raise that front sight up
in the notch of your rear sight, aim at the base of the flame, and squeeze
off your shot. The ball will go through the top of the flame, and suck,
or "snuff" out the candle flame. Just don't miss.
These are the kinds
of "trick" shooting that you can practice
on your own range, at short distances, to help you become a better shooter.
When you get good at fundamentals using a .22 rifle, then try it with
a centerfire rifle using reduced loads. Try these with cowboy action
style lever guns and pistol ammo for a lot of fun. Then you can move
up to commercial loads or full power reloads as a warm up for your hunting
trips.
Challenge yourself. If you get to the point where shooting these small
targets off-hand becomes easy, then find a smaller target. I like empty
.22 casings. Put them on a cross bar (NOT the target frame at the rifle
range!), and move farther and farther back, until they are hard to see
without sunlight gleaning off their sides. When you can hit those tiny
targets using iron sights at 25 yards or more, consistently, you are
ready to make longer shots. And you are one of the better off-hand shooters
in America.
I once saw a " manually challenged" man
shoot at a public range west of Chicago. Because of birth defects or
some illness, his hands were curled inwards. A friend had to load and
hand this man his rifle, a Garand M-1, .30-06, with an aperture rear
sight and a post front sight, while the man was in a sitting position.
He proceeded to shoot the wires holding some gear blanks against the
backstop at 100 yards, used for high powered, informal plinking.
Granted, he was not
shooting off-hand. But the target was 100 yards away, and the wire
was no more than 1/4" in diameter! He aimed for
and hit the wire where it was tied to a hole in the top of each target.
He was cutting down the targets one after another until a range officer
stopped him. The range was closed for most of an hour while the staff
went out and put the targets back up.
At the time, I was angry that he was destroying range property and ruining
the opportunity for us other shooters to shoot. But, I can now look back
and admire just how good a shot this man was. And, I remember that not
very many shooters out there that day begrudged him for cutting the wires.
Instead, more than one shooter walked by to see what he was shooting
and went away muttering about how someone could do that with iron sights!
Once you get good at shooting iron sights off-hand, you are ready to
shoot that scoped rifle you put together for big game hunting. Don't
be surprised to see those cross hairs wiggling all over the target as
you look through the scope. If you employ the fundamentals I have discussed
above, you can shoot a scoped rifle almost as well off-hand as you could
from a rest.
Control the "wiggle" of
those cross hairs the same way you controlled the jiggle of the front
sight when shooting iron sights. Time your trigger squeeze so that
the cross hairs are back on target when the shot is fired. And, you
will really understand the benefit of counting to that 4 to 7 window
when you shoot a scoped rifle, as well as the time you spend getting
your stance correct.
Fortunately, we now have schools where rifle training is again offered,
such as Gunsight, in Arizona, or Thunder Ranch, now located in Oregon.
These courses require the shooter to take 500 rounds of ammo with him,
to be shot over about 5 days on the range. When is the last time you
shot that much ammo out of your rifle in so short a time? The ranges
will run from 50 yards to 600 yards. And, you will be able to hit targets
at those distances by the end of the course.
