Getting into Field Target Shooting Part 6

No matter how much time and effort has been put into the final choice of equipment, it will all come to nothing if the shooter doesn’t have the ability to be self critical and is unable to analyse their faults accurately firing the rifle. So, once you have all the kit, it’s time to get the best from it, by applying some basic rules of marksmanship!

Four play

To achieve a high and consistent level of marksmanship there are four main areas that need to be worked on and these are; stability, breathing control, trigger control and follow through.

Stability - is the fundamental of accurate shooting; without this, everything else is pointless! In FT, certain accepted positions have been adopted over the years and these have variations, which every shooter will try to find that are most beneficial. We need a 3-point position; 1 - bottom and two feet spread like a tripod. The rifle needs to be sat at the correct height and distance to allow proper scope alignment, without using any muscle power to achieve a good sight picture. Head more or less upright, arms relaxed. This will take some experimentation with position and probably some adjustment of the stock. Homebrew adaptations can be done without breaking the bank, as the pictures show.

 

Breathing control

Normal breathing will obviously cause movement of the rifle and this has to be avoided. Once in the aim you should take a normal breath and release half of it, making a conscious effort to relax the body. At this point, we are not about to fire but checking that the rifle falls onto what we call its ‘natural’ point of aim. If the rifle has moved away from the target, an adjustment in the body position should be made, so that the next relaxed position sees it remain somewhere around the area of desired impact. What you don’t want to be doing is swivelling your upper body around to compensate for a poor initial position.

 

Conscious effort

The aim is adopted once again and a conscious effort is made to relax, allowing the rifle to find its natural position. The sight picture should be moving directly up and down with the breathing at this point, with no lateral movement. Once satisfied, take a few steady breaths, then exhale halfway and hold. Now hold for a few seconds while the aim is confirmed and the shot taken. If, for any reason you hold longer than three or four seconds, start again. Don’t be tempted to hold for too long, as it will cause muscle tension and in severe cases affect vision. I have actually seen competitors fire because they were running out of air, which is not the sign of a disciplined shooter. The first step in improving your shooting is recognising weaknesses in your technique and correcting them.

 

Trigger control

This is probably the most common cause of missed targets and it’s often the observer and not the shooter who is able to spot the fault. This should not be the case if the shooter is able to analyse their procedure properly. Even though modern day pneumatics have their triggers set ultralight, there is still a need to release the shot without disturbing the point of aim. It’s like searching for the Holy Grail and should be a constant point of self checking regardless of experience.

 

Tap, tap

This ‘ultra-light’ trigger has allowed a technique known as ‘tapping’ to be employed by some shooters and it has proved to be quite successful. The shooter waits for the right sight picture and ‘taps’ the trigger repeatedly whilst holding on to the target, each tap getting stronger until eventually the shot releases. This method can be used with only the lightest of triggers and should not be confused with a snatch; here you ‘grab’ a finger-full of trigger in an attempt to fire as the sight wobbles across the target. In tapping at an ever- increasing pressure, you are well in control of what eventually becomes a ‘surprise release’. That is, you are unaware of the shot breaking until it has done so. A more conventional way of achieving this ‘surprise release’ and the one that I favour, is as follows:

After ensuring that the position is right and the breathing is under control, the trigger finger is placed on the blade making contact somewhere between the tip of the finger and the first joint. The finger should be at 90° to the stock but not touching it anywhere and to allow the finger to move straight back without any side pressure whatsoever. If the finger joint is used this pressure will be transferred to the stock causing movement.

After the first initial sighting and allowing the body to relax into position as the breathing is controlled into a steady half exhale, the final sight picture will appear and the cross hairs will settle within the chosen ‘hit zone’. At this point, the first stage can be taken up as the cross hairs ‘hover’ around within this zone.

Another mental confirmation of the sight picture is taken before pressure is increased slightly and at this point the shot can be aborted if necessary. Continued pressure on the trigger allows the shot to break, as though the rifle has fired itself! And a true ‘surprise release’, there will be no flinch because the brain doesn’t know it’s happening until it is too late!

 

Flinch?

What’s a flinch? Flinching is usually associated with recoil but can still manifest itself in a practically recoilless rifle. It’s closely associated with trigger control, as the shooter tries to make the rifle fire at an exact moment in time, as the sight picture wanders across the centre of the target. It can also be caused by a sudden tensing of the muscles in either arm just prior to releasing the shot. In this case, try to ensure that the arms are relaxed throughout the firing sequence. It can be argued that muscle tension, particularly when shooting from a standing position, can be helpful in averting a flinch. After all, if the muscles are already tensioned they cannot suddenly ‘jerk’.

The hunter may very well do this sub-consciously, as normally, shots are few and far between. However, in the case of an FT shooter, to go through a 40 or 50 target course like this would spell disaster. They have the added pressures of competition to deal with and need to be completely relaxed, at least on the outside!

 

Follow through

The last part of the sequence and probably the easiest skill to acquire! Never the less, if close attention is not paid to it, all the previous skills are wasted. After the shot has been released, it is simply a matter of continued mental and physical application to the task. No movement of anything! No head up. No barrel down. Stay tuned to the target until after the strike before coming off aim. The trigger should also be held in the back position during this process, not released as though 10,000 volts have been fed down it!

Many a good shot has been spoiled by a poor follow through. It is interesting to note that many shooters regularly holds steady and appear to follow through on a miss, probably in disbelief, yet when hitting the target, appears to be up and running before it has fallen. Your action should be the same after every shot, regardless of its effect. Only when this level of discipline is achieved can the shooter expect to become consistent to any degree.

 

Call it

The expression ‘calling the shot’ is one that most experienced shooters are familiar with and is a term used to predict where the actual impact point will hit on target, after the shot has been fired. Even the top shooters cannot call it every time they fire, but regularly experience this feeling through proper shooting technique.

The shooter has a sight picture in their mind at the moment of release and relates it to the impact point as it appears. This only takes a few milliseconds and can only be relied on if all the fundamentals, including a good follow through are rigidly applied. We all attempt to ‘call the shot’ every time we check the zero point of our rifles.

Unfortunately, not all are capable of doing this because something in their basic application is wrong. They then ‘call the shot’ using a sight picture which, for one reason or another, was not the one as the projectile left the barrel. This helps to explain why experts can check zero in 3-shots, while the poor or inexperienced one can go through a tin of pellets before getting it right!

Once all the above things have been practised and improved, ‘calling the shot’ will be much more dependable, and accuracy should increase as a result. Most of them can be practised in the comfort of your living room and if you own a pneumatic rifle, you can safely fire it without ammunition loaded. Just make sure the cat’s out and the wife has her earplugs in.