Jim White wrote: ↑Sun Mar 17, 2024 8:24 pm
Shakey, in the competitive shooting world there are terms such as NPA [Natural Point of Aim], front sight-sight alignment-trigger control. Hopefully these tips will help you and anyone else here who reads them;
1. NPA; whether you're shooting from a bench or offhand/standing at 200 yards, prone at 1000 yards, you need to establish your NPA. To do this you need to establish a good position, yes, even from a bench and it needs to be repeatable from shot-to-shot. This is going to involve eye relief, the grip on the rifle, cheek weld, breathing control and trigger control. It entails these and others I have probably forgotten about.
2. Sight alignment; even with scopes sight alignment is critical It may look good but be aware of it. I have found, on high power scopes, the higher the magnification is dialed in, the more critical it becomes.
- Be aware of parallax, especially as the distance grows and how to detect it. Scope quality pays off in these areas.
- When you’re shooting, don’t stare through the scope at the target to long. If you do, learn to stop the sequence, look away, get refocused and try again.
- Keep both eyes open because closing one eye puts extra strain on the other.
- Focus on the reticle, not the target. This will take some learning but its all a part of the package.
3. Breathing; don’t hold your breath too long. When I’m getting in position, I slowly exhale while I’m getting lined up. When I start to squeeze the trigger, I hold my breath but I don’t hold too long because you’ll soon start the jitters and it just goes downhill from there.
4. Trigger control; when you’re squeezing the trigger you need to aware of inducing movement into the rifle. Primarily this is done by squeezing the hole hand rather than just the trigger finger. This will take some practice and effort to master but it is a must.
5. Cheek/Stock-weld/head position; head position on the stock is another critical aspect that needs to be found and be repeatable, shot-to-shot. It definitely has impacts on the aforementioned items.
6. Hot chambers; leaving rounds in a hot chamber for those shots you can’t get off; remove the round, grab another one for the next attempt. I realize several powders today are noted to be resistive to heat changes but rest assure, if the round gets warm the POI [point of impact] is impacted downrange; more so for some than others.
I realize this is long winded but as you can tell, it’s a lot of little things that make a difference. And speaking of little things, a strand of human hair is about .008-inches. Just a FYI, .008 inches of muzzle movement equates to 1 MOA down range. 1 MOA is 1 inch @ 100 yards, 2 inches at 200 yards and so on. All of these things will give you reliable feedback of your rifle and your loads.
Hope this helps out,