Target Sports

TARGET RIFLE BASICS PART TWO: SEARCHING FOR THE ONE

Created on 14th May 2009

This month CHRIS WHITE explains the perils of issue ammo and why experience is key in gauging wind

LAST MONTH we looked at why rifles shoot groups and do not put all the shots through one hole. We touched on the importance of finding the centre of the group and ensuring that this group centre coincided with the centre of the target. This maximises our potential score, even if the combination of rifle, shooter and ammunition is not capable of shooting tight enough to put every shot into the bullseye.

For the smallbore shooter shooting indoors, this is fairly straightforward. For the TR shooter, though, wind is usually a bedevilling influence. How we cope with the wind comes later. Since we cannot predict what the wind will be until very close to shot delivery we, unlike our indoor colleagues, are unable to centre the group in a lateral sense.

What we can do, however, is to centre the group in a vertical sense. The tighter the group the easier this is to achieve.

Let's assume that we are shooting in windless conditions at 300yd and fire a shot which ends up a low V. We have no way of knowing whether this shot represents the centre of where our subsequent group will develop. It may be in the centre, it may be at the top or bottom of the group or on the edge of it or anywhere in between. If the shooter/rifle/ammunition combination are capable of grouping to a minute or thereabouts then there is a possibility that the next shot fired will fall anywhere within the five (blue) circles shown in figure one. This gives something like a 70% probability of scoring a bull.

If, on the other hand, this combination can only produce groups of 2½ minutes or thereabouts (as shown in figure two) there is only about a 15% probability of a bull, 40% for an inner, 40% for a magpie and about 5% for an outer.

Since we don't know where the next shot is going until we fire it we have to assume that the shot is in the centre of the group - unless we have a strong reason to believe otherwise. The smallbore shooter has the luxury of firing a limitless number of sighters and should have a high degree of confidence in where their group centre is before committing to scoring shots. The TR shooter is stuck with only two sighters and in many team events only one.

We have to make the best we can of the situation and we do this by quickly and diligently plotting our corrected elevation (Target Sports January to March 2006). Now let's look at the situation which may develop in the two scenarios portrayed in figures one and two. In this situation that first shot was actually at the bottom of the group, there is little or no wind and the shooter makes apparently rational decisions based on the plot (figures three and four). In both cases, the shots have gone in the same relative positions to the actual group centre. Note that, in addition to the vertical spread, shots one, six and eight (figure four) have lost points due to the lateral size of the group.

Difference in ammunition

Let's look at a practical example where indifferent ammunition quality made the shooter's task well nigh impossible, and good ammunition made it a lot easier. It was the same shooter (the author), the same rifle (Barnard), the same range, reasonably similar wind conditions - but different ammunition this time.

Figure five relates to a shoot in the 2008 NRA Imperial Meeting with issue RG ammunition and figure six in the 2008 Welsh Open Championship shot at the same distance with my own ammunition. Given the large vertical spread in the first case it is reasonable to assume that the horizontal spread is also quite large. Were shots four, six and 14 all down to errors in wind judgement or were some of them down to the ammunition?(Experienced shooters will recognise in figure five a typical RG scenario of two groups: one with a mean elevation of 19½ and one with a mean of 18½. Both are acceptable at around a minute of spread but, combined, they make a decent score virtually impossible.)

This brings us on to another important issue. Target Rifle matches are won and lost by wind judgement. While we will cover the theory of this in some detail later in the series, it is important to understand there is no Holy Grail. It is very much a case of the harder you work the luckier you get. Ability to gauge wind comes from experience - lots of it - under as many different conditions on as many different ranges as possible. If you are shooting ammunition with a built in two minute error, how on earth are you going to be able to know whether a shot hit where it did because your wind judgement was wrong (or right)? Take the example of shot six in figure five and assume that as well as being 2¼ tall the group was also 2¼ minutes wide. If my judgement was right but the shot fell on the edge of its group it could just as easily have been a wide inner out the other side.

Conversely, if my judgement was really 1½ minutes adrift and the actual position of shot six is in the centre of the group it could easily have been a left-handed V-bull.

In other words, getting an inner or a V-bull is nothing to do with skill; it is merely an act of chance. That is why those of a reactionary tendency - who support indifferent issue ammunition on the grounds that it is the same for everyone - have their heads stuck in the sand. It is also why you should never compromise on your ammunition quality, even when practising, because you will learn nothing if you do.

It is common practice for clubs to issue inferior ammunition to beginners on the grounds that cost is more important while they are in the learning stages. That may be fine for the first couple of sessions, but as soon as the basics are grasped the beginner should be using good ammunition.

Finally, remember what we are doing is centring the group based on the developing plot, not ‘error chasing' by correcting on individual shots.

At the risk of repetition, the importance of being able to plot corrected elevations quickly and accurately cannot be overemphasised.

TARGET RIFLE BASICS PART TWO: SEARCHING FOR THE ONE

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TARGET RIFLE BASICS PART TWO: SEARCHING FOR THE ONE

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