Target Sports

TARGET RIFLE BASICS PART TWO: TELL THEM WHAT YOU HAVE TOLD THEM

Created on 14th May 2009

CHRIS WHITE highlights the importance of alignment and head position for TR shooters

In the August issue we reminded ourselves of how the sling takes the weight of the rifle (Target Rifle Basics, p.65). Correct use of the sling is fundamental to successful shooting. Despite this, there is a widespread misconception about the effects of adjusting the sling. Shortening ('tightening' is a misnomer) the sling reduces the length A/B in figure one (right) and decreases the angle ABC, thus raising the position. Even the late, world famous Andrew Tucker referred to 'tightening his position' when talking about shortening the sling.

Moving the handstop towards the front of the rifle in effect pushes the stock and hence the butt backwards, thus tightening the position. This is important and must be understood.

Now we have reiterated the point, it ought to be obvious that for shot-to-shot consistency there must be intimate contact between the hand and the handstop. To make sure this happens the left hand (right hand for left-handed shooters) should be pushed hard up against the handstop when shouldering the rifle. When the sling and handstop are correctly adjusted we should be able to put the rifle in the shoulder and aim at a target without the right hand (left hand for left-handers) touching the rifle. We should be able to maintain this aim with ease.

So that we can maximise the consistency of our position and exploit the benefit of the sling, we need a well-fitting shooting jacket to provide a stable interface between our bodies and the rifle/sling system.
In the November 2006 edition of Target Sports (Target Rifle Basics, p.63) I highlighted the importance of buying a good jacket, even before you purchase a rifle or even a telescope. The jacket should come first. You can learn to shoot with a club rifle but an ill-fitting jacket with the sling constantly slipping down your left arm will teach you nothing.

How many of my protégés have followed this advice over the past 20 years? About 0% I'd guess! How many shooters do you see in the Queen's Final without a shooting jacket? The same percentage! The point bears reiteration because it is so important.

Natural alignment

We must ensure that we achieve natural alignment, so that the rifle points at the target without any muscular input from the shooter. This is helped by looking at the target while we are shouldering the rifle. Put simply, you steer the rifle with your bum - not with your arm.

Conventional wisdom says that you must not grip the rifle with your right hand (left hand for left-handed shooters). This is concordant with our attempts to eliminate muscular input. However, even with an all-singing, all-dancing stock, NRA rules require that the trigger supports a weight of 1.5kg. It is a simple fact of Newtonian physics that if our trigger finger is going to exert that pressure on the trigger another part of our hand will have to exert a similar pressure on the stock.

In addition to this some rifles (converted P14s being a very good example) require a fairly firm hold with the right hand to avoid a crack on the head with the rearsight. Once again, our watchword must be ‘consistency'. Since we are compelled by circumstance to apply pressure this must be the same from shot to shot, and we must not grip the stock too tightly with our right hand (we'll come back to this at some point).

Head position

Our next fundamental point is that our head must be in such a position that our shooting eye is directly behind the rearsight aperture. This should be easy to achieve because we have a reference point in the image that we see. This ought to be a lot more repeatable than the grip we apply to the stock with our right hand! Let's just remind ourselves that if we displace our eye by an amount which equates to the thickness of a £20 note, we will have produced the same effect as moving the rearsight by 1MoA, the distance from the centre to the edge of the bull. Once again, the better the stock profile, the easier this is to achieve. Modern alloy stocks and wooden ‘Supermatch'-style stocks almost guarantee it, but take a close look at the front cover of July's Target Sports. While it is vitally important to ensure that we look directly through the rearsight, it is also important that our head is supported by the stock and not by our neck muscles otherwise it starts to hurt and the older we get the more it does so.

This is all very well with a modern rifle, but what if we are shooting a classic rifle where our head barely touches the stock at 300yd, let alone 900yd? One strategy is to support the head on the top of the hand, or in extreme cases to actually have the chin on the stock.

Before we leave this topic, remember that whatever the stock profile of our NRA target rifle might be it will be useful in acquiring an optimal head position by the use of a height-adjustable foresight. Those of you who have followed this series from the beginning will know how much I favour these gadgets. If you haven't got one, go out and buy one!

Let's just go back to natural alignment for a minute. For us to achieve this effortlessly our shooting equipment, mat and telescope need to be deployed on the firing point in such a manner as to be compliant with the correct body position. In a nutshell, the mat needs to be lined up with the target, not the front of the firing point. Most importantly, the telescope should be placed to suit you, not the other way round. How many shooters dump their kit on the point and then shuffle around so they can see through their scope? This is very much a case of having the cart in front of the horse. Settle your position and make sure you are in a state of natural alignment, and then move the scope so that you can use it without disturbing your position.

Now that we have achieved a stable position, a stable interface between our body and our rifle and established natural alignment, we need to make sure we are pointing the rifle at the target.

All we need to do is what our club instructor taught us when we started shooting. Construct a series of concentric circles with the target in the middle. Consider a horse, which has a bifocal eye. It can focus on the grass it is munching while maintaining an in-focus image of the distance so that (were it in a wild environment) it could spot an approaching predator. Since human beings do not generally graze grass, we have not evolved a similar facility. The point is that we can only focus on one thing at once. That must be the foresight. This is counter-instinctive and the tendency is to want to see the clearest image of the target. Don't do it. Next time I'll illustrate this with a pertinent story.

TARGET RIFLE BASICS PART TWO: TELL THEM WHAT YOU HAVE TOLD THEM

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TARGET RIFLE BASICS PART TWO: TELL THEM WHAT YOU HAVE TOLD THEM

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