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Osage Orange
Sharpshooters 2005 Schedule - Online at www.swampworks.com/OsageOrange.html Schedule of
Upcoming Events Miller Range Marshfield Shooting
Club Range Spfld Bench Rest Rifle
Club, Billings Bucksnort Range, Marshall
MO (Across the Course events) Mill Creek Gun Club,
DeSoto KS (Across the Course events) May 8 Team
Match We can loan you a rifle and ammunition so that you can be sure of your equipment. We can give you the sight settings to get you on paper at 600 yards, and once you do, it's no different from shooting at the Dalton range. If you think you want to go but are unsure of yourself, let me know so I can talk you into it. May 14 John
C. Garand Match Rifle Raffle Scope Raffle The Kowa scope will be paired up with a scope head from Ray-vin ($85). It's one of the most popular one-handed scope- adjusting heads around. Along with that will come a custom stand from Les Welch and his son (approximately $120). As you can see, the rig will retail for about $1100 total. When we sell 220 tickets, at $5 each, we will hold the raffle. We won't put this one off a day later than is necessary, because I know whoever wins it will want to use it. In fact, we'll hold the raffle at the start of one of our matches! Marshfield
Range Miller Range We worked out a fee of $75 per match, and we are paying this out of the OOS bank account. I think this arrangement will work out just fine because when the Osage Orange Sharpshooters started out, we set the dues at $30 because we thought that we'd have to pay the Dalton Range $20 per hour of use. Because of our junior program, we are allowed to use Dalton Range free. But I don't have any objection to paying for range time if we can get a slightly better time of day to shoot. We had one match on a Saturday afternoon, and 17 shooters attended. This one will be on a Sunday afternoon. If you have any preferences as to day and time let me know. The big attraction is to have an afternoon match rather than early morning. That would be a nice thing for these Spring and Fall matches where it is cold in the morning but nicer in the afternoon. Junior Program I have appointed a committee to find a date or two in 2005 (besides the July 16 match) when we can get together a larger number of young people for a match. Joe Huftless will chair the committee. I would like the committee to communicate via email and telephone, and identify possible dates. It will be impossible to find a Saturday or Sunday when all youth can participate, but if we can just find a date and time when we could get a few more young people out, I think it would be a success. For some of you, this will be the first you have heard about the committee. I hope you will all communicate with each other, share telephone numbers and emails, and come up with one or two dates for CMP Rimfire matches. The information below is what I have in my files for names, phone, and email. Joe Huftless <jsh002@worldnet.att.net> Slow Fire
Prone In short, slow fire prone depends upon three things: a perfect natural point of aim (NPA), a perfect trigger squeeze, and a perfectly repeatable sight picture. Let's take them in reverse order. The perfectly repeatable sight picture involves the most outside influences, especially your head and cheek position as well as your overall body position. To get the same sight picture each time, you must concentrate on seeing exactly the same amount of front sight in the rear aperture; and the sight picture (relationship between the front sight post and the aiming black) must be perfect and perfectly the same each time. This is hard to do for 20 shots. Your sling loosens up as you shoot. Your body moves around. Recoil drives your left elbow out of position. Your cheek hurts, so you don't put your head on the stock the same way each time. All of these things will keep you from getting a repeatable sight picture. How do we fight them? First, develop a head position that gives you what you want. I place my right thumb on top of the stock, almost against the heel of the receiver. My cheek then goes onto my hand; this is called a spot weld (as opposed to a stock weld). The back of my thumb contacts my cheek in exactly the same place each time. My head is exactly where it needs to be to get the same sight picture each time. To get a position that doesn't break down over 20 shots you have 2 options. Traditionally, shooters were taught to take a very tight position and then not move for the duration of the string. The left hand goes all the way to the front swivel to act as a recoil lug, and the right elbow is brought in towards the body. Most of us are not as young or athletic as we once were, and this becomes difficult. I think it is more reasonable to say that you MUST repeat your position each time, and you will find a position that is a compromise between comfort and tightness. Ideally you would be slung up tighter than a piano wire, but comfort may prohibit that; so you take a looser position, and recoil knocks you around.. You may need to rebuild the position 20 times. Recoil will move you, and the sling will slip. Most important is to get your sling tight. I like the new synthetic slings that don't loosen. When I say tight, I mean tight. Then learn to get your body into exactly the same position each time. I do this: I load and shoulder the rifle, put my cheek on the correct place, acquire the target, then look off at my cartridge box and take a breath (I don't like to close my eyes because they sometimes take too long to clear after closing. Looking off accomplishes the same thing without blurring them.) I make sure that my left hand and arm are "dead", that is, they are not holding the sight on the target. In a sense, my hand is pushing the sling down with the back of my hand, as if my hand were trying to fall straight down to the ground. There is no muscle tension in my left arm at all. Only my body position is aiming the rifle on the target, not my left hand. Then I look down range at my target and front sight. If the sight picture is not perfect, I adjust my body. If I am off in the horizontal plane, I may scoot my body around or maybe just my left elbow. If I am off vertically I have 3 choices: for a small differential, I can change the amount of air in my lungs; for a larger amount of elevation, I can move my right leg up or back. Finally, I can leave my left elbow planted as a pivot point and scoot my body forward or backward to lower or raise the muzzle. I will then take 2 or 3 breaths, watching the post rise and fall (or fall and rise, actually). On the last one, as the post comes up from the white, just as it gets to that last, little line of white leaving the black clearly outlined, I will pause, then focus on the sight and squeeze the trigger. In slow prone, your trigger squeeze must be perfect. I suggest you practice dry firing at home by placing the rifle on a flat surface with you sitting in a position to emulate the prone head position without holding the rifle with your left hand. Only your trigger hand and head should be used in this exercise. It will take some work. I put the rifle on my table saw and sit on a 5 gallon bucket. I may actually have to put a knee on the bucket to emulate the prone position. Once you get set up and have a sight picture (it will help to have a black dot on the wall), pull the trigger. The sight should not move off the dot. The first time I tried this, I pulled the sight way off target. It became clear to me why my slow prone scores were mediocre. With just a few minutes of practice I found a way to pull the trigger without moving the sights, and it really paid off in a long-range match the next day. What I had to do was move the trigger much more gradually and concentrate on moving only the trigger finger. I was tensing up my whole hand as the trigger broke, and that moves the rifle. Grab the stock firmly, place the thumb on top of the stock, and concentrate on a gradual pull directly to the rear with the trigger finger only, while the thumb applies forward pressure. (On the AR-15 I wrap my thumb around onto my 2nd and 3rd fingers and grip the pistol grip tightly. Then and only then do I start the trigger finger moving. And only the trigger finger moves. And by the way, on the AR-15, I have taken to pulling the trigger with the 2nd joint of my trigger finger. I get more of a straight-to-the-rear motion that way.) Well, that's a lot of words for a simple position. But finding a way to do it exactly the same 20 times in a row takes some doing. I hope this helps. Bill Corcoran (417) 862-8618
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