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Osage Orange
Sharpshooters 2005 Schedule - Online at www.swampworks.com/OsageOrange.html Match Schedule Mill Creek
Range, DeSoto KS Bucksnort
Range, Marshall MO St Louis BR
Club, Wright City MO
Probably the most prestigious match is the President's Match (P100). It is 30 shots (10 standing, 10 rapid prone, 10 slow prone). The top 100 shooters are honored as the "President's 100" and receive medallions and letters from the President. Sad to say, none of the Sharpshooters joined this club. We were in good company with approximately 1290 other shooters, though. The National Trophy Individual match (NTI) is a 50 shot match to crown the top service rifle shooter as well as award medals and leg points to others. Sergeant Norman Anderson won both the Presidents and the NTI. The cutoff score to receive leg points was 471 with 14X. Your club president shot a 471 with 9X. Sharpshooters covered themselves with glory (and leg points) in the M16 match. This match is open only to shooters who have not earned any leg points in Excellence in Competition (EIC or "leg") matches. It is shot with M16 rifles and ammunition issued on the line to all participants. The match is 40 rounds (plus 5 sighters), all shot at 200 much like a John Garand match, and the top 10 percent of all participants receive 4 leg points each towards the Distinguished Rifleman's Badge. It takes 30 points to win the badge. Jerry Patten and Alex Belt both finished in the to 10%. Alex finished number 29 and Jerry finished number 12 out of 400 shooters. This is a big step in a shooter's career, and Jerry and Alex are to be heartily congratulated for their accomplishment. We had a Junior
shooter with us, Adam Day; perhaps you have noticed him assisting
his father Michael at Osage Orange events. Adam has been with
us up at Bucksnort and Mill Creek as well as the Dalton and Miller
ranges, but he has never shot in any of our matches. Well, this
all changed at Camp Perry, and how it changed is a story in itself
involving the CMP, the NRA, state shooting associations, and
politics. Adam agreed, and so the first match in his whole life was the Whistler Boy. He shot his first 10 shots offhand, pair-firing with Ray Findlay, a 20 year-old from Centralia. Adam acquitted himself well, firing all 10 shots without a miss. (I ask you: Is there any adult in this group who went to his first match and had no misses in offhand?) Rapid fire sitting was a bit of a mystery, since Adam had never shot from the sitting position before. But his rapid prone was fine. Unfortunately, at the 600 yard slow-prone stage, the LCSCA coach decided Adam should shoot ammunition provided by the coach rather than the ammo Michael had provided his son. The problem was, the coach had forgotten to put powder in many of the cartridges, so Adam had 3 or 4 bullets get lodged in his barrel. It's very uncomfortable to be laying on your shooting mat waiting for the armorer to show up with a cleaning rod to knock the bullet out, all the while watching the clock tick. His score wasn't the best, but he toughed it out, and the problems in the slow prone stage were entirely the fault of the coach, not the shooter. When we finally got off the firing line, it was one of my proudest moments as an Osage Orange Sharpshooter to see Adam standing up with Ray Findlay and the coach for pictures, with the targets on Rodriguez range in the background, and 2 tired, proud boys smiling at their accomplishment. It was worth the trip. For the record, the team finished 92nd out of 103 teams-not bad. It is not too early to be thinking about next year's trip. The CMP matches will again be during the first week of August. The planning and logistics for a trip to Camp Perry take a little bit of work, but it really is not too expensive. Entry fees run perhaps $100-200, depending on the matches you wish to shoot. A bed in the huts costs $100 for the week. So those are the only expenses beyond what it costs you to travel, eat, and purchase shooting supplies on Commercial Row. It's really kind of a cheap vacation. This last year entry for the various matches was full largely by the end of May. Registration generally commences in March or April, so the window of opportunity is fairly small. Talk to the Sharpshooters that went, and get an idea of what it was like. If you want to go, the single most important person to talk to is Les Welch, since he coordinates the room accommodations. Ammunition
Report Speaking of ammunition, I tested some .223 ammunition made by Olympic. It caught my eye at Camp Perry because it cost about 13 cents a round, far cheaper than even reloading costs. Well, upon test firing it the other day, my conclusion is: This stuff is awful. I gave up after 8 rounds on the MR-31 target (the 600 yard reduced). One shot would go roughly where I called it, the next would be high in the 6 ring. Just to be sure, I put up other targets and shot a 195 and a 197 for 20 shot strings with my own reloads. Olympic ammunition: stay away. Youth For Sale Great Outdoors
Day
Standing Position
Part II - Making the Shot At first glance, you wouldn't think that it should be an issue; you have been pulling triggers for many years. How hard is that? For many people it is not. If you look through the P100 or NTI scores on the CMP web site, you will find many people who shoot 97-100 from the standing position. Gary Anderson, the Director of Civilian Marksmanship at the CMP holds the national high power record for a 20 shot match 200-15x. Clearly, for some people standing position is not a problem. For many of us, though, there are a number of issues. Here are a few of the ways people describe problems in the standing position: the front sight is moving, when do I pull? When I pull, I jerk. I see a good shot, but by the time I get the trigger pulled, its out in the 5 ring. I see a good shot, but I just can't pull the trigger. Because so much has been written on the standing position, and because there are a few diametrically opposed viewpoints on a couple of issues in the process, I want to focus mostly on start-to-finish description of what to do. At this point, I really don't want to get into too many problems and alternatives; let's just develop a clear path to making a shot. The two main theories of standing I call "break the shot" and "make the shot." Cute, eh? The break-the -shot folks say, in a nutshell, when you see the perfect sight picture, pull the trigger. The make-the-shot folks say pull the trigger gradually, all the while concentrating on keeping the sights aligned. Personally, I think that these are merely two endpoints on a continuum of hand-eye coordination. I think that as you get better, you can break the shot, but to begin with you will concentrate on making the shot. The general rule is that it takes 100,000 trigger squeezes to make a good offhand shooter; that's the length of the continuum from one endpoint to another. Let's get started. Offhand shooting is 90 percent mental. You must come to the line with the correct mental attitude and maintain the attitude of a winner throughout the whole string. The attitude is not one of putting pressure on yourself-that only breeds nervousness and indecision. Rather, it is an attitude of confidence that you have everything right and you know what to do. Then you execute exactly as you have practiced. It all begins before you go to the line. When the preparation period for standing begins, you must be ready. Your coat is buttoned, glasses adjusted, ammunition and cart correctly placed, etc. Every bit of time in the preparation period should be spent finding your position, your NPA and dry firing. If you spend any time with equipment during prep period, you are doing it wrong. Concentrate on doing it right. If you convince yourself that you are ready and that you can do it right, you will do it right. If you spend your time talking and rush yourself to the line and spend all 3 minutes getting your equipment layed out, you will feel rushed and unconfident during firing. Organization breeds confidence, and confidence breeds success. Take all the time necessary to find your NPA. Assume your position, close your eyes, and breathe; maybe take 2 or 3 breaths. The open your eyes and adjust your position. It is common for the first few attempts to yield wildly different NPAs. Don't worry, just keep after it. Your muscles will stretch or tighten, and things will change a bit throughout the string, so you may have to change your position a bit even after you've started firing. Find your position and find your NPA. Once your are close, dry fire a couple of shots checking your NPA before firing. Oftentimes people will check the NPA, find it close, and go ahead and dry fire…OK, fine, you can try that. But then go back to completely trying to find NPA. When you dry fire there is a tendency to hold the sights on target; that is the antithesis of what you are trying to do in the prep period. You are trying to find your NPA, not dry-fire 10s. What if other people are shooting already? Don't worry, don't hurry. At the Joplin matches we usually get "block time" where the prep period, sighter period, and shooting time are all rolled into one. There are always folks who start banging away as soon as time starts. They never win anything. Take all the time you need, including 3 or 4 minutes of shooting time if necessary, to find you NPA and dry fire 5 shots (10 shots is better). Each shot should be executed exactly the same way. Most good shooters have something like a ritual to assure quality control. The rifle is lifted off the stool and loaded exactly the same way each time. The sequence of establishing the support hand, the trigger hand grip, and the location in the shoulder is always identical, shot-to-shot. Finally, the muzzle comes down onto the target as the shooter takes a deep breath or two. As the shooter exhales to the natural respiratory pause (don't even think about it, just breathe; don't hold your breath, and don't try to exhale everything; just be natural but pause), the sight settles on the aiming black. You are holding tension on the pistol grip with your last 3 gripping fingers, and the first pressure comes off the trigger. Now all concentration is on the front sight (NOT THE TARGET), and the trigger finger moves independently to put continuous pressure on the trigger until it breaks. You are rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time, but you're only thinking about one of them. You are thinking only about keeping the front sight on the target. One sage phrased it: "sights, you'd best be aligned, because Mr. Finger is a'pullin' the trigger." What if you run out of breath? What if you haven't fired the shot and your sights have gone way off target? What if it's just not working? Bring the rifle down, and let it hang (muzzle down range) in front of you. Some people unload and rest the rifle on the stool. Then start over from the beginning. I prefer just to let the loaded rifle hang safely, let my arms relax, take a few breaths, and mount the gun again. Never stay with a shot that's broken down. And you will know when this is. In any sequence you will come to recognize the best time for you to shoot. You get everything right, the sights settle (more or less), and it's time to shoot. If you go another 3-5 seconds beyond this, you run out of breath. Start over; don't force it. One of the problems people contend with is "chicken finger," or the inability to pull the trigger when the sights are aligned just right, and of course, the disinclination to pull the trigger when they aren't. The shooter is trying to make the shot perfect and trying to control the trigger to make the perfect shot. This shooter also often ends up by finally jerking the trigger in a last desperate effort to take a shot. Sometimes this shooter ends up with a whole-body-flinch. (Ask yourself, how does he know all this?) In a sense, this shooter is trying to execute offhand shots from a position in our continuum (between make-the-shot and break-the-shot) farther towards the high-skill side than he ought to. His skill lags behind his aspirations. The simple solution for all shooters is contained in the old advice, "accept your wobble area." In standing you are shooting at an area, not a point. Stand up there, find your NPA, align the sights, and pull the trigger smoothly. The trigger finger is isolated from the rest of your hand (which is holding pressure on the stock), and moves slowly, smoothly, and independently to pull the trigger. It is isolated from your hand, exerting pressure to the rear only. In a sense, it can be isolated from your consciousness too. Thinking about your trigger pull, trying to make it coincide with the best sight picture, is what leads to chicken finger. Isolate the trigger finger, accept that you are shooting at an area, not a point, and let the finger pull. Your natural point of aim will bring many of your shots right into the center of the target, and your score will be fine. There, we've done it. We've got everything we need to make good offhand shots, including the knowledge of how to avoid the most common mistakes associated with jerking the trigger. As we progress on the continuum, we may eventually try to take some of the other advice such as "take the first 10 you see." Sometimes that may help, oftentimes not. Please report back after 100,000 offhand shots. Bill Corcoran (417) 862-861 wtc928f@smsu.edu |