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Osage Orange
Sharpshooters 2005 Schedule - Online at www.swampworks.com/OsageOrange.html Match Schedule Mill Creek
Range, DeSoto KS Hurricane
Aid Raffle John Garand
Match
Shooting with
Friends When I go to the out-of-town matches, I always make a point of striking up conversations with the other shooters. I've made some good friends this way, and it really helps your mental preparation if you can consider everybody there as a friend. In fact, the last 2 matches I went out of the way to try to make friends with guys that had provided a little friction for me over the years. It worked, and I shot better just knowing I had developed a good relationship with a former adversary. I had two interesting, unforeseen results from all this talking at a couple of matches this year. Since I'm always chatting up the good shooters, people think I'm one of them. I had people thinking I made the Presidents 100 at Camp Perry (never been close), and people at the Kansas leg match thought I was already "Distinguished" (nope, not a chance). Hey, we can always dream, and if somebody thinks YOU were in the Presidents 100, just smile. Youth MSSA is the formal state contact for both the CMP and the NRA. All of the Conservation Dept. shooting ranges, such as the Dalton Range, have memberships in the association, and I keep my personal membership current (it costs $15). Our club will be taking a club membership, largely to show our support and gratitude. Club membership costs $30. Marshfield Ammunition We can also get a pretty good deal on Black Hills .223 ammunition. The price list is extensive, so check the "Clubs" area of the CMP web page, but, for example, we can get Black Hills ammo with the Hornady 75 grain match bullet for about 26 cents a round, and with the Sierra 77 grain bullet for about 36 cents a round. Other loadings, such as the Sierra or Hornady 69 or 68 grain bullets, are a bit less expensive. These are club prices, but they are for anyone who belongs to the club who will use the ammo in high power competition or practice. That's all of us. Let me know if you wish to get a club order together. Look at the CMP web page under "Club Info" and follow the link for commercial ammunition. Reloading Another way to save a little on Sierra bullets is through their drop-ship program. Someone who holds a Federal Firearms License must do the ordering and take shipment of the bullets; in addition, I believe there is a minimum order size, but the savings generally run about 30% of retail, and these are retail bullets, not seconds. Les Welch believes he can line up one of the Kansas highpower shooters who has an FFL. Jeff Chosid, of Missouri Highpower web page fame, usually also runs a drop-ship program on Sierra bullets, and if you watch that web page you may be able to take advantage by contacting him directly. Annual Meeting Next Year One thing I propose is making between one and three of our Dalton Range meetings into Rimfire Sporter matches, and advertise for youth to join us. The rimfire match is every bit as much fun as shooting the M1, and you don't end up with a headache. We could offset the loss of highpower days by adding a couple of matches at the Miller range, and these could be afternoon matches followed by a cookout. Let me know what you think of this idea. One thing we never got around to doing is having a shoot for charity, something like a toys-for-tots kind of shoot. Because these sorts of things tend to become desireable around Christmas, and the fall season is very busy for me, I let the ideas fall through the cracks. If someone would like to take charge of organizing a charity shoot, something that we could advertise to the public and use for publicity purposes, here's your opportunity. I'd be glad to help you with it. Goodness knows, there are enough causes around to collect for; everything from tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, and Hillary Clinton is afflicting the human race. For Sale Standing Part III - Little Things-Pulling the Trigger While the Sights are Moving Sometimes I think that the literature on the standing position focuses more on the little things than on the big picture. There are so many things to remember that you forget it all, become confused, or become nervous that you're not doing something right. In the previous two parts of this epistle I have tried to ignore all the optional material and concentrate on a simple path to better shooting offhand. I believe that a newer shooter or one in great need of improvement is best served by simplicity of advice; additional complexity can be confusing rather than helpful. But in this installment we will discuss a few things in more detail, things that may help you sort out your method of shooting These are things that you might want to think about, might even want to practice, but they shouldn't be something you're consciously thinking about as you mount the rifle to shoot. Let's revisit pulling the trigger. The best generalization of the process I ever heard was something like: "accept your wobble area; you are shooting at an area, not a point; isolate the trigger finger from the rest of the hand, align the sights, and pull the trigger". Frankly, I have started to use that as my mantra as I bring the rifle down. Really: "Isolate the trigger finger, align the sights, and pull the trigger; you are aiming at an area; OMMMM…..OMMMM. (Sorry, that's meditation for those of you who missed the 1970s.) We've already talked about isolating the trigger finger. Gripping the rifle firmly with the other fingers and thumb of the trigger hand does that. Once the grip is firm, only the trigger finger is free to move. We must be sure that it moves directly in-line with the bore of the rifle; to do otherwise will deflect the shot. For example, a common problem with M1 and M14 shooters is called "dragging wood." The trigger finger touches the stock, and this will invariable throw shots out the far side of the target (left side for a right-handed shooter), at least that's my experience with the pellet rifle. I can call every shot standing, and if I call it perfect, and then say to myself "oops, I touched the stock," I know the shot will be out on the left. Always. Keep the trigger finger away from the wood. Another problem is not pulling the trigger straight back; the shooter either pushes or pulls the trigger slightly to one side or the other. On the wood rifles (M1, M14, '03), shooters practiced placing the pad of the trigger finger (opposite side from the center of the fingernail) exactly on the trigger. For most people, this will give a pretty straight trigger pull. Newer shooters sometimes get the trigger into the jointed area or push slightly sideways. Not good. One thing you can practice is to hold your trigger hand in front of you as if you had just picked up a pistol, kind of in the handshake position. Now place a pencil across the crease between your thumb and hand, extending forward like the bore of a gun with the pencil point sticking into your trigger finger pad. Your job is to pull the pencil straight back over your thumb joint. Any sideways movement will deflect it and knock it off. Many of you have heard my story about the first time I shot a good score (in the 190s) at 600 yards. It illustrates why trigger pull is so important, even in the supported positions. I was getting ready to leave for the Long Range Championship in Marshall. My M1 had just come back from the gunsmith with a new barrel, and I wanted to just pull the trigger a few times, but I didn't want to get into the prone position, etc. So I rested the rifle on a table and held only the pistol grip while I took a sight picture and squeezed the trigger. Was I surprised! Every time I pulled the trigger the muzzle deflected off the target. It only took a few minutes to iron out the kinks and get a good trigger pull established, but that experience opened my eyes. You must have a trigger pull that does not deflect the sights, and you should not have to think about it. It should be natural. Many of you know that on the M1 I am an advocate of placing the thumb on top of the wrist of the pistol grip so that the trigger finger and thumb are, in effect, pinching the stock between them. The finger pulls back and the thumb pushes forward. Pressure is applied equally to the thumb and the finger, and this gives a nice straight pull most of the time. But in fact, most of the good shooters I have watched with the M14 had the traditional grip with the thumb down the far side of the grip. To each his own, but find one that works. Try it out, as I did, with no additional support for the front end, other than laying it across a table. On the AR-15 everything changes. With a full pistol grip, dragging wood no longer matters. And for most people, the trigger is so close to the grip that a traditional pull-location, the forward pad of the finger, is too uncomfortable and causes a sideways pull. In prone and sitting, I put the trigger into the crease of the front joint of the finger. You read that right…the crease, where it flexes. In standing, I use the middle flat area (2nd joint?) of the trigger finger on the trigger. I get more leverage that way, and I am less likely to get chicken finger because there's less feeling. It may sound kind of odd, but in using the 2nd joint, I get the sensation I like to think of as an anaconda (the snake) tightening, ever tightening, around it's prey (the trigger), until it snaps. The snapping of a trigger, and the tightening of the finger, gets us into the act of pulling. A newer shooter is well-advised to pull evenly and as fast as possible. Since we're talking about the offhand position here, the "as fast as possible" is important but impossible to divine in its meaning. What's "fast" for one person is slow for another. What matters is pulling the trigger evenly (that is, straight back, without deflecting the muzzle) and keeping the sights aligned for the amount of time it takes to pull it. How long is that? I really don't know. It could be 1 second, it could be 4. Sometimes it seems like an hour. The newer shooter executes what is called a "sustained pull." Align the sights, start pulling, and keep them aligned. The shot should surprise you when it goes off. (There is great discussion about this last point, but if you can make the rifle go off exactly when you want it in offhand, and where you want it is the center of the target, you don't need to be reading this.) The shot should surprise you when it goes off. But we are working to control the environment so that the sights will be exactly where you want them when it goes off, and it will go off at exactly the right moment, when the sights are perfectly aligned. That takes a ton of practice. For 99.9% of us it does not come naturally, but it can be learned as a conditioned response, much the same manner as typing or writing your name. You can't explain how you did it, you just did it. The opposite of the sustained trigger pull is the interrupted trigger pull. The shooter is exerting pressure on the trigger, trying to make it break without disturbing the sights, and the sights wobble off the target. The shooter pauses (interrupts), holding the pressure on the trigger, until the sights come back to the target, and then the shooter continues the pressure. It is a simple theory, and virtually everyone executes it. It is natural. From experience, I know the pitfalls of the interrupted trigger pull. First of all, it contributes to chicken finger: "oops, hold up; oops, hold up; oops, hold up," is what your brain is saying. For some reason, we seem to gravitate towards holding up rather than pulling. Second of all, when we hold because the sight wobbles off the black, we tend to look at the target (DON'T DO THIS). If we focus on the front sight it will come back to the target fast. If we focus on the target, the front sight just keeps running away from it. We seem to be able to execute the basics of sight picture and sight alignment for a finite, limited amount of time. The interrupted trigger pull often seems to push us beyond our limits, and we forget to follow the basic principles. Third, the interrupted trigger pull implies starting and stopping the pull and sometimes we just don't have the fine motor skill necessary: We think we're going to stop and we don't, and the rifle fires just as we decide to take a breath, or in re-starting, we pull really hard (jerk). So is there something fundamentally wrong with the interrupted trigger pull? Absolutely not. It's the way almost everyone shoots. But it is not a technique to start with. It is not something that can be learned overnight. In fact, I believe the best way (actually, the only way) to learn it is to become proficient at the sustained trigger pull. Concentrate on getting the front sight into the correct location for a shot while you evenly pull the trigger. If you wobble off to the 9 ring, well, a few 9's won't hurt your score any. What if you wobble off to the 8 ring or worse? Then I think your problem is not with the trigger, it's with your hold. OK, so here's were I think the story gets interesting; and to follow this you might want to read David Tubb's book, "Highpower Rifle." Mr. Tubb has discussed many times what he calls "the approach method." In other words, he consciously moves the sights onto the target, from one side to the other, and takes the shot when they are perfectly aligned. I won't claim to know exactly what Mr. Tubb does, sees, or thinks, but if you read his description of it, it really is not too awfully far from a sustained trigger pull, with an interruption if he wobbles off the far side. Here's my impression of what a good sustained trigger pull looks like through the sights, from a guy who has been struggling with his offhand quite a bit the past few years. Assume that everything is done right, and we are taking our last breath just as the rifle comes down into position (in fact, I take 3 rhythmic breaths, and they clearly slow my heartbeat and pulse.) For a few seconds afterwards my body and sight picture are really quite calm. If I could pull the trigger at that moment, I would. And I would be national champion. It's a short time period, maybe a second, maybe two. And I know from experience that the next thing that will happen is the front sight will drop down to the 7 ring. So I take up the trigger slowly as the front sight drops, and as I will (yes, will) the front sight upwards, I am squeezing the trigger. The essence of the sustained pull is that the trigger will break exactly at the moment the front sight post hits the 6 o'clock position. It is practice, practice, practice, that makes this work. It most assuredly is NOT willingly taking the shot. The snap of the trigger is a surprise in that I am not causing it to go RIGHT NOW. But I have practiced that I want it to go at the correct instant the front sight post touches the black, so it's kind of a disappointment if it goes off early or late. In one sense, it's like trying to get 2 moving vehicles to collide, but YOU MAY NOT CHANGE THE SPEED OF EITHER ONE. In other words, the rate at which you take up the trigger is fixed, as is the wobble. Over many thousand rounds of practice you have settled (unconsciously) on a trigger pressure and a sight movement that should bring them together at just the right place and time. (The interrupted trigger pull method simply allows you to hold up when the front sight wobbles off the black, and start again, usually by waiting for the front sight post to cycle all the way around and come back in from the bottom for a second try.) Now I don't mean to imply that I shoot like David Tubb. There's a bit of a difference between a 179 and a 199 in the offhand position. But I do mean to say that if you watch your sights, what David Tubb describes as "shooting on the approach" is what we all do. Our front sight is always moving, and every book on offhand technique will point out that you should be taking up the trigger pressure as the front sight moves toward the target. Tubb's trigger pull is sustained, and so finely-practiced that it breaks at the correct time almost every time. You can do it too. Just convince yourself to keep pulling that trigger, and concentrate on aligning the sights. And once you can do that consistently, holding up (interrupting the trigger pull) will come naturally. Finally, we should talk a bit about the approach of the front sight to the aiming black. David Tubb got people talking when he said that he shot using the approach method. In other words, move the sight in, in the same direction for each shot. Tubb says he establishes his natural point of aim, then, for each shot, he brings the rifle down a little left of the aiming black and allows it to drift over; then pulls the trigger. Many, many good shooters try to establish a predictable wobble. (Is that a contradiction in terms?) The first 2 or 3 Masters I ever talked to about shooting all said the same thing…"take the shot on the way in, not on the way out." What they were telling me was to exert pressure on the trigger as the sight moves towards the aiming black. The founder of the Osage Orange Sharpshooters, David McCurdy, told me had learned to move his sight around and into the bullseye in the shape of a 'G', with the last, interior tail being the center of the target. He exerted a sustained pull as the sight described the G, and when the sight got into the middle, that's when the gun fired. You can see how this is similar to Tubb's approach or even to the sustained trigger pull I described. If the front sight always follows an identical 'flight path' then it should be simple (!) to establish a trigger pull that will break at exactly the time the sight reached the 10 ring…all you have to do is practice Once again, let me repeat that you're trying to get the sight picture and the trigger break to coincide in space and time; you are not trying to line it up and pull the trigger. You are accepting your wobble area and squeezing the trigger as the sight moves towards the target. It is impossible to execute the kind of offhand shooting we all start out trying, that is, to align the sights on the target, then pull the trigger (sound familiar). If you allow the implied linearity of that statement to guide you, you will fail. Once you align the sights and focus your brain power on pulling the trigger, the sights will wobble off, and you will be too late. The processes must happen simultaneously and somewhat independently. It is 'align the sights on the target AND pull the trigger…' not '…THEN pull….' The process of aligning the sights and the process of pulling the trigger must be going on at the same time. The more I shoot offhand, the more I think we should focus on these two things: the sustained trigger pull and the predictable wobble. (One big problem, though, is that's two things to learn at once. Humans don't do that very well.) Try doing it a thousand times and see what happens: get the trigger moving with sustained pressure, and concentrate on aligning the sights. Perhaps always take the same approach (from the same side or from the bottom). You will be shooting like David Tubb. Bill Corcoran (417) 862-861 wtc928f@smsu.edu |