Tell us a shooting story where you learned something.

Chesten_Hesten

Greatness isn't Stoked by Compliments.
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Like the title says, tell us a shooting related story where you learned something that advanced your abilities/understanding of the game.

I'll start with a few:
I shot Competitive HighPower Rilfe from 1989 till 2008. The classifications designating relative levels of proficiency are: Unclassified/Marksman, Sharpshooter, Expert, Master, HighMaster.

The Book Marine Sniper lead me to Highpower, not because I wanted to become a Marine Sniper, but because I really dug the Chapters describing Hathcock's competitive shooting career. I thought it a great avenue to better my shooting for hunting.

No one else I knew shot competitively, (who wants to get up at 4:30am to drive hours to be somewhere by 6:am to look bad in front of people way better.)

To this day I've still haven't read the Highpower rulebook, but instead would watch match winners and try to learn by example.

#1.
There was a chick shooting an issue match M14, (not an M1A) had selector switch and all. Her father was an army shooter, since he didn't have a son her taught her to shoot. I think she had been a a whiz-bang smallbore shooter, because her technique was impeccable. She never wasted motion, was categorically methodical in everything she did once on the firing line. She was Master Class when I started. She had the same procedure for each shot every time. By the numbers.

A lot like Emmons the bb-gun shooter.


Roy, that was her last name.


Anyway, the Ah-ha moment I had watching Ol Roy was the notion you must have precise procedure to repeat performance. I don't just mean cognitive understanding, it was, Ok I got it, I get this, its in me now to be this way.

#2.
There was this ol Goon, a HighMaster. Retired Marine, shot on their National Team, Several States Champion, Shot Model 70 Winchester , 30'06. Name was Landry.

Unlike Roy, who would get locked into this concentration zone for 20 minutes at a time and had zero tolerance for offline people standing around talking, or making any noises, Landry was somehow beyond any of that. Comparatively Landry didn't fret over method, procedure or any of that structure. He'd just raise the rifle, aim, shoot, 10! So simple. He was the essence of shooting.

Once as a sharpshooter I got staged with Landry and got to score him shooting Offhand at 200 yards. He starts telling me some long elaborate joke when it's his time to step up. He's 1/4 of the way through his story as he begins shooting for score. He'd blab on and on, marking score and loading the next round, then pause, turn in on the rifle, aim - Blam! Another 10! Crank his neck back and continue flapp'n his lips.

Momentary Absolute Concentration!

it was a revelation to me because I was having an incredibly tough time trying to hold concentration like Roy for minutes at a time. After seeing Landry in action my mind was set free. I could let my attention deficit run loose, and then at the moment where it really counted, concentrate totally for 10 seconds, and make the shot. This I could repeat. It was great.

Landry


#3.

Rifles of the day, (in HighPower Competiton) from 1989-1993 were M1As and 30cal Boltguns, with a few old Garands thrown in. The only match bullet for an AR was the 69grn Sierra Matchking, and it was beatable at 600 yards, so no one shot ARs much. Plus back then it was still looked at as a gun for Pussies and Women.


Camp Bullis in San Antonio was the best place to Shoot HighPower, (in Texas) back then, Mostly all Active an retired shooting team guys showed up and the competition was fierce. It was a great environment. Plus the conditions were always tough at 600. Swirling winds, intense heat....

There was a Marine who shot there, (can't think of his name no matter how hard I try, Have to add later when I remember)

He shot a Match M14, and had a pronounced Cant in his sitting Rapid Fire Shooting style. This fellow was the epitome of the consummate professional. You could feel the atmosphere around this guy was centered on perfect aimed fire, period. That was the goal and aura that emanated around him.

I got staged with him one match, again I was a sharpshooter at the time, (1991) It's 200 yard sitting rapid fire; he's shoots his first string of 10 shots in 60 seconds. Guy shoots a group the size of a baseball, but its 9 Oclock in the 10 and 9 ring.

He looks concernedly at the group, starts marking stuff in his dopebook, (all the Marine shooters had dope books they'd mark and carry like the gospel) he rechecks the wind, the this & the that, then suddenly looks back to me and asks, "Did you see anything I did wrong?

It amazed me that someone of his caliber would check with an dummy shooter like I was.

Feeling on the spot I said, "Uh, well, the only thing I noticed was your elbow on your knee was pulsing towards 9 Oclock and your shots were breaking on the pulse?"

He looked and listened intently, looked back at his dope book, started writing, went adjusted windage on his rifle, repeated everything including the pulse, but cleaned the next 10 shots with a baseball sized group in the 10-X rings.

Later he said, sometimes I do this, I forget, it was weird because I couldn't feel it. Must've tunnel-visioned, Thanks.

I thought Wow, this is a true Master! Always a consummate student and open to pick up gains from anywhere, even from an imbecile!

Ol What's his name! (Damnit) EDIT: McCarthy!


I saw him years later, 2005-ish He was by now a Colonel. Had switched to a Match M16.

I walked up to him and said, do you still cant with the M16 like you used to with you M14?
It was like an immediate continuation from 1991. He started talking about positional differences, how in Afghanistan he rigged up a 200 yard range near wherever he was so he could work on his shooting and not get rusty. Guy had and still has the heart of a fucking Samurai.

Ok enough of my bullshit, what do you guys got? Tell, me I wanna learn something.
 
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I limp shouldered my M1A and learned I don’t need a bump stock lol.
 
I've recently got into skeet shooting more seriously and have found a lot of excellent tips on utube. Up against some dudes with $3,500 guns so it's been a good challenge.
This is some of the best mental prep teaching I've seen for a while. It's basically a excellent approach to life in general that applies to how raise raise children which he wrote a book about.
The dude was a world champion rifle shooter and helped a world champion skeet shooter take his game to the next level.
One of the things he focuses on is process over result.







 
I've recently got into skeet shooting more seriously and have found a lot of excellent tips on utube. Up against some dudes with $3,500 guns so it's been a good challenge.
This is some of the best mental prep teaching I've seen for a while. It's basically a excellent approach to life in general that applies to how raise raise children which he wrote a book about.
The dude was a world champion rifle shooter and helped a world champion skeet shooter take his game to the next level.
One of the things he focuses on is process over result.









Lanny is very good. Not the best speaker, but what he has to say is invaluable. I had a collection of his mental management tapes back in the early 90s.

One of the helpful things I got from his talks was the concept of reinforcing the outcome you want. So the 1st stage of a Highpower match is 20 shots offhand at 200 yards at a target like this:


The goal is 20 tens. With that in mind I made up a dryfire drill


Put your aiming mark on the wall start dryfiring but only mark down the 10s & Xs.

Any score less than 10 is ignored and you dry fire again till you get another 10.

When you're done you got twenty 10s.

After a while 10s is all you think.

It helped my avg offhand scores. for a while there I was around 195 offhand every match I'd goto.
 
A couple of years ago I tried my father in law's WWII Mauser.

That thing is .308 caliber I think, and he shoots it raw. No scope, no shoulder pad. To me it felt like a bomb exploded in front of me each time I shot it.

I can count on two hands the number of times I have shot a firearm in my entire life.

Yet I was able to group my shots within like 20 cm on average, at like 100 meters with this death machine.

I was always a very good shot with pellet guns as a kid but that is when I realised that I could have been pretty decent with guns if ever I had been exposed to them.

/ thinly-veiled bragging post.
 
I used to experiment with handloads in my S&W 686 .357. One load was a max power load with a 180 gr silhouette bullet. I shot it into a ream of printer paper that I had propped up on the floor of my parents basement. The bullet only went through about half the ream; it came apart. Then I tried the same bullet in a milder load, this time holding another ream of paper in my hand, just to see what it felt like. It's a good thing I held the paper up high, because the bullet tore right through it and disappeared through the ceiling into the attic.

What I learned: Less velocity allowed the bullet to stay together, therefore penetrate a lot better.
 
When I was learning true marksmanship (age 16) my instructor came and lay next to me in prone position and said:

"Don't snatch the trigger, if you have a girlfriend she's not going to like you finger banging her like that is she? You have to put your finger in her slowly and then gently curl your finger and pull back gently...repeat it the exact way each time and she'll be happy!"

I aced the next shooting test! lol
 
A couple of years ago I tried my father in law's WWII Mauser.

That thing is .308 caliber I think, and he shoots it raw. No scope, no shoulder pad. To me it felt like a bomb exploded in front of me each time I shot it.

The first big caliber gun I fired was this same story. .308 WW2 Mauser, I was like 12, before then I had only shot .22s and 12 gauge shotguns. So I feel your pain.

My dad was showing me why it was dangerous to shoot at water from an elevated angle, and shot at the water, to show the bullet bounce, he anticipated the bullet going into the large tree on the other side of our dam, instead it his favorite duck basically exploded. It was quite the lesson
 
The first big caliber gun I fired was this same story. .308 WW2 Mauser, I was like 12, before then I had only shot .22s and 12 gauge shotguns. So I feel your pain.

My dad was showing me why it was dangerous to shoot at water from an elevated angle, and shot at the water, to show the bullet bounce, he anticipated the bullet going into the large tree on the other side of our dam, instead it his favorite duck basically exploded. It was quite the lesson

Yeah as a non-educated guy regarding firearms, I honestly had no idea that a legal weapon coud generate so much power and death. It's impressive.
 
for self defense, a long/unmodified shotgun is a pain in the ass to handle. I highly suggest shortening it for easy handling.
 
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