Dri-fire opinions, please.....

[OnaginOffagin]

For many of us, "good enough ammo" is too expensive to practice much....so....

To get as good as you can get, how much should you dri-fire?
How much "hold practice?"
How much air rifle practice?
Indoors at 50'?
What else helps?

[steve b.]

Aside from what Kitty or Mary offer (bankable advice in my opinion), I know that Eric Uptagrafft did about 90% dryfire over a period of a year when he made his first Olympics.

Get a DF pin or get an extra regular FP and cut it short, or use spent casing that is cleaned from grit and hammer away.

I have read alot of your posts, and I see that you are looking to improve, asking about equipment upgrades, ammo, air rifles, ect - all while on a budget.

If you are on a budget - then dry fire. The very best olympic shooters in the world, ones that have limitless Eley 10x at their disposal still dryfire.

Pouring money into upgrades should be the last thing you do. I believe there is no substitute for trigger time. An air rifle is great if you can invest in a quality rifle, scope, pellets, target, ect.. You would be much further down the road dollar for dollar dry firing.

You could buy a brick of SK Standard, and tell yourself for every single live round to shoot, you follow that up with 40 dry-fire shots. 20,000 trigger pulls later, and you will have really made some solid progress.

Hold practice and dry fire are close that you can pretty much do both at the same time. Kitty may have more insight on hold practice.

50 indoor is a waste of time. Dry fire in your house to build hold and positon, shoot outside to learn how the wind works, and how to shoot in it.



s.

[CZforlife]

What is hold practice exactly?

[OnaginOffagin]

Thanks, Steve B.! I'm on it!

CZfor life........ Holding practice is putting up a series of circles, of different sizes, and hold on them, trying to keep the dot in smaller and smaller circles.......

see this: http://www.zediker.com/articles/zcomlawt.pdf

[CZforlife]

WOW, very intresting Ill have to give this a try. Thanks

[Dee]

I do some dry firing from time to time. It gives good feedback on whats happening when the hammer strikes. Although it is rather boring I must admit I have thousands of empties saved up to do just that. I prefer actual shooting as it is more entertaining and I have a nice selection of airguns for switching up with the smallbore. If you can't shoot at your home dry firing is about as good as it gets for practice. Do a couple hold drills and then try some dry firing mixed in. Even thought I can shoot my 1712 at the house I still only shoot it about 25% of the time and the rest is all airgun.

Don't discount shooting a shorter ranges inside, trigger time is trigger time after all. I have 4 range areas at my house and one of them is inside and only 40' max. When you can drill 5 shots into a hole only slightly larger than a single pellet it builds confidence and you have to have the hand eye coordination down with the trigger pull to make that happen even at a mere 10m with an airgun that has such a slow shot cycle it demands the most follow through of any rifle you can shoot.

It is just so hard to be disciplined enough to dry fire when you can shoot live rounds but it is a great learning tool and something I should do more of. As for holding drills I try to do some while practicing as well just to try and get the body to settle without worrying about breaking the trigger. It is amazing how well you can hold at times when you have no intention of trying to shoot anything so not even worried about missing lol.

Dee

[OnaginOffagin]

Thanks, everyone...... I'm trying to decide what pays better dividends for the silhouette shooter, dri-fire or air rifle..... I do have a quality air rifle, an old RWS Model 75 match, a recoilless springer that still shoots better than I do, topped with a BSA 4-12 scope.... and I can shoot 10 meters at home anytime. The gun shoots $7/500 Crossman Premier pellets pretty well, and the they are available at my local BiMart. Also, as I've alluded to before, I have a 50' indoor range six minutes away.....And I have a good dri-fire setup. The only thing I don't have is a silhouette range, although I do have a measure wheel and a place where I can measure out for paper targets, but the wind in my home-town blows constantly at a ridiculous velocity.... we're talking maybe 10 minutes at 100 meters......! Consequently, I don't practice too much outdoors....waste of ammo.....

So, dri-fire or 10 meter air, that's the question....

[atomicbrh]

10 MOA wind at 100 meters. That's over 10 inches of bullet drift at 100 meters. If that was a every day thing for me I do not know if I personally would have the mental strength to shoot this sport outdoors. I do not know what that is in miles per hour. To me those are nearly impossible conditions to train in if the shooter on the firing line is not protected and is being blown around also. Unpredictable lulls would make that 10 MOA even more difficult. If you train in that you will really be able to shoot in calm conditions. At my home range the shooter is protected from all sides. When the gusts are unpredictable I just dry-fire on smallbore swingers at the usual distances.

Some very good advice on the replies to this topic.

Bobby R. Huddleston

[lone ringer]

10 MOA wind at 100 meters. That's over 10 inches of bullet drift at 100 meters. If that was a every day thing for me I do not know if I personally would have the mental strength to shoot this sport outdoors. I do not know what that is in miles per hour. To me those are nearly impossible conditions to train in if the shooter on the firing line is not protected and is being blown around also. Unpredictable lulls would make that 10 MOA even more difficult. If you train in that you will really be able to shoot in calm conditions. At my home range the shooter is protected from all sides. When the gusts are unpredictable I just dry-fire on smallbore swingers at the usual distances.

Some very good advice on the replies to this topic.

Bobby R. Huddleston

I too thought that if I learned to shoot well in the wind I would be able to shoot very well in calm conditions so every time I had a chance I would stop at the local club after work for a shooting session in very windy conditions to the point that I got good at it and when I went to the Nationals at Ridgway where there was no wind it took me all of the SB matches to learn to shoot well in no wind conditions. What happened is that I got so used to having movement when I was holding during training that I did not know what to do when I had no movement introduced by the wind. Would have been better if I had mixed shooting indoors and outdoors but you know what they say about hindsight being 20-20

[Bob259]

.................. when I went to the Nationals at Ridgway where there was no wind it took me all of the SB matches to learn to shoot well in no wind conditions..................

Well Tony, you would have been happy at Ridgway this last weekend. Nice wind and gusts just enough to make it interesting.

The good news was we got none of the thunder storms that were forecast.