Technique

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Technique

A Box of Practice

Technique

To me, and I say this a lot, especially to new silhouette shooters, is that this sport is a lot like golf. You want to develop your swing and repeat this swing on every drive because you need it to be predictable. The golf ball and the club are predictable like your ammo, scope and barrel . Now if you can get your stance, hold, trigger control and follow-through into a "swing", you'll quickly see the correlation.

The warm-ups shots are important and I put 30 of my box into getting my head right. They not only get you in the groove of things, but you start to remember a lot of the little things you need to do right, the things you need to avoid and what good shots look like. Most importantly, you remember your "swing" - you FEEL your "swing". You know when you're swinging correctly and you know when you're standing there trying to pull off a mulligan.

I can tell I'm in my "swing" when the shot breaks because I sighted the picture and the trigger seemed to have pulled itself. I'm confident I'm in my swing when I see a snap-shot of the dot, in my mind, sitting on the target as I heard the shot. It's when one of these little things doesn't happen, I know it was a lack of discipline - I broke my swing and threw up a shot to chance.

So, what did the remaining 20 shots tell me? It told me, it's about what my average score is for a match.

(The shootin' iron)

Section A - You can see these 5 I pulled up over the top, 2 of them horribly. The three bottom shots were me being sloppy. The top two were just a plain breakdown in discipline.

Section B - More sloppy effort. While I felt they were in the vicinity, I should have better recognized I wasn't in my swing and started over.

Section C - A bit more than 1/2 were solid, in my swing, shots. Each one of these, I knew were going to be nuts because the trigger released, I had a picture in my head and I could feel I was in the swing. Another thing I've learned is that my "vicinity" seems to be a 3" radius when it clearly requires a 2"radius to stay in the hit-zone.

So - the question is - if you find yourself outside the swing, recognize this and start over - how do you get to the swing... I'm going to explore that one a little more this week...

(A South'ern Range for some practice)

Bad day at the range

Technique

So you think you've had a bad day at the silhouette range?

Contributed by Dwaine

With the possible exception of a few shooters in Master class, few of us are happy with every score we turn in. Most of us are looking for improvement. Some days just don't go our way and we find ourselves unable to improve or even watching our scores slip a bit. On occasion some of us might have an outright awful day. Here is a recollection of mine.

Firstly, I didn't actually have a bad day. I had a great day. I wasn't at the office. The sun was poking through the clouds. There was a good turnout for the match. Lots of good conversation between relays. I got some good input from one of the master class shooters. When the day was over I still had a positive outlook on the sport and was particularly excited about having a concrete game plan on how to improve the weak points of my game.

Elevation

Technique

Elevation

Here's some info gleamed from a recent shooting clinic. We liked the presentation and decided to repeat it here.

As a silhouette shooter our goal is to put the crosshairs on the animal and break the shot. Our common enemy is wiggle. Nobody is immune from the wiggles, but the better shooter has methods to control it. If we break down all the random movements they are either in the vertical or horizontal direction or a combination of the two. The following techniques are aimed at minimizing movement in the vertical direction.

Spare the shot

Technique

Spare the shot, spoil the shooter.

The plan is simple enough. Get into position, breathe, hold, break the shot on target. When it works, all is well. But how do we deal with things when they don't go well.

The solution is easy enough; don't take the shot. A rushed shot has a lower chance of hitting it's mark. A better shooter has an expectation of a hit. Don't settle for the chance of a hit.

So what happens when we have fallen out of the groove and start to feel rushed? We are nearing the end of our 4 to 8 seconds of air. We start to contemplate this and think about breaking before our hold becomes less steady. Instead of panicking and maybe forcing the situation, the better shooter restarts the process.

Practice with Imas

Technique

Practice Time With Dave Imas

With winter around the corner, indoor practice might look enticing to some. At least one of the authors here at steelchickens.com is interested in getting in some indoor practice. We decided to ask the master and find out what he thinks. A big thank you to Dave Imas for taking the time to answer our questions.