What's the old saying? Shooting off the bench proves the rifle while shooting off-hand proves the shooter?

I am with you Ernie, but we are so civilized and helpful here at SC that some people's treads that start as advice seeking end up telling us how we have been doing it wrong all along. Would be much better if they actually came to our matches and showed us how to do it.

I say we snipe the trolls from teh offhand position!!!
Innocent

Ok, I cant help myself any longer.....

The top silhouette shooters shoot 20 plus power. That is the short answer. What follows is in response to the silly Sniper vs Competition shooter argument I've heard for the last 28 years.

I earned the MOS 8431, Marine Scout Sniper in April of 1983, and carried a sniper rifle of one sort or another until 1990. I am also fairly adept at the competition shooting disciplines. (Distinguished rifle and pistol, Presidents 100 rifle and pistol, 4 national records, 3 national team championships, blah, blah, blah...)

SO. Any sniper will greatly benefit from Silhouette, or HRA HighPower for that matter. The skills needed to shoot at a high level from position(s) that are inherently unstable will easily translate back into improving the shot delivery process a sniper would use. The fact is that shooting from a supported position is less difficult that from standing: so if you get better at standing at everything else seems easier. I competed on the USMC rifle team in the summer of 85 and 86 and can assure you I went back to my sniper rifle WAY better prepared than I was when I started each year.

A silhouette shooter will likely NOT gain much by shooting like a sniper, when they go back to silhouette. The sniper,on the other hand, will benefit more significantly from the silhouette shooting, when they return to their primary MOS.

The real hard part of being a sniper is not in the mechanics of delivering a precision shot. It is the knowledge that pressing the trigger ends a life; one you see in the magnification of your scope much more personally than you might imagine. Many I know are haunted by images of those exact shots, despite knowing they were morally right for doing what happened did. The worst I've ever felt in Silhouette was that I missed my Grand Slam AGAIN....pale by comparison.

Check your references too. Snipers today carry at least 10 power (fixed) scopes like the Unertl on the M40 A_ rifles, or higher powered variables, Nightforce primarily, up to 18=20 power commonly. Most dont get to pick rifles based on distances either. Only a few tier one units have the ability to choose weapons based on specific mission profiles, and they have the .308, .300 winMag, .338 Lapua, .408 CheyTac, and.50 cal's most commonly. Again, there are fewer than 200 operational snipers in the entire DOD that have access to that suite of weapons. Most Army and Marine snipers have either the M40 or M24 in .308. Some Navy ones use a .308 semi auto by Knights Armament, but the teams tend to have a others.

If you were trying to spark controversy, well done.

Now, Zero that high powered scope and shoot.

Rant over, we'll now return to our regularly scheduled programming

THSKEER, I'm glad you posted ,as you point out so glaringly the difference between shooters who have their lives on the line, and professional shooters, who if a good shot is not made at the right time, your family doesn't eat and recreational shooters that are shooting for trophies and accolades.
Coming from you the fact that I stirred up some controversy is a well received compliment. I want everyone that I had the pleasure to converse with that I learned alot from you and and am very grateful to you for sharing your insights with me.
And just for your information I shot pistols for 5-6 years and rifles for 2-3 years for 5-6 hours every day ,and from sun up till sun down on weekends. I considered myself o.k. as a shooter. Oh, by the way I only shot standing, except when load testing. I wish that all of you shoot a 40/40 at least one time in your life.
ifldned

One thing is for sure competetive shooting will make you a better shot. I started as a young lad in position shooting like a lot of the shooters here and then carried my skills to the military where I shot Hawk eye 40/40 as an expert with the M16 and perfect with the Beretta 92F. I am a former 31 Bravo. I was the top shooter in every unit I was attached to and though I was not a sniper I could wooop thier ass more ofthen than not ....why because precision shooting on the civilian side is about points where you must be much more accurate where a sniper shoots mostly at the silhouette. much more enphasis is placed on field craft. All that said there are some very good snipers out there now but I bet if you check you will find that the very best ones started as a kid in smallbore prone or position shooting.

I am far removed from really making any comment on military snipers, but there is a scout/sniper unit near by that occasionally uses our range in Mesa to practice, I happened to be there one day when they were practicing and one guy there said "Hey I have seen you before, you sighted in my rifle at Ben Avery last year before deer season" If I was any kind of a sniper, I wouldn't be paying anyone 5.00 to sight in my rifle and I wouldn't tell anyone about it. There are about 5-6 valley police department Swat teams that use the same range. After seeing them shoot I can think of three or four AA silhouette shooters that I would rather have behind a rifle, if I was ever a hostage.

thskeer,
You are the 3rd person that I am aware of active in shooting silhouette and has in the past that has been a sniper professionally. My hats off to you for bringing up the one thing that all I have met will mention eventually (when drunk enough) and that is the mental side. I have worked in the field for a former UDT member, very interesting person and hard worker, but still has some unbelievable issues with certain things. When you hear some of the stories, you can not imagine the actions or what they must deal with daily.
Your points of the discipline involved in silhouette or any competitive shooting are true, I have seen it happen in many a law enforcement officer that has problems qualifying, when I can get them to try competition shooting of some kind the overall performance improves.

May you finish your grand slam and keep shooting the metal critters. Look forward to seeing you at a match soon.

Mary

Shooting people and sniper skills in general are very different than shooting silhouette, name one AAA master/military sniper, there probably are a few but I know alot of silhouette shooters and have never met one.

Like i said before the very best ones started in civilian marksmanship...But having run in those circles I can say that those gentalmen prefer to keep that side of thier work private.

malinois wrote:Like i said before the very best ones started in civilian marksmanship...But having run in those circles I can say that those gentalmen prefer to keep that side of thier work private.

Amen. The baddest people I've known talked about it the least. I talk about it, therefore it cleaned my bowels, so I am not bad.

nomad wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29

Rgr that...

Jim, the experience you stated at the range matches my limited experience with police snipers. I was at a range in Idaho where a couple were shooting. They could NOT hit all the rams from the bench and we had less than 10 mph wind.

Most police sniper shots are inside 200 yards, the hard part is keeping your cool and killing another human being that may spot you and shoot back, that adds a whole different element to the situation. Killing a person that you may have never met or personally have anything against is much more difficult than you might imagine. Shooting games and killing someone have very little in common if your a normal person.