David E. Petzal - The Gun Nut

“Never mistake activity for achievement.”—John Wooden, arguably the greatest college basketball coach of all time.

I’ve been spending the summer trying to get the level of my pistol shooting from heartrending to poor, and have been reminded of a couple of truths along the way. That 10 percent of you who actually practice their shooting, take heed:

1. As Coach Wooden says, it will not do you any good to go out and fire a whole case of shells unless one of two things happens: a) You finish by shooting better or b) you finish knowing why you’re not shooting better. A pile of empty casings on the ground, by itself, means only that you are deafer and more broke than you were when you started.

2. Unless you are a true expert, it’s almost impossible to diagnose yourself. I’ve had the help of a friend who is a real expert, and he has spotted a couple of things I could be doing differently and/or better.

3. Progress is not linear. You do not get better at a steady rate. There are times when you will feel like you’re beating your head against the wall, and then, for no apparent reason, you break through to a new level.

4. Sometimes, you do have to burn ammo. I just ordered 2,000 rounds of Speer.22 LR Pistol Match from Midway Shooters Supply to replace the 2,000 I’ve burned up over the past several months.

5. As Dirty Harry Callahan said, “A man has to know his limitations.” Eventually, no matter how hard and how smart you work, you will reach the point where you can go no further. That’s fine. You can have just as much fun as a B-Class trap shooter as you can in AA Class.   

In my accuracy extravaganza in the July issue, the promise was made (not by me) that we would reveal the formula for calculating how much a flinch can throw off your bullet. Here it is:

Distance off = L * 0.0014706 

What you need to know in order to understand this gibberish is that the rifle is assumed to be 42.5 inches long, that L equals the distance the bullet will go wide, and that the asterisk means multiply. (Apparently mathematicians no longer use X for that purpose, although it did perfectly well for many centuries.)

So, if you want to calculate how far you will miss by at 200 yards you would multiply 200 by 0.0014706, which would give you 0.29412 yards or 10.59 inches.

Now if any of you who scored 800 in your math SATs would like to quibble, you can do so with each other. Feel free. I am not going to get involved.

The only things you really need to know about recoil are: a) it will make you miss for seemingly inexplicable reasons, since no one admits they do it, because b) it casts serious doubt on your manhood, and c) it can be cured by getting a much less powerful gun.

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And a further note on the accuracy piece. In the summary of how the Winchester Model 70 shot, I said it performed like an old Model 70. I've learned that's because it was an old Model 70 that looked like a new gun, but was actually assembled from leftover parts from the New Haven plant. I was sent the same rifle, yet again, for an upcoming piece on the ups and downs of the Model 70. I am told that I will get a real, honest-to-God new rifle in late July. We will see.

Thanks to the blogger who suggested this.

Here's what goes into my range bag.

Three pair of headphones, one with sound in them. (Why three? For people I teach, and for the occasional pitiful bastard who shows up on the line with a pair of cotton balls.)

Screwdrivers. Standard blade, Torx, Allen wrenches, and one great big screwdriver for Leupold windage screws.

Belding & Mull takedown steel cleaning rod for knocking out stuck shells.

Leatherman Wave.

Two pairs of molded ear plugs. (Used in combination with the headphones when I shoot muzzle brakes.)

Weatherproof notebook for recording chronograph readings.

Chronograph aiming cards and sunscreens.

Scoring gauges for .22 rimfire matches (sometimes I get to do this.)

Ball-less whistle. (For range officering.)

Stopwatch. (Same.)

A roll of heavy, black stick-on aiming squares. For when my geezer eyes need some help.

Three pairs of shooting glasses. One for me, two as loaners. If you have a spare pair of eyes, you can skip these.

Bug repellent. The little bastards love me.

Two Fisher Space Pens. One small Sharpie. One great big Sharpie. One big fat Magic Marker. Writing is better than trying to remember.

100 rounds of Winchester .22 LR High Velocity for practicing with my .22 rifle.

100 rounds of CCI .22 LR Pistol Match, for practicing with my S&W Model 41. Having the ammo on hand encourages me to practice. I need it.

The weight of all this would bring a mule to its knees, but what the hell, shooting is about having lots of stuff, so why not?

Part of the trouble with our older scope mounting systems is that they were designed way back when scope reticles were not permanently centered. If you cranked the crosshairs up and right, they traveled up into the upper right quadrant of your field of view and there they sat. So rather than adjusting the crosshairs, shooters would center them and then adjust the scope itself up, down, right or left. This was an immense pain in the ass, and once you had a scope mounted, you didn't touch it.

Now we don't have to do this, unless the barrel is out of line with the receiver, and then you will probably need a mounting system with some of the old left/right to it.

The strongest mount around is made by David Miller, the great Tucson rifle builder. He builds each one to fit a particular rifle, and they are constructed so that the scope is almost entirely encased by the steel rings and bases.

The lightest/simplest rings and bases are made by Talley, and were designed by Melvin Forbes of New Ultra light arms. The base and lower half of each ring is one piece of aircraft aluminum. They weigh less than a hummingbird's spleen, but are extremely strong.

The strongest bases and rings, aside from David Miller's, are the standard Talleys. They are steel, and have a virtual death grip on the fine-gun biz. Every expensive rifle you see employs them. However, getting them mounted can cause you to say many a bad word, and the directions don't help much.

The worst rings and bases are any of the see-unders. Structurally they are weak and they force you to lift your head off the stock to see through the scope and thereby violate one of the principles of sound rifle shooting. And try to get a gun with these abominations on board into a saddle scabbard.

Last year, one of the items of shooting equipment to receive a Best of the Best award was the Rapid Acquisition Shooting System, made by R.C.B.S (and who there among ye can tell me what that acronym stands for, and how it came to be?). We used it in our rifle tests, and the three of us who did the shooting loved it.

Despite its somewhat overblown name, the R.A.S.S. is simply a portable shooting bench--a stand with four legs, a seat, and a rifle brace that supports the fore-end and the butt. The R.A.S.S. is heavy and hyper-engineered, but it is very quick to set up, can adapt to just about any uneven terrain, and is dead solid.

I've found it most useful at the rifle ranges I use, both of which have fixed backstops and benches. If you want to shoot at 25 yards or 50 or 100, you're fine, but if you want to shoot at 5 yards (getting a scope on paper) or 10 yards (air rifles) or 250 or 300, you're SOL. So what you to is take your R.A.S.S. to the range and your problems are solved.

Or you can take it groundhog shooting and you will not have to lie prone on a fresh meadow muffin in order to be steady. Prairie dog shooting? A natural.

The real-world price for the R.A.S.S. is around $350. It's worth it, and then some.

Back when I was young and knew everything, I was convinced that a good shot was a good shot, period, and that anyone who could shoot well at paper targets had to shoot well on game, and vice-versa. Now I am not so sure.

Shooting well at targets and shooting well at game require different skill sets. The target shooter must be able to control his breathing and heartbeat, be able to read mirage and wind, have a perfect trigger squeeze, have his shooting positions down to perfection, and be thoughtful and deliberate at all times. Being a good game shot requires that you shoot quickly, from awkward positions, at ill-defined and/or moving targets, and above all, that you be able to kill without hesitation.

This last is a big thing. Taking a life does not come easily to many people, and I have seen many, many otherwise fine shots become completely unhinged when the time came to drop the hammer on something that was breathing. About the only thing you can do about this is shoot until you do everything automatically, but even that is no sure solution.

Probably the best example of the "bad target/great game" shot is an African PH. The ones I've seen shoot at paper can sight in a rifle OK, but that's about it. However, if you want someone to stick a big bullet up the nose of a Cape buffalo that is 10 feet away, coming at full speed, and has payback on his mind, he is the guy to see.

I'm indebted to one of you for giving me this idea but I can't remember who it is. In any event thanks, and don't expect a small-frame 28-gauge in the mail.
      
Mostly, it's the shooter. If you'd like an illustration of this, go to a benchrest match where everyone's rifle can send five shots into .12245-inch (or something of that size) under ideal conditions. Yet if one of these  guns is put in the hands of a non-benchrest competitor, you'll get half-inch or one-inch groups. The reason? Tiny groups come not only from the rifle, but from a shooter's ability to dope wind and mirage at a supernatural level.
      
A bad rifle in the hands of a good shooter will produce bad groups, but a good rifle fired by a poor shot will also turn in poor groups.
      
For shotguns, it's somewhat different. A really skillful hand can shoot just about anything well, but to turn in his best shooting, he has to have a gun that fits him perfectly and whose balance works for him.  Uncle Robert Brister, who was the best I ever saw with a scattergun, could take anything and outshoot anyone (almost), but if he had his druthers, he would always go to a gun that particularly suited him.
      
A fellow named Dave Crosby, who worked for various gun publications and was a wonderful shotgunner, never used anything but a 30-inch-barreled Parker (I think) for everything. Skeet, trap, birds, it didn't matter. How he would have done with something else I do not know, but he was a wizard with that old side-by-side.

After much prayer, meditation, and fasting (well, no, no fasting, screw that) I have realized that our deterioration as a nation is not due to our addiction to gasoline, Internet porn, a Congress that has pretty much given up, a pinheaded President, or Senator Hillary R. Clinton's nightmarish, nonstop whoring after the Oval Office. No, it is due to the Lead Sled.

In case you're not familiar with this infernal device, it is a metal pan upon which is affixed a rifle mount. To use, you lock your rifle in the mount and throw lead-filled shot bags on the sled. Then you aim the rifle and shoot, and the monstrous combined weight of sled and lead completely eliminates all recoil.

If you use the Lead Sled you will not suffer from detached retinas, blinding headaches, crying jags, spinal injuries, or any of the other neat stuff that recoil can cause. That's the good news. The bad news is you will be a sissie boy, a girlie man.

Friends, listen to me: The way you learn to shoot a rifle that kicks is by shooting a rifle that kicks. My brother, a sixth-degree black belt (Tae Kwon Do), tells me of martial arts experts who have gotten their asses whipped in real fights because they spent almost all their time pulling their punches in a dojo. If you decide that you would like to shoot a rifle that kicks, you will not learn to handle it by locking it into the Lead Sled. You do so by shooting it for real and getting your brains scrambled.

Good shooting begins with the acceptance of pain. Great shooting begins with the love of pain. Do you think John Wayne would have used a Lead Sled? Do you think John Wayne would have appeared in Brokeback Mountain ? You have been warned.