A good day at the range...

[Totentanz]

Hit a personal best last night and broke into the sub-MOA range. <3/4" at 100m. Any suggestions on where to go from here? My initial reaction is that I'll probably move out to 200m, and continue to work on tightening down groups at that range. Just curious to get some guidance from those who've been here before.

View attachment 12541

 

[8'Duece]

That's a seriously good group, but what caliber, what platform, what ammuniton ? Off a rest ? Bi-Pod etc ?

 

[Totentanz]

I was using a Tikka in 30-06 (150 gr Federal Vital-shok), prone w/ bipod.

 

[Diamondback 2/2]

Congrats on the shot group!

It's kind of hard to give advice on what the next area of focus should be with out knowing what your goal is that you want to achive. Of course the basic response is to keep doing what your doing until you can repeat it every time you shoot (i.e. every day is a sub-MOA day at 100).

If you are looking at PR/LR type shooting, then I would place a lot of focus on shooting in the wind. There is really not much differnce from 100 to 200, just a BDC adjustment. However depending on the caliber/rifle match up between 300 to 500 is where you will start to find the down range effects of wind on the bullet, and thus be able to practice making adjustments and or hold offs to comp for the wind effects.

 

[Totentanz]

Ideally, the goal is to be able to consistently engage the smallest target possible at the longest distance possible. To make that a bit more quantifiable, the range I go to is a 400m KD range (100m step between targets), so my end goal is to be able to replicate these results (sub-MOA accuracy) as closely as possible at 400m.

I'm also trying to push toward being able to increase accuracy from multiple positions (ie standing vs kneeling vs prone unsupported vs bipod). I'm not sure how feasible accuracy from standing is past 200m or so... so I'm also trying to develop some reasonable goals both short term and long term.

Of course the basic response seems logical, but as I'm doing that, I'd like to add in something else to move toward, so I'm not just showing up to the range to check the box again if that makes sense.

 

[Diamondback 2/2]

Right on, I am guessing you already understand minute of angle and basic wind and gravity. ?

I would say go here http://www.iowahighpower.com/hplinks/databook.htm and download a some data book sheets. You can use them to start recording your dope. I would also recomend buying one of these http://www.ambientweather.com/amhp816a.html it's a cheap get you started tool that will make collecting your data 10 times faster and easy.

What you should do is fire 5 round shot groups at each disance and then record the bullet drop and the wind push. So if you are zeroed at 100 and shooting at a target at 300, you will record hom much your bullet droped and if there was any wind, the value of that wind and how far it pushed your bullet. Of course fill in the temperature and the other data. What this will allow you to do is build a record of conditions, so that when you are in those conditions again you will know what adjustments to use.

If you can shoot sub-moa at 100 then you can do it at 400, it's just a matter of knowing the effects of wind and gravity on your bullet/gun combo and being able to adjust for those effects.

As for the position shooting, you will need to do a lot of dry practice of building a solid shooting position. Follow that up with shooting at 100 where the wind and gravity are not effecting your shot, so that you can get the best results prior to adding the other effects.

To be honest I do not know of many people who can hold sub-moa groups in the standing or kneeling positions, is it possible (yes) but I would not set that as a goal. I would look for something that you can build up to and then improve on. Say like 10 shots on a bulls eye at distance with a score of 75, and then try and push that score to 80 and then 85 and so on.

Dry drills/ dryfire is going to be the key to position shooting, You have to build the muscles to support the rifle in each position prior to managing the recoil. So I would say practice 5 minutes in each position doing dryfire, once you get to a point where the fatigue is not as bad make it 10 minutes and then 15 minutes. The longer you can hold a position the better...

If you own a video camera, video your self shooting. This will allow you to maintain a record of the shooting session and allow you to see for your self what you are doing right and wrong. Being able to see that you changed something while shooting a group, that may have caused a bad shot or being able to see what your doing to achive good shots is a big plus.

For wind and gravity read this, it's a pretty good post. http://www.shadowspear.com/vb/showthread.php?9341-External-Ballistics&p=123292#post123292

For marksmanship refresher http://www.shadowspear.com/vb/showthread.php?13956-Aka-Fundamentals-of-Marksmanship-with-a-scoped-rifle.&p=195268#post195268

Hope this helps!

 

[Voodoo]

c'mon, where is the 1/4 inch at?

 

[Totentanz]

Right on, I am guessing you already understand minute of angle and basic wind and gravity. ?

I would say go here http://www.iowahighpower.com/hplinks/databook.htm and download a some data book sheets. You can use them to start recording your dope. I would also recomend buying one of these http://www.ambientweather.com/amhp816a.html it's a cheap get you started tool that will make collecting your data 10 times faster and easy.

What you should do is fire 5 round shot groups at each disance and then record the bullet drop and the wind push. So if you are zeroed at 100 and shooting at a target at 300, you will record hom much your bullet droped and if there was any wind, the value of that wind and how far it pushed your bullet. Of course fill in the temperature and the other data. What this will allow you to do is build a record of conditions, so that when you are in those conditions again you will know what adjustments to use.

If you can shoot sub-moa at 100 then you can do it at 400, it's just a matter of knowing the effects of wind and gravity on your bullet/gun combo and being able to adjust for those effects.

As for the position shooting, you will need to do a lot of dry practice of building a solid shooting position. Follow that up with shooting at 100 where the wind and gravity are not effecting your shot, so that you can get the best results prior to adding the other effects.

To be honest I do not know of many people who can hold sub-moa groups in the standing or kneeling positions, is it possible (yes) but I would not set that as a goal. I would look for something that you can build up to and then improve on. Say like 10 shots on a bulls eye at distance with a score of 75, and then try and push that score to 80 and then 85 and so on.

Dry drills/ dryfire is going to be the key to position shooting, You have to build the muscles to support the rifle in each position prior to managing the recoil. So I would say practice 5 minutes in each position doing dryfire, once you get to a point where the fatigue is not as bad make it 10 minutes and then 15 minutes. The longer you can hold a position the better...

If you own a video camera, video your self shooting. This will allow you to maintain a record of the shooting session and allow you to see for your self what you are doing right and wrong. Being able to see that you changed something while shooting a group, that may have caused a bad shot or being able to see what your doing to achive good shots is a big plus.

For wind and gravity read this, it's a pretty good post. http://www.shadowspear.com/vb/showthread.php?9341-External-Ballistics&p=123292#post123292

For marksmanship refresher http://www.shadowspear.com/vb/showthread.php?13956-Aka-Fundamentals-of-Marksmanship-with-a-scoped-rifle.&p=195268#post195268

Hope this helps!

Good stuff, thanks. Data book seems like something I'd (as an engineer w/ a background in data analysis) get heavily into. And the position/dryfire stuff sounds like a good idea.

Just to be clear, I'm not sure how accurate I can get from standing, but I figured I'd start like from prone - shoot, see where I'm hitting, and try to reduce the group size. 1 MOA is probably a stretch, but if I could get it down to 2 or 3 - whatever, as long as it's coming down, and I'm increasing my accuracy and effectiveness, I'm happy. Using the bulls-eye scoring system for that sounds like a pretty good plan. Maybe start seeing what I can do on those targets at 100, and then like you said... just adjust for wind/drop/environment as distance increases?

c'mon, where is the 1/4 inch at?

Not entirely tracking on this comment... you want me to pull that down to 1/2" group? :cool:

 

[8'Duece]

Believe it or not my Les Baer "Thunder Ranch" .223 does in fact throw a .5 MOA @ 100 yards.

It's made to do that though.

 

[Voodoo]

Good stuff, thanks. Data book seems like something I'd (as an engineer w/ a background in data analysis) get heavily into. And the position/dryfire stuff sounds like a good idea.

Just to be clear, I'm not sure how accurate I can get from standing, but I figured I'd start like from prone - shoot, see where I'm hitting, and try to reduce the group size. 1 MOA is probably a stretch, but if I could get it down to 2 or 3 - whatever, as long as it's coming down, and I'm increasing my accuracy and effectiveness, I'm happy. Using the bulls-eye scoring system for that sounds like a pretty good plan. Maybe start seeing what I can do on those targets at 100, and then like you said... just adjust for wind/drop/environment as distance increases?



Not entirely tracking on this comment... you want me to pull that down to 1/2" group? :cool:

I would be glad to hit the damn thing with a shotgun.

 

[Totentanz]

Believe it or not my Les Baer "Thunder Ranch" .223 does in fact throw a .5 MOA @ 100 yards.

It's made to do that though.

Nice... I'm pretty impressed with the Tikka. Other than the scope and bipod (neither of which is particularly expensive or highspeed), the rifle's bone stock firing whatever 30-06 ammo I could snag at Walmart for cheap. Needless to say, I'm fucking elated...

I would be glad to hit the damn thing with a shotgun.

gotcha... :cool: