What is a " Tack Driver " Anyway??

I'm guilty of using that term quite often here on this forum and many others. So what of it?

Tack driver is a superlative term by definition. Slang used to describe a guns accuracy in this instance and many others. Some guns are considered tack drivers or naturally accurate from their inception or birth if you will. While in most prove to be such and are touted as sub MOA or tack drivers by the manufactures gun scribes to boost sales.

The reality is it is entirely up to the nut behind the trigger.

Here is one of my Spanish Mauser builds that has turned out to be a Tack Driver in my eyes.

JDGray said:

It’s a rifle that is very accurate. Everybody know dat! Lol

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Everybody except the OP and me.

The first round is at the top left of the target and the last five are in the one hole that measured about 5/8 of an inch.

Turkeytider said:

LOL! Yea, I kinda knew that. Is one man`s " tack driver " another man`s " meh, that`s pretty good " depending on the individual definition of "accurate" ?

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What is an accurate rifle? One man's accurate rifle is another man's "meh, that's pretty good."

For me, a tackdriver is a gun with which I can shoot a tack (such as a thumbtack) at X distance. For my range, that would be 100 yards.

WrongHanded said:

Tack Driver: A firearm that (at some point in the past, or in the imagination) has demonstrated a level of accuracy which creates a sense of pride in the mind of the owner.

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This ^^^^ pretty much sums it up for me.

I have used the term “tack driver”. I used it today regarding an SKS I once owned. It was a very accurate rifle.

In high school, it was shooting out the tacks holding up your friend’s targets at practice….

When I was teaching archery at summer camp, we used 4 long pins on the corners to hold paper targets to our hay bail backstops. We called them tacks and driving one in with an arrow meant you were barely on the paper.

MY definition of a tack driver is a rifle I can drive home the tacks holding up the target. Range is inconsequential. I used to do it with my old Remington 22lr, a s&w 29, and ironically, with a very rare(as in accuracy) sks. So it can be a bit of hyperbole, or an actual firearm capable of such feats.

Like the time I told my buddy that my new savage 7mm-08 was a tack driver, and I dropped a round in the chamber and shot the string his hanging target was dangling from at 200 yards. Just looked at him like it was commonplace. Never told him it was totally an accident and I flinched...

Varminterror said:

For most folks, range from the rifle won’t matter. Whether at 25yrds, 50, or 100, most guys aren’t capable of driving racks, and a guy talking tack driving at 10yrds tends to fall into that class of telling fish tales about e’rything else too.

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My father in law used to shoot indoor smallbore. That game was only 50 feet. If you called one of those guys rifles a tack driver, they would be insulted since their 10 ring is much smaller than a typical tack at only 0.15”

their 10 ring is much smaller than a typical tack at only 0.15”

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Shot those targets for years.
Those would be pin heads

someguy2800 said:

My father in law used to shoot indoor smallbore. That game was only 50 feet. If you called one of those guys rifles a tack driver, they would be insulted since their 10 ring is much smaller than a typical tack at only 0.15”

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I shot in an indoor smallbore postal league for 4 years during part of undergrad and grad school. Parking sucked on campus so I rode my bike everywhere, which was interesting, as our group practiced/competed in the basement of the Military Science Building and riding through the Quad with a 13lb Win 52 slung over my back raised a few eyebrows. Naturally, it was the positional shooting which made the challenge, since a .15” 10 ring on A17’s was broken with a properly centered 2MOA group, and the center 10 DOT (not even a ring) on the NRA-50 target achieved with a 1moa group - and we weren’t fighting wind indoors. Ridiculously fun sport, but obviously not a common opportunity, since not many indoor rifle ranges exist, let alone have set up to allow regular 3/4position competition. That might be the only slow fire, precision shooting sport I’d still want to shoot if it were more readily available.

And like I said before - “accurate enough for the specialty of certain competitions” isn’t the same as “accurate.” Certainly, a tack at 50ft doesn’t yield a very good prone score, but a lot of folks would have been glad for that accuracy standing or kneeling.

Varminterror said:

If a guy can drive tacks, the rifle is grouping somewhere around 1/2moa, and there’s no one which can rightfully say that isn’t “accurate.” Maybe not accurate enough to compete in the highest forms of precision competition, maybe not the most accurate among accurate rifles, but certainly “accurate.”

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Varminterror said:

I shot in an indoor smallbore postal league for 4 years during part of undergrad and grad school. Parking sucked on campus so I rode my bike everywhere, which was interesting, as our group practiced/competed in the basement of the Military Science Building and riding through the Quad with a 13lb Win 52 slung over my back raised a few eyebrows. Naturally, it was the positional shooting which made the challenge, since a .15” 10 ring on A17’s was broken with a properly centered 2MOA group, and the center 10 DOT (not even a ring) on the NRA-50 target achieved with a 1moa group - and we weren’t fighting wind indoors. Ridiculously fun sport, but obviously not a common opportunity, since not many indoor rifle ranges exist, let alone have set up to allow regular 3/4position competition. That might be the only slow fire, precision shooting sport I’d still want to shoot if it were more readily available.

And like I said before - “accurate enough for the specialty of certain competitions” isn’t the same as “accurate.” Certainly, a tack at 50ft doesn’t yield a very good prone score, but a lot of folks would have been glad for that accuracy standing or kneeling.

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My father in law also shot a Winchester 52 and my brother in law shot with him with a Remington 37. They still have the rifles but haven’t shot them in about a decade. He was nationally ranked at one time but when he was no longer winning matches he lost interest and gave it up.

It’s another qualitative way to describe the accuracy of something without giving any actual quantitative data.

Next time someone uses the term, pull a few of these out of your pocket and let them have a go at driving them through the backer and see if the paper falls…

Which is more accurate: a tack driver or a rifle that shoots "lights out"?

If you can really drive a tack, your gun must not only be accurate, it must be perfectly zeroed. When hit, the tack goes away, you don't have a "group." Some scholard may now lecture on "accuracy" and "precision."

.308 Norma said:

I watched "Open Range" again the other night. There's one scene where either Costner or DuVall (I forget which) is using the butt of his revolver to drive tacks in order to post a notice on the door of the town marshal's office.

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That was very common in western movies, I don't know about the real range.
Elmer Keith wrote of a movie in which the cowboy used his front sight to pry out fence staples, led his horse over the dropped wire, then hammered the staples back in with the gun butt.

A “tack driver” is a gun that “shoots MAO all day, if I do my part”

ETA: a “tack driver” will also shoot “bug holes” and “clover leafs”

Turkeytider said:

See that term tossed around a lot. Is there a standard definition within the rifle shooting community?

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it is a rifle or rifles that every gun owner seems to have

WrongHanded said:

Tack Driver: A firearm that (at some point in the past, or in the imagination) has demonstrated a level of accuracy which creates a sense of pride in the mind of the owner.

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the imagination LOL you nailed it

Jim Watson said:

If you can really drive a tack, your gun must not only be accurate, it must be perfectly zeroed. When hit, the tack goes away, you don't have a "group." Some scholard may now lecture on "accuracy" and "precision."




That was very common in western movies, I don't know about the real range.
Elmer Keith wrote of a movie in which the cowboy used his front sight to pry out fence staples, led his horse over the dropped wire, then hammered the staples back in with the gun butt.

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what if you aim at a tack in the middle of the target but hit the tack in the corner holding the target to the board. is your rifle still a tack driver?

robin banks said:

what if you aim at a tack in the middle of the target but hit the tack in the corner holding the target to the board. is your rifle still a tack driver?

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What if I use the butt of the rifle to pound in the tacks?

.308 Norma said:

After Dad bought himself a little Browning semi-auto .22LR, I remember him saying there's no such thing as a "nail driver." It seemed that little Browning .22LR was the most "accurate" rifle Dad had ever owned, so he decided to see if he could drive nails with it. He pounded a few nails half-way into a 1x6 board, set the board up 10 or 12 yards out, and proceeded to try to drive the nails the rest of the way in by shooting them on their heads.
Dad's words, "It will bend them over, but it won't drive them in!"

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Gotta use a bigger HAMMER!