Long Range Rifle/Scope/PRS question(s)

I had some real good stages, but some poor ones. I still need to get steadier and faster. I cleaned the Stage # 5. KYL rack (409) and IPSC (612) semi prone (Only 4 of us cleaned that stage) Shoot the biggest plate on rack, shoot the IPSC, shoot the next size on the rack, shoot the IPSC, etc, etc. Called "Back & Forth".

A very fun day, despite the poor stages. It was a tough course of fire today IMHO, between the movement, multiple targets on stages, target sizes, etc. Wind was switchy and tough at times, but overall not too bad. My lost points were mostly timing out, or not being stable enough and missing. I did a good job with the wind for the most part. I had 8s, 9s, and the one 10, but had some 4's and 5s as well.

61 hits (Two of us had 61), 34th out of 62, so I fell back into the bottom 50%.......dang it. :)

The "junior" girl in the pics (Melanie) got 26 hits, very impressive. Dad and squad helped, but still, she did it by herself except for getting dope, which dad did, and some help with wind adjustments, but she handled the gun alone, and made hits out to 800+.
IMG_3525.JPG
IMG_3519.JPG

That's right, she made it to position 5 on the rocks without timing out. Nice!
IMG_3522.JPG
 
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Walkalong said:
I had some real good stages, but some poor ones. I still need to get steadier and faster. I cleaned the Stage # 5. KYL rack (409) and IPSC (612) semi prone (Only 4 of us cleaned that stage) Shoot the biggest plate on rack, shoot the IPSC, shoot the next size on the rack, shoot the IPSC, etc, etc. Called "Back & Forth".

A very fun day, despite the poor stages. It was a tough course of fire today IMHO, between the movement, multiple targets on stages, target sizes, etc. Wind was switchy and tough at times, but overall not too bad. My lost points were mostly timing out, or not being stable enough and missing. I did a good job with the wind for the most part. I had 8s, 9s, and the one 10, but had some 4's and 5s as well.

61 hits (Two of us had 61), 34th out of 62, so I fell back into the bottom 50%.......dang it. :)

The "junior" girl in the pics (Melanie) got 26 hits, very impressive. Dad and squad helped, but still, she did it by herself except for getting dope, which dad did, and some help with wind adjustments, but she handled the gun alone, and made hits out to 800+.
View attachment 995893
View attachment 995894

That's right, she made it to position 5 on the rocks without timing out. Nice!
View attachment 995895
Click to expand...
What shooting range was this?

I dig her pink suppressor cover :cool:
 
I used to time out so I spent a couple weeks working on getting faster. Then I almost never timed out.

imho keys to going fast:

finding targets fast
Dial your mag down a bit if necessary. Keep your eyes on the target. Don’t look at your gun. Bring your gun and head together and look directly over your scope as you’re getting into position so you’re indexing or pointing the gun right at the target then slide your head down and you should see them in the FOV

take binos to stage briefing. (Or spotting scope or monocular. LRF Whatever.) look at the targets and make notes about what is around them. For example just low left of biggest tree in tree line. Or follow dirt road out and target is just below top of hill. Bonus tip: ROs have prob been driving four wheelers or side by sides to paint the targets all week so look for tracks.

Then make a plan on which order to shoot the targets. If you’re transitioning between a lot of targets on one stage, think in terms of clock direction. Ie target 3 is 1 o’clock from target 2. Then while you’re on deck, go through the targets in your mind as many times as you can.

Getting into position fast
This takes practice but there are several things to not screw up. First is planning. Getting into one position takes long enough. If you get there and find it doesn’t work and you need to adjust your bipod or bags or you thought you could hit it kneeling and have to drop to sitting etc... it takes way longer. So find a way to index it.

What I would do is build a stair step barricade and measure each step. Figure out ahead of time which position you can comfortably shoot each step from. Then measure that step on your leg or something. So you walk up to a barricade in the stage briefing and they won’t let you ghost it but if it’s level with your knee or mid shin or halfway to your hip or whatever, you know which position you’ll shoot it from and it’s something you’ve practiced.

more specifically, practice the most common positions, where you assume the front of the rifle is supported and you have to provide rear support at different elevations. For each position, do an efficiency/ time and motion study. Start with finding the most stable position and quantify it. How far is your foot or knee from the barricade? Etc. now figure out how to approach the position from standing with as few moves as possible. Backing out of the position (reverse order) is prob the easiest way to do this.

in high power, shooters had to move from standing to prone and sitting but they’d get prep time. So we’d get into position and then mark where our elbows or knees were with a magazine or pen something. So when we stand up we remember exactly where to put our knee, then elbow, etc to get back where we were.
you don’t get prep period in PRS but you can game things a little.

This was a lot more important before everybody just started free recoil with game changers. Definitely easier now. But it still helps to plan your approach. Especially getting into prone. It’s kinda shocking how long people take to do this. My tip is do a rifle burpee. Gun in hand bend down and put the gun on the ground pointing at the target, then kick your feet out into push-up position then drop onto the rifle. Keep your eyes on target the entire time.

The other thing people screw up is gear management getting into position. Practice deploying and stowing your bipod. If you have targets that need multiple heights on the bipod legs, try running on the highest setting and figuring out how to make your rear bag taller. Look at the position ahead of time and see if it’s not level. You may need one leg longer than the other. Or the ground may be higher in the middle and interfere with your magazine.

lots more to talk about there but I’ve got to go so one last tip is mentally learning to pull the trigger when your sights are coming onto the target. Some of us have a tendency to dress up the shot for an extra 20 seconds until it’s just perfect before pulling the trigger. Literally practice this. Shooting standing in CMP/high power or smallbore will teach you that you have to be able to shoot a moving target because everybody wobbles. Once you’ve shot 20+ rounds the instant the reticle crosses into the target, and given yourself confidence, add this to your dry fire routine.
 
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taliv said:
imho keys to going fast:

finding targets fast
Dial your mag down a bit if necessary. Keep your eyes on the target.
Click to expand...
Those are definitely the biggest ones, when I do that, I'm fine.

Yesterday I let to much magnification to start bite me a couple of times, and once too much magnification left up when moving to another target that was far off sideways. Lose time looking for targets and you'll almost surely lose points to timing out. That hurt me yesterday. I need to use the throw lever more often, it's there for a reason. Start low though, start low.

I took my Nikon binoculars yesterday and used them to scout out where the berms were and what they were close to so I could see where they were with my naked eye getting into position, very critical to be able to do that, and the binocs help a lot with that. Don't rely on having someones spotter or binocs on a tripod free to do that. My next purchase is going to be some 15X binocs for my tripod, but I will still want a lower powered pair smaller pair for scouting targets. My Nikons are a very old L.L. Bean pair, variable 7-15 power, very useful, but not as clear as today's offerings in the $400 range. My buddy's Vortex Diamondback 15X's were much clearer.
 
This was my list of targets in ELR match beyond 1000


taliv said:
3x 1266 30" circle
3x 1749 40" circle
2x 1220 antelope
4x 1215 24" circle
3x 1396 50% elk
3x 1278 50% elk
3x 1420 24" circle
3x 1710 30" circle
3x 1224 wolf
4x 1529 elk
3x 1442 24" circle
2x 1200 24" shot strong side, 40" shot weak side
3x 1283 antelope
3x 1770 wolf
1x 1217 20" circle
1x 1516 30" circle
Click to expand...
 
To piggyback on my data/dope/Kestrel/truing the BC at 1K post earlier.

My data was the best it has been yesterday. With a trued BC, two good velocity/temps in the Kestrel, and letting it calculate muzzle velocity for me as temps changed during the day, bingo, best data ever, 99% of misses were left/right. One stage had three yardages, not far, 400 to 600 maybe, I hit the first two each time and missed the third barely high twice, timed out, so no third try at it. It was the first stage our squad short, so I was concerned, but Rick our RO told me that half the squad was high on that target, so don’t be concerned. He was right, I was dead on vertically the rest of the day.
 
I got an email today, the Manners PRS1 stock I ordered last October is ready, should ship tomorrow. Yea!

Jeff and I are probably going to shoot at Altus this Saturday, I have all the cases ready, just need to drop powder and seat bullets, have it set up, will do that when I get off THR.
 
My main focus today was to be faster and leave fewer points on the table uncontested, a secondary goal was to start well as my last two first stages were a 2 and a 4.

I was first up again this AM because of my name(s) (AC), but it was a stage I have shot before and a rock where we could use the bipod and a rear bag, so steady, and the wind was kind. I cleaned it, so the pressure was off to not start badly, but put the pressure on the continue to shoot well. I did well with that, and stayed calm and well focused.

Last week I brought 20 unfired rounds home, so 20 potential, uncontested, lost points. This week I brought 100 rounds, there were 99 targets, and I brought 6 rounds home, so only 5 lost chances. One stage was because I forgot to dial down the power to start, and shot a plate on the wrong berm and had to reconnoiter. One was a hit a couple of tenths over time, and one stage was where we were shooting off opposite car doors, Jeff talked me into usinf a bag clamped to the arca rail and my schemdium GC under it. Very stable, but when I moved left the SGC behind, had to crawl over the seat to get it, and timed out. But hey, only 5 lost chances was a big improvement. Should have just used the schmedium bag by its self.

I cleaned 3 stages. Pretty stoked about that, as I had never cleaned more than one in a one day match.

I didn't have less than a 6 until the last stage, shooting through a window with a tropid for the back support, pretty stable, and I could hold the crosshairs plenty steady to shoot, but I did not get behind the gun well and did not control recoil enough to see my impacts, it was a plate rack with a nice berm so we could see hits. After I shot it Jeff said my wind calls were right on, but my misses were a hair low. If I had controlled the recoil better and seen a low miss, I could have adjusted and done better. All me there.

99 targets, 6 leftover rounds, 79 hits (My best ever), so 15 misses, 6 on the last stage. The Impact fed flawlessly all day as usual, simply a great action.

So we get the results and am am 16th out of 46, sweet!

We eat our Firehouse sub, chat with some of the guys, and they come out with the hardware. They ask us to raise our hands if we are seniors, and a few hands go up. he calls a fellow's name who was sitting with us, how old are you? 54, so no go, then he calls my name....over here, 64, and he says.....well there we have it, our top senior. Holy cow! Yea, I'm still pretty stoked. :)

IMG_3573.JPG

The Kestrel stage is one of the ones I cleaned, I was on my tip toes shooting the last one just to the right of the Kestrel name.
I shot the four rectangular ones with the black bottoms, then the one above them right of the name for the fifth spot. Tip toes.
IMG_3576.JPG

Yea, a small match, with a small number of seniors, but I beat them all, and they can never take this away. Yep, still grinning. :)
Altus 5-08-2021.JPG
 
I ordered this Manners PRS1T last October. I've been collecting parts since before then, have almost everything, just lack the barrel, and it's ordered. I'm going put the second Impact action in it. It's set up for an Area 419 Arca Rail, which is also ordered. I need a second bipod one of these days. Now I will have a backup rifle, which I can also loan to kids/nephews etc should they want to try PRS out. Dasher again, considered the GT.
Manners PRS1T LS.JPG
Manners PRS1T RS.JPG
Manners PRS1T Sikes Clutch & Rail 1.JPG
Manners PRS1T Sikes Clutch & Rail 2.JPG
Manners PRS1T Chassis Insert.JPG
Manners PRS1T & Impact Action.JPG
 
taliv said:
clutch?
Click to expand...

The handstop knob on the side of the stock he ordered, shown in his 3rd and 4th pic above. Named after Bryan Sikes from GA Precision, Manners sells the “Sikes Clutch”. Mounts in a QD socket, or in the Manners multi-port rail as pictured on his stock for tunable position. Really nice for running the rifle over many obstacles, and allows the shooter to “clutch” the rifle and barricade bag together in the support hand during transitions with much better control.

I started using a left side handstop at the end of the season 3yrs ago, but using a skinny import version. Manners released the Clutch when they announced the TCS, and I picked one up last year - much better feel in hand than the skinnier handstop I had been using. I usually stick the 4 fingers of my hand through the strap on my Gamechanger and sink the Clutch into the web of my thumb and index finger. It’s kinda like running an attached bag, but without actually having the bag stuck to your rifle - which I find to be a notable disadvantage.
 
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