Mid range streak

As many of you know my fav shooting is headsized targets from 300-600 yards. Especially hostage style. So I’ve hung a couple on one lane where I shoot from one ridge to another, targets 410 and 415 yards, and another few targets up a power line at 423, 444 and 458 yards.
I'm editing this cause i've added targets and it was confusing. Previously I was trying to track first round per target. Now I'm just tracking my first round of the day past 400 yards. I’ll see how long I can keep this up. Basically a 1.5 MOA target past 400yd.
current streak:
17 days

longest streak:
17 days

shortest streak:
2 days

Total first round hits / misses: 25 / 2

10APR 1st round hit 415
15APR 1st round hit 423y
17APR, one round, right in center 423y target
21APR one round hit steel couple inches from center at 10 o’clock, 423y target
22APR one round hit left edge, holding right edge for wind, 423y target.. THEN i managed to drop my rifle out of the side by side as i was driving up the mountain. So i took about 4 shots figuring out my zero had shifted .5 mil. Then, I shot the other two plates from 415 and 420y (barely catching bottom of plate). (and a hostage taker at 420y where about 1"x3" of target was exposed, but that's not part of the challenge)
23APR 1st round at 423y, but just barely. DA >4800. 7* up angle. I've been shooting the targets with 1.9 or 2.0 up, but calc said 1.8 and impact was within an inch of edge at 1 oclock. compensated for elevation on second shot, but wind let up and i just barely caught the left edge of plate.
29APR missed in the rain at 423y (not the rain's fault)
1MAY 1st and 2nd round hits, misc other see post 6
2MAY 1st round hit 423yd
3MAY missed at 423yd, forgot to dial dope, followed with a hit
4MAY 1st round hit 423yd
8MAY 1st round hit 423yd
9MAY 1st round hit 423yd
10MAY 1st round hit 423yd
11MAY 1st round hit 458yd and 423yd
12MAY 1st round hit 423yd (atip) and 458yd (jlk and atip)
13MAY 1st round hit 423yd
15MAY 1st round hits 423yd and 458yd
16MAY 1st round hits 423yd and 458yd (head)
17MAY 1st round hit 423yd (barely caught top of plate, light conditions)
20MAY 1st round hit 423yd but missed 444 and head at 458.
21MAY 1st round hit 423yd but missed head 458
22MAY 1st round hit 423yd, and head at 458yd
(Out of town)
28MAY 1st round hit head 458yd and 423yd using trigger cam
29MAY 1st round hit 458yd with trigger cam
30MAY 1st round hit 423yd with trigger cam
31MAY 1st round hit 458yd with trigger cam on 12x mag

heres a few pics of the targets and looks

The two 6” plates are black and white one in the pic below which you may have to click to view
View attachment 1024188

And here’s a couple of the videos of me practicing transitions.
https://rumble.com/v11w750-transition3.html
https://rumble.com/v11w9u8-transition1.html

Hit the 6” streak plates today but it was a bad day to be a hostage.
I placed empty spray paint cans on either side of ipsc silhouette head to be challenging targets (first pic). Wind picked up and I held .3 and bullet went right where the crosshairs were (second pic) Ouch. At least I got the bad guy (knock down plate) behind white hostage on left. Pretty day though. Hard to make wind calls shooting across a hollow

and the first streak is over. 3 rounds, 3 misses in light rain.

shooting is definitely mostly mental, and confidence has a lot to do with it. had kind of a crappy day, traveled this week for work and i knew before i went out that i was going to miss. i even thought i shouldn't go today because i'm going to blow my first streak. I went anyway and sure enough, 3 rounds, 3 misses. no idea why really. not a missed wind call or anything interesting. not a bad trigger pull as far as i know. just didn't hit the target. mostly lack of confidence in my elevation after the rifle falling out of the side by side and having to rezero it.

well, mystery solved. since it was raining and i was having operator headspace errors, i didn't stick around to figure out what was going the other day, but today it was nice and i had some free time and so i went out and on the 2nd round i figured out it was shooting .5 mil low and got a hit on the 3rd round. so i took it to the 100 yard range to shoot paper and get it zeroed again, which i did with a round or 2, but i shot a couple more and it was shooting enormous groups. wth? so i went through my "what causes big groups" checklist, and first is tightening the suppressor. sure enough, it was loose. so i tightened it and sure enough, it was shooting .5 mil high, so i zeroed it AGAIN, and shot some small groups. satisfied i left that range and went back to my 423y 6" plate and sure enough, got 1st and 2nd round hits. streak starts again, 1 day, 2 rounds

thunderbeast ultra (well, 30p1 with ultra guts) but it wasn't the can's fault.

For anyone wanting to study this a bit more seriously, Brian enos forums used to have a whole forum dedicated to mental aspects of shooting.

Speaking of mental….

went out today. Storm rolling in. Gusty winds. Weird light. Watched wind signs awhile. Wind blowing trees all over. Looking through scope I could see stuff blowing left and right as it fell out of the trees.

made my wind call, pulled the trigger. Watched it impact right by bottom of tpost! Dang! Forgot to dial dope! Twisted the knob and put a perfect impact in the center. Streak is back to 0/0

Added a new target. It’s a 45% IPSC (8” wide by 13” tall and head is 2.5” square) hanging on an 8’ tpost. It’s more challenging because it’s past the crest of the hill, so a close miss will land over 200 yards past the target with very deceptive impact if there’s any sign at all. Catch your trace or guess. (everything past the target is on the next hill)

I fired 3 rounds today. Got a hit but wind call was .2 off. I made an adjustment and hit the 423yd plate then I went back and took a poke at the head on this little silhouette. Good thing I didn’t miss cause I didn’t see my trace at all.

Target from yesterday and today
Good - 1st round hit on 2” head with jlk
Bad - 2nd round a bit low in the shoulder. Dunno why.
Ugly - first two rounds with ATip past 100 yards using 4dof have me worried. First was high on 423yd plate. 2nd is way low on ipsc in pic. None of my five 3-round groups on paper have been larger than .5moa or had ES worse than 10 fps.



15 may target 2, 2 rounds

i got a new trigger cam a couple days ago and i've been playing with it. overall, mild disappointment. but my review thread is here: https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/trigger-cam-2-1-review.906347/

so, i took a couple videos earlier, but the focus was so bad you couldn't see anything. I drove to a national forest range and followed the trigger cam focusing instructions, putzing around with it for 30 min, then fired 1 round at 100 yards to confirm it didn't shift my zero. my impact was maybe 1/4" right of POA so I'm pretty happy.

then i went back to my range and fired 1 round at each target close to far from a prone, but uncomfortable position due to the up angle. 423, 444, 458 yds. For the last one, i was aiming at the 2.5" head. I did this twice, and you can see the videos below

https://rumble.com/v16qcbj-3-targets-take-1.html
https://rumble.com/v16qfcf-3-targets-take-2.html

first attempt (and my official mid range streak cold bore for day) was 3 hits. I actually didn't think the third target was a hit, but when i went and took a close up and painted the targets, i saw the impact, which was just on the edge and barely scraped a little copper off the jacket lol. so i went back and looked at the video and sure enough you can barely see the target moving forward and back, though its a little hard to tell with the distortion from the targetcam. also, the delay between targets 2 and 3 is me fiddling with the elevation turret

second attempt we'll call 2 hits since i was aiming for the head on target 3, even though i had a barely glancing blow on top of the shoulder and you can see a puff in the video. i was trying to favor the right side a bit cause of the mirage. i added a bit of slow mo to the shot using a free microsoft editor. get what you pay for no surprise



anyways, only the 1st of the 6 rounds counts for the streak which as of today stands at 16

i definitely need to work on my recoil management, which has gotten pretty embarrassing since i stopped shooting matches in 2017