Target Shooting with a Rifle?

[Joshua M. Smith]

Hello,

I get to be new at something again.

As many of you have read I picked up my first centerfire rifle a few days ago. Since then I've been trying to determine its inherent accuracy.

There is a problem. I can't seem to shoot a piece of a target, say, a bullseye. If I'm given a piece of paper, I will shoot within the confines of that paper, but I'm just no good when shooting something smaller, like a bullseye. This is with open sights.

Case in point:


I started shooting this target at 50yds using the green dot as a target. I plunked those three shots into the group that's circled. It measures less than an inch and I knew I threw the last shot.

After those three shots things went downhill. It wasn't the gun; I just couldn't see the green dot any longer. The white piece of 4x4" paper became my focal point. I managed to keep most shots on the 9x12" sheet of cardboard holding the paper.

But then, to make sure it wasn't the gun, I got out another 4x4" sheet of paper and put a playing card on it. I shot 9 rounds at it.


Eight of the nine rounds fired struck someplace on the paper, three striking the card that I was using as an aiming point. Notice how the hits are peripheral to my aiming point. However, all the rounds are in a smaller area than they had been on the previous target.

I don't know what to do about this. I'm sure that my rifle can cloverleaf at 50yds, but I've just always shot like this. I've never been able to wring out much of a rifle's accuracy on the bench unless I had a 'scope. It's not that I can't use iron sights; last year I was able to hit a running squirrel at 50yds with my .22, then when the bullet failed to expand probably due to the range, I shot it in the head at that range. That wasn't a big deal.

The bullseye, however, mocks me.

I have slight astigmatism and 20/30 to 20/40 vision in my shooting eye. They say it's just on the verge of needing corrected, and though I have a pair of glasses, I opt not to wear them as they're optional. I've found shooting with them doesn't much improve things anyway, and I actually go slower on the "action" shots.

I've practiced with open sights since I had my first BB gun, but it's unless anyone here has any tricks, I'm about as good as I'm going to get without a 'scope.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Josh <><

 

[eldon519]

What kind of gun and what kind of sights are we talking about? If you want to stick with iron sights, some sort of peep sight or aperture may help you. With a small aperture, the light is bent to bring the target and front sight into focus at the same time.

 

[yesit'sloaded]

Breathing, sight picture, not flinching, squeeze the trigger, and practice. It isn't learned overnight and a center fire rifle will amplify all of the little things that a .22 can hide due to the almost nonexistent recoil. I would personally try it about 3 more times before I thought it was me because we all have off days. One day I couldn't hit a coke can at 100 yards and to be sure I handed the rifle to my friend who proceeded to hit it on the first shot.

 

[OAKVILLE SHOOTER]

Since then I've been trying to determine its inherent accuracy

I have found that the only way that I can determine how accurate the rifle is is to use a scope, even if I plan to take it off and use iron sights after the fact. Also, might be a dumb question, but are you shooting rested off of a bench or free hand?

 

[Joshua M. Smith]

I'm resting my elbows on my truck hood for this one. I've been trying different methods.

This is an M44 and I've not been consistent with it at all. I thought it was the rifle even thought the rifling looks virtually unused because of all the posts about crappy accuracy, then I asked my dad, who has better eyesight, to have a run with it. He proceeded to chew a sub-1" five shot hole where the green was on an identical target. And, he's not a regular shooter. Just grew up hunting small game.

My groups with my .22 look identical to my M44 groups.

Josh <><

 

[Acheron]

Part of the problem may lie with the gun, but not in the way you may think. You said you're shooting an M44 which implies that you are flinching when pulling the trigger. The kick out of one of those is substantial. It's a tough transition from .22LR to 7.62x54R. So don't be too hard on yourself, it's just going to take some more practice. Go to the range a few more times and see if anything improves. Conciously try to prevent any flinching when you pull the trigger.

 

[Red_SC]

How long is it taking you to shoot those groups? I'd say take a shot, lay the rifle down, take a drink of water, take another shot, check your shoelaces, take another shot, etc. Whatever you do, make sure you are completely focused for each shot. If you find yourself aiming at the paper instead of the bull, you aren't focusing enough.

Also, dry fire dry fire dry fire dry fire dry fire, and focus on each dry fire shot as much as if it were the real deal.

 

[Owen]

Josh,

If your groups with your .22 are similar, its almost definitely not the gun.

 

[DnPRK]

M44s are not known for accuracy.
There are reports that they shoot better with the bayonet extended.
Surplus or eastern European 7.62x54r ammo is not known for accuracy.

Shoot from prone - legs spread for better stability.
Use a rest just forward of the magazine.
Good ear protection helps reduce flinch.
A sandbag or shot bag between the buttstock and your shoulder helps reduce flinch.
Practice sight alignment - focus on the front sight, not the target.
Practice breathing - exhale and shoot with empty lungs.
Practice trigger control - use the pad of your index finger, not the first knuckle.

 

[cmidkiff]

Fred's shooting tips 'by the numbers'

1. Line up the front and rear sights. Simply center the front sight in the rear sight (a scope does it automatically for you). (“Sight Alignment”)
2. Keeping the sights lined up, bring them onto the target. (“Sight Picture”)
3. Take a deep breath in. The front sight will dip. Let your breath out, watching the front sight rise until it barely touches the bottom of the bull’s eye - now hold your breath (“Respiratory Pause”). You have just used a natural act - breathing - to establish your correct elevation. (Don’t forget to get your NPOA!)
4A. Focus your eye on the front sight. It may be a little hard to do at first - you naturally want to look at the target - but focus on the front sight.-
4B - Focus your mind on “keeping that front sight on the target”. This is the big one!
5. Now the tricky part. While you are doing step 4, take up the slack and squeeze the trigger straight back - but keep your concentration on the front sight! Don’t let the front sight off the target. You are trying to do two tasks at once, and the more important is to Keep the front sight on the target! This is the part where practice really pays off.
6. When the hammer falls: 1) keep your eyes open, 2) take an ‘instant’ mental photo of where the front sight was on the target when the hammer fell (“Call the Shot”), and 3) hold the trigger back (“Follow through”). In field shooting you want to quickly observe the impact of the bullet on the target and the target reaction. If the shot is a miss, try to spot any bullet splash so you can correct the next shot.

 

[Omnivore]

Do What cmidkiff Says

But do it dry firing with someone looking at your face (from a safe position off to one side of course). Make sure you can do this without the slightest movement, including not blinking your eyes. I know people who record themselves on video while shooting so they can detect flinching.

It is because of flinching, more than anything else, that we miss at realistic distances.

Sniper trainers will place a dime on the barrel and expect you dry fire without dropping the dime.

A good book on the subject is called "Highpower" by G. David Tubb. Its centered on NRA Highpower competitions specifically, but there is a lot of good stuff in there for the general shooter.

Don't spent too much time setting up the shot because your eyesight deteriorates quickly when staring at something without moving. Mammals' eyes are designed to scan, and cannot maintain acuity when motionless on a motionless subject. If you're not satisfied that your current shot is going well, look away for a bit and reorient your eyes.

Our eyes also do something interesting in response to light (Tubb addresses this): Our pupils adjust to the total sum light of the two eyes. If you have one eye closed while aiming, the aiming eye pupil is larger than it would be in the same light with both eyes open. As you recall from your physics classes, the smaller the pupil, the less optical distortion at the focal plane.

Hence, if you keep both eyes open you gain a little bit of visual acuity in your aiming eye. If the image in your non-aiming eye is too distracting, place a piece of cellophane tape on the off-eye lens of your glasses. That lets in the light and reduces your pupils while letting you concentrate on the aiming eye.

 

[benEzra]

If you're having trouble seeing the target, it's probably an eye fatigue/eye angle/eyesight problem, not a shooting problem per se. You can't hit what you can't see.

For me, I wear moderately thick glasses, and when shooting a rifle with low-mounted iron sights, I sometimes lose small targets if I tilt my head forward too much. I have a red dot (Kobra, actually) on my AK and it helps quite a bit.

Here's a few things to try to rule out.

Holding your breath too long? You want to hold your breath no more than a couple seconds when preparing to break a shot. Hold it for long, and your visual acuity suffers (your retina is one of the most oxygen dependent subsystems in your body).

Squinting your shooting eye too much, or otherwise tensing your eyes.

Try again with your glasses, concentrating on the basics, and see if that helps.

Take some eye vitamins. Beta carotene, lutein, and antioxidants, and eat more veggies.

You might try shooting with a low-power, fixed-magnification shotgun scope (Wal-Mart sells a 2.5x, or go shooting with a friend who owns something with a scope) and see if that helps you shoot smaller groups. If it does, your eyes are the problem; if it doesn't, it's probably technique.

 

[Joshua M. Smith]

Thanks all.

I do not flinch; this was not a straight transition from .22 to 7.62x54R. There was a detour of several very powerful slug guns on the way. One load actually recoiled enough to knock me a bit sensless and I had to just keep it pointed in a safe direction before I could sit up and make it safe (yeah, it put me on the ground the first time). That load was not safe, and I've since corrected my ways.

Thanks,

Josh <><

 

[Joshua M. Smith]

Hi,

The rifle is cleaned and put away. I'm drinking a Killian's Irish Red Lager in celebration.

Using techniques from this and other boards, I was able to improve quite a bit. Though I still have a long way to go, I am seeing immediate improvement, and that's good.

My first mistake was that I was dwelling on the target too long. I didn't know this, but after a few seconds of aiming a person's eyesight begins to suffer due to lack of oxygen (thanks, you know who you are). As well, using the truck hood was too close to prone to be a bit painful and I pushed myself. I don't mind standing up and shooting with nothing to rest the rifle on. The recoil is inconsequential from this power class as long as the butt is not on my collar bone - and standing, it's not. It just shoves my shoulder back a bit, and my shoulder is well conditioned from years of slug shooting.

I decided a new drill was in order: I set up larger targets (thanks, you know who you are), paper plates about 7" across, at 50yds. I slung my rifle up to my shoulder, grabbed a flash sight picture, fired, worked the bolt, and grabbed another sight picture. I repeated this three times before I had to reload.


Here is the first target. Typical performance was two rounds touching, and the third lost. I'm not precisely sure how I got nine rounds on target here, but I believe it was four vollies of three each, two rounds hitting from each volley, except for one. That would explain the nine rounds on target.


This is my second target. I didn't do as well. I was beginning to wear down a bit and my rifle was getting dirty.

That brings me to a question: How long does it usually take for a clean rifle to foul out if the round is travelling about 2600fps? I fired 24 shots.

I can't explain why the last round didn't make it on target most of the time. This is good ammo, not milsurp. My best theory is that I went a bit too fast on the last shot most of the time, wanting to go see how I did.

Comments? How about that rifle fouling?

Thanks,

Josh <><

 

[The Annoyed Man]

I can't explain why the last round didn't make it on target most of the time. This is good ammo, not milsurp. My best theory is that I went a bit too fast on the last shot most of the time, wanting to go see how I did.

Comments? How about that rifle fouling?

I've fired as much as 100 rounds (2 separate range sessions) through my Remington 700 VSF in .308 without cleaning the barrel before the groups REALLY started to open up badly. In fact, I always fire a couple of fouling shots when shooting from a clean barrel before shooting for group size. And incidentally, I'm firing Federal 168 gr Match Kings, which is very good commercial match grade ammunition.

That being said, if you snapped off 24 rounds without much time between shots as your description seems to imply that you did, then your barrel probably heated up considerably, and that would definitely open up your group sizes very noticeably. My Remington has a fluted heavy barrel which would handle heat dissipation better than your lighter "sporter" style barrel. In any case, I fire slowly and methodically, with as long as 1-2 minutes between shots in a 4 shot string. I also allow time for the barrel to cool a little bit between strings before starting to fire again. If I don't do these things, accuracy does suffer. I can't imagine that your Mosin Nagant, with its lighter barrel, wouldn't be even more susceptible to this phenomenon than a heavy barreled, accurized expensive varmint rifle.

 

[Joshua M. Smith]

For those following this, I shot again today. I used 20 rounds of surplus Czech light ball (147-148grns).

I rested my support hand on an aluminum ladder, but I didn't let the rifle have any direct contact with the support as I couldn't keep a stable sight picture with the rifle resting on the ladder.


This was the first target. I fired three rounds at it and plunked two in the same hole. There may be three there; the upper hole looks a bit larger than it should.

I truly can't tell for sure by looking at the target if there are two or three rounds there. If I lost one, it was the only one I lost during the shoot.

I started to get sloppy after this. Three targets that followed looked only a bit better than before.

Then I buckled down again.


When I was down to five rounds I decided to make it good.

I didn't rush on the above target nor did I dwell too long on any one shot. I made sure to stay well oxygenated and I used the military sniper's breath control instead of inhaling and letting half out as I was taught growing up. Interestingly, I was able to see the dot as long as I breathed well. This made for a rock solid sight picture.

It seems I had some vertical stringing in the last target. The flyer was called as I shot.

A note on the ammo: Some of it stuck; some of it didn't. I think I had maybe five rounds that stuck to the point that I had to smack the bolt open with my palm. Most of it, however, extracted just fine.

When I went in to clean it, I found both action screws were way loose. I had forgot to recheck their tightness a few days after cleaning the cosmoline off. So, I've been shooting with a loose action for a while. Oops...

I will shoot tomorrow if the weather holds and see what effect, if any, tightening the action had on accuracy.

Josh <><

 

[AtticusThraxx]

Get closer.

 

[benEzra]

That's a big improvement in such a short time. Good shooting.

 

[rangerruck]

first off, learn to do one thing at a time, until it becomes second nature. the best thing to start with is, focus on the front sight. if you do this everything else will begin to line up with, and go off , from this starting point.
secondly, or maybe firstly, you need to find color dots you can easily see at 50 yards, and maybe you need differing front/rear sites. you need all the possible advantages you can get, when you shoot open sites.

 

[Joshua M. Smith]

Hi All,

Shot again today after some bad weather passed.

I found a lot of my problem is focusing on the front sight. I... couldn't... do it! At what age do eyes start going downhill?

Anyway, I painted the post with white automotive touch up paint. The difference was night and day: I can see the sight very clearly.

Before, I had to concentrate to get good groups. I did these without much effort at all.


The flyers were my fault here. I'm having trouble mastering the trigger, which is too heavy. I may try a "toothpaste trigger job" on it tonight.


Again, a flyer. I shot this while sighting in better. The four rounds could have been together if I hadn't done that.

There was an older gent at the gunstore dropping off his M44 to be 'scoped. He had a genuine Mosin-Nagant 'scope mount and WWII sniper 'scope. It was a "sight to behold." If I wanted to permanently alter this into a 'scoped rifle I'd invest in one - especially since it had my beloved, but rarely seen, preference of a post reticle.

As it stands, I'm still planning the scout setup. I'd like to see what this will do with match ammo (or 7n1 Soviet sniper ammuntion) and a 2.5 or 4 power handgun 'scope. I'm betting with a few inexpensive tweaks I could get this bad boy to shoot very, very well.

Josh <><

 

[funfaler]

Looks like the groups are getting better.

The Appleseed Shoots will be coming to Wabash twice in 2008, you could get some quality marksmanship instruction at one of them, and use your 22 for most of the short range shooting, to get your skills. Then you can use your centerfire for any long range shooting that is done.

You will find that the skills that you learn at the Appleseed Shoots will get you a long ways to shooting 1" groups (from field positions with surplus gear and iron sights) to making hits on a 20" target out to 500 yards.

Perhaps you will find the Appleseed shoot worth your time.

http://www.appleseedinfo.org

PM me if you would like details, the 2008 schedule will be posted soon.