How to Shoot/Train Effectively?

[hereinaz]

A huge part of it definitely needs to be training in the specific environments. But there also must be some great ways to learn and train fundamentals at home, or at the 100 yard range. I know what my range limitations are, I am just not sure how to best utilize what I have available to me.

Over a offseason:

Get a good video training course like Modern Day Sniper to at least have a solid training education. There are many variants and methods, but I found his practical.

Build and break field position drills at home with dry fire 3x a week. Get fast and confident. Learn to break a trigger without moving the rifle.

Use Form’s paper test, standing, kneeling, sitting, prone. Repeat regularly to test yourself at the range. Save all the targets in a book.

Build and break with a 22 LR at 25 and out to 300 if possible. Thousands of rounds.

Build and break with a .223 hundred of rounds as far as possible.

Build and break drill with your hunting rifle, 100-150 times as far as possible.

 

[TaperPin]

wtf are you babbling about?

It’s so complicated you may not understand it. Don’t feel bad, every technique isn’t for everyone.

 

[hereinaz]

Over a offseason:

Get a good video training course like Modern Day Sniper to at least have a solid training education. There are many variants and methods, but I found his practical.

Build and break field position drills at home with dry fire 3x a week. Get fast and confident. Learn to break a trigger without moving the rifle.

Use Form’s paper test, standing, kneeling, sitting, prone. Repeat regularly to test yourself at the range. Save all the targets in a book.

Build and break with a 22 LR at 25 and out to 300 if possible. Thousands of rounds.

Build and break with a .223 hundred of rounds as far as possible.

Build and break drill with your hunting rifle, 100-150 times as far as possible.

For the WHY behind my suggestion.

The reason why home and .22 works, is getting reps for basics. So much of the benefit is to start to learn what wobble looks like and how to mitigate it. If you do that based on principles learned in a course like MDS, you’ll be so much more effective with your time and money behind a .223 and your hunting rifle.

 

[Dave0317]

You can make a lot of progress through dry fire and the 100 yard range.

Dry fire in every position with a focus on decreasing your wobble zone. Look that up if you need, but basically it’s how large of an area is your reticle moving around in, as you hold any particular position.

Look up articles and YouTube stuff from Caylen Wojick, Phillip velayo, Ryan Cleckner, and Chris Way. Keep in mind they are more PRS or sniper focused, so take what is of value and if you won’t carry a tripod, or you do more stalking and still hunting, look more into Form and Shoot2Hunt. They focus more on field shooting with minimal extra equipment.
Form has a couple podcasts on Shoot2Hunt where he talks about field positions, and shooting off packs vs bipods, etc.

Do the Kraft Drill at 100 yards once you have had a chance at some dry fire. Then do the drill you mentioned from the “equipment vs practice” thread on here. Then go home and refine your positions based on what you sucked at from those drills.


Eventually you will have to shoot some live fire at distance to confirm a few things, true your data, and practice wind calls.

Maybe save some money and go to a long range shooting course or clinic of some kind.

Hereinaz is right as well. Many thousands of rounds of pellets and 22LR can really help grease the groove of getting in position, manage wobble zone, and also manipulating the trigger consistently.

 

[BigMiss]

What part of MN are you located in?

I'm sure I could find some locations to shoot long on portions of public in MN but its not in the same universe as living out west. I used to go shoot on BLM weekly out west, have never setup to shoot steel at long range on public since being back in MN full time. There are some ranges around the state with longer distances but shooting at a square range is different than being in the mountains. It definitely helps but it isn't all the way there.

Edit to add: I'd not concern myself with someone being unhappy at the sight of a gun. The problem in much of the MN public land is you cant see where other people are recreating adjacent and they have no way to expect where someone might be shooting.

Once a guy gets good at building stable positions, its largely a wind game. But you can do very well learning to build positions at shorter range.

Live in the metro, but am regularly in the Brainerd area. Yes, to your point about being unhappy at the sight of a gun, I suppose I misrepresented my concern. It's not the gun itself. Your second half of that point really nails what I was trying to get at. I certainly wouldn't want to be surprised by someone shooting in the woods relatively near me and not know which direction they were aimed.

 

[BigMiss]

You might look for a power line going across state or the forest land, those are usually cleared of vegetation.

That is a good suggestion I had not thought of!

 

[BigMiss]

Lots of great suggestions, I appreciate all of the thoughts here. I've got a .22 and thousands of rounds already, which is a very unobtrusive way to practice. I also haven't taken dry firing/position building in the house seriously yet either. Those are great places for me to start. I've been digging into S2H, having read multiple of the hundred page threads and listened to the podcasts over the past couple of weeks, and would absolutely LOVE to take one of the 0-600 courses. Perhaps in a year or two once the family is a little older and there is more time. For now, I keep waiting for updates on the online modules! Bottom line is I do not shoot enough regardless of the type of shooting it is, so anything increase in time behind the gun is better than nothing - though I will try to focus on quality over quantity. And ultimately, as Form mentioned, I cannot truly be proficient at my desired ranges without shooting at and past said ranges. But I have something to start with now.