I went to the range a few days ago to practice prone shooting with a 22 long rifle. I found this to be good practice, but with a "light" feeling. It felt very different than shooting my 270. There wasn't a great deal of anticipation because of the light recoil and because 22 long rifle is very cheap. There seems to be a certain amount of weight with every center fire rifle shot that the 22 does not have. (Note: This does not apply to safety. All guns deserve and are treated with respect and caution) It feels like every shoot needs to matter with the larger guns, where the 22 I can load another magazine and have at it again. I'm wondering if this is more just me, or is normal at the range.
Don't misunderstand me, I think any trigger time is good. Getting into prone and working on form is great with any rifle, even shooting a BB gun in the basement. (Again with proper safety) But could this feeling of "Oh, I'll just throw some more lead down range." missing the point? Or worse yet training me incorrectly? It seems to me that when one is shooting long range, for what ever reason, every shot counts. Shouldn't that be the way we practice too?
What I think I may do to solve this is take Massad Ayoob's advice and make every shot worth something. For example for every shot I miss I owe my wife a dollar. I believe that method would put me in the right mind set.
Do you have any additional ideas? We'd love to hear from you. Comment so everyone can see or drop us an e-mail.
-Steven Kipp
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I think once you're reasonably comfortable with something, then practicing very seriously makes sense, but you need to get hundreds if not thousands of rounds downrange just to get comfortable with the gun, the position, the target, etc. Since you've done a fair amount of rifle shooting, you may not need quite as much of that, but I still think that treating shooting like a chore misses the point to an extent.
ReplyDeleteIf you're training with your concealed carry gun, using the weapon you plan to use to defend your life, I could see training like every round matters because it really does at that point. If you're just shooting for fun, I think you're much more likely to psych yourself out than you are to psych yourself up.
That seems to be a valid point. It might be that there is a sweet spot between plinking without care and stressing to an ulcer. I'll keep that in mind and see how that functions at the range.
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