Shooting in Isolation

[RobinC]

Dear Shooting Friends

With clubs and ranges shut, and us all in isolation, its not good for target shooting, but there are things we can do to continue our sport.

My wife and I now in the old fart category do not shoot 10 mt standing air rifle any more, we just do coaching, and we now just shoot small bore and full bore prone rifle. With the spare time now we have reorganised our 10 mt home air range so we can shoot air rifle prone on it, so can continue to practice prone. In fact the wife who has shot it several times now says that its great training, no excuse for the tens not being 10.9's, and the lack of recoil helps to analyse technique better.

So what can you do for shooting training any discipline, air rifle and air pistol, small bore and full bore rifle?

1. Dry firing, (aiming and clicking the trigger), set up a proportional aiming mark at what ever distance you can get. You can print proportional aiming marks for all the ISSF disciplines from the Scatt programme tools, you can download the Scatt programme free online. Then set your rifle or pistol to dry fire if it has a setting (most target air guns do), if not just pull on the un cocked trigger, small and full bores you can fully cock and use a snap cap to not damage the firing pin.
Dry fire with an objective, (aiming, sight picture, hold, follow through, etc) best to pick one at a time, rather than the whole process, be precise and analytical and you will get more advantage than actual shooting.

2. With air guns, shoot live, if you don't have 10 mts then shoot 6 yards, if you don't have 6 yds shoot what you have! The standard garage part of my range is 5 yds, perfectly adequate to train, and actually the lost yard makes very little difference.
If you have 6 yds shoot the MPL league at home, maybe they will accept 5 yds with an allowance? And also maybe accept non MPL target guns, PCP's etc? If enough of you are interested?

3. Shoot dry fire on Scatt at any distance and and any discipline, we shoot 300 mt full bore rifle at home at 5 yds, (dry fire!). This is the expensive option if you don't have a Scatt, but this is likely to go on a long time, and the going price for Scatt USB's is £500 and there are always ones for sale, and even after they are still sellable. Just remember that its a training aid, not an electronic target, a 10.9 is nice but if it was pointed there it just shows your scatt set up was good, to get the best out of it, look much more at the "shape" of the shot, and there are enough back screens to keep even the most ardent geek amused!

My coaching book is sold through the NSRA shop, the shop is now closed, and also the NSRA online shop is closed for the duration, so the book is currently unavailable, but if any one would like coaching help they are welcome to email me on robin.carter80@ntlworld.com, and I will do my best to answer any queries.

So that's my contribution, any of you are welcome to make sensible suggestions.

Have Fun, and remember to wash you hands after reading this post.

Robin

[zooma]

Dear Shooting Friends

With clubs and ranges shut, and us all in isolation, its not good for target shooting, but there are things we can do to continue our sport.

My wife and I now in the old fart category do not shoot 10 mt standing air rifle any more, we just do coaching, and we now just shoot small bore and full bore prone rifle. With the spare time now we have reorganised our 10 mt home air range so we can shoot air rifle prone on it, so can continue to practice prone. In fact the wife who has shot it several times now says that its great training, no excuse for the tens not being 10.9's, and the lack of recoil helps to analyse technique better.

So what can you do for shooting training any discipline, air rifle and air pistol, small bore and full bore rifle?


2. With air guns, shoot live, if you don't have 10 mts then shoot 6 yards, if you don't have 6 yds shoot what you have! The standard garage part of my range is 5 yds, perfectly adequate to train, and actually the lost yard makes very little difference.
If you have 6 yds shoot the MPL league at home, maybe they will accept 5 yds with an allowance? And also maybe accept non MPL target guns, PCP's etc? If enough of you are interested?


So that's my contribution, any of you are welcome to make sensible suggestions.

Have Fun, and remember to wash you hands after reading this post.

Robin

Hi Robin,

With regard to your second suggestion - yes the MPL would be more than happy to run an "Isolation" postal competition for those that would like to shoot with a PCP air rifle (or any other air rifle) and as you suggest, if people can only shoot 5 yards (or whatever distance) in their garage (or anywhere else) we would be more than happy accept that as it makes little or no difference.

I would suggest that we continue to use the Air7 targets for 6 yard air rifle and accept that the 6 yards may be a little shorter for the Isolation Air Rifle competition.

Please send you entries to Russ (PhatMan) and your tenner entry fee by PayPal or bank transfer in the usual way and lets get started!

The completion starts NOW and will close on the last day of June 2020 and will have 6 rounds, each with 6 targets, with 5 shots on each target giving a possible ex300 score per round.

Your scores for each round can be submitted whenever you like between when you enter and the last day in June.

If we are still on lock-down after that, we can start another Isolation Air Rifle Competition to start 1st July if there is enough interest.

The same applies to air pistols as we can also run a 6 yard Isolation Air Pistol with the same relaxation of the actual 6 yard distance for those that cannot guarantee a precise measured distance and will be shot on the Air 8 6 yard air pistol targets.

Lets hope this helps avoid the boredom and keeps everyone in practice!

Bob.

[RobF]

There's also this league for FT if you're really stuck

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1134467543564285/

Which uses this which you can play with and join the league if you wish... you don't need any FT experience, all you need to do is be able to aim off for wind, no ranging, holding, twiddling, just move mouse left and right and click

http://www.competitionshooter.co.uk/windeeze/

It might be of interest for those not into FT... just as a bit of fun. The premise is that if you knew the wind and direction would you be able to hit every target

[thirdwheel]

Robin
I've just had an email from Peter at Scatt and they are running a world wide competition for air pistol, rifle and 200m high power all you need to do is submit your scatt file to the forum, they are giving out little prizes too and it is free to enter.

Have a look

https://forum.scatt.com/#online-competitions-board.27

We are going to give it a go.

[martini1215]

The 50 M LSR competition run by Keelby Rifle Club has tried to overcome the present problem by sending a message to all entrants informing them that the shoot by dates can be ignored and as long as all the cards are in by the final shoot by date in September we will score and sort positions from there. We realise that if we are really unfortunate and the lockdown continues until or after September we may have to rethink and also we may get a great wad of cards to score in one go at the last week then positions to work out but at least the competition will go ahead all being well.

[PhatMan]

martini1215,

My 1955 12/15.

Have fun

Best regards

Russ

[martini1215]

wow nice looking gun, first rifle I ever shot seriously in 1973 at the Grimsby and District meeting at Toothil rifle range. I was 12
.
I have now graduated to an anschutz but never forget the good cards I shot with the martini, I also had a Mk5 ISU until not so long back