What Long Gun Training is All About!
Precision. Accuracy. Consistency.
Precision.
Precision is what a rifle system is mechanically capable of holding or grouping.
Precision relies on the following:
- Quality of equipment (components, design, manufacturing)
- Quality of ammunition
- Equipment care and maintenance
Accuracy.
Accuracy is how well your rifle system and you can adjust the point of impact into the point of aim. A shooter can shoot a sub-MOA group (minute of angle); however, if it is not centered on the point of aim (POA) then they have not achieved Accuracy.
Accuracy relies on three important factors:
- Quality of sight or optics
- Proper calibration of sight or scope travel
- The shooter’s understanding of environmental factors and the ability to make proper sight settings
"Amateurs practice until
they get it right, professionals practice
until they do not get it wrong"
Consistency.
The third component of marksmanship is consistency. This is YOU as the shooter! Your confidence in a rifle system and your shooting ability is an aspect many times overlooked or never considered. Confidence comes from familiarity of your equipment, lots of practice and shooting on a regular basis. . Two important variables impact shooter consistency: how the shooter manipulates the rifle system or “Drives the Rifle,” and environmental factors and interpretations. Let’s look at all of the elements comprising both these CONSISTENCY variables.
Shooter Manipulation | “Driving the Rifle”
The shooter must ‘drive the rifle’ by reliably and constantly performing:
- Proper shooting position
- Sight alignment
- Sight picture
- Breath control
- Trigger control
- Recoil management
- Follow through
Each of elements above are important for the serious shooter to study and learn the proper techniques to become consistent. Long Gun Training will supply the initial education and foundation to enable the student to become consistent. empowering students to focus on these fundamentals.
Environmental Variables | Shooter’s interpretations
The ability for the shooter to read and judge environmental variables AND understand the elements which comprise these environmental variables is critical. These interpretations dovetail into the ACCURACY component of marksmanship as well.
- Elements of Environmental Variables
- Range estimation
- Reading wind direction and speed
- Ballistics
- Lighting conditions
- Mirage
- Atmospheric conditions and their effects
Understanding and comprehending environmental factors should not be viewed as an exact science, but rather rely on a shooter’s ability to judge and adjust for them. Of the elements above, two are mainly responsible for the largest margin of error: poor range estimation and improper wind calls. In precision long range and extreme long range shooting, once a firing solution is made, you must separate the two variables of shooter and environmental.
As the shooter, send the best round you can down range. If a miss is spotted and your spotter gives a quality correction, send another as soon as possible before the down range conditions change. If your second round is a hit, you as the shooter just sent two quality rounds down range; you just needed to correct for the environmental variable. If you are shooting during a match with spotters, then the environmental considerations become more about reading changes rather than establishing a singular reading in the first place.
