One Day...
AH elite
Honest questions calling for honest answers...
My personal training regimen is to shoot ~ 5,000 (yep, five thousand) rounds of .22 LR at a 6" steel plate standing off the sticks in the couple months of spring before going to Africa...
Truth be told, this is just as much my end of afternoon Sunday personal relaxation time, as it is my training time.
Why do I practice with a .22 LR ?
#1 full power center-fire rifle training can actually be counterproductive
Some people can actually develop a flinch without even realizing it and muscle-memorize a whole range of negative habits, but even if this does not happen, the reality is that the recoil of full power center-fire cartridges will actually hide a whole range of shooting mistakes. Because it has virtually no recoil, a full size .22 LR rifle will show you a trigger jerk, a breathing control issue, a rifle position mistake on the sticks, etc. A .300 or .375 will not. Never mind a .458...
#2 full power center-fire rifle training will burn your barrel and your wallet
50 to 80 rounds of full power center-fire firing once per week for 3 months (a dozen times) will put close to 1,000 rounds through your barrel. Depending on caliber and load, do it 2 or 3 years in a row and you will shoot out your barrel. Additionally, you will spend (depending on the ammo you shoot) $2,000 to $4,000. That is a Roan or Sable trophy fee at Huntershill...
#3 full power center-fire rifle training can have physiological consequences
Let us not even discuss hearing protection, it ought to be a given, right? Depending on the rifle weight and caliber you shoot, recoil can be harmful. For example, my Mauser 66 .458 Lott is objectively too light at 8 lbs 13 oz. Shooting more than a dozen rounds with it causes me a small headache, the sure medical sign of a mild concussion. This is not good. Additionally, a number of aging shooters fall victim of retina detachment under violent recoil. We, aging men, need to be careful I suppose...
Why would you inflict all of this to yourself?
The bottom line is that shooting form off the sticks is better practiced with low to no recoil rifles. I like the .22 LR myself because of its simplicity, but its negative side is that it limits practice to 150 yards. A .223 will extend the range to 300 yards with little negative impact on practically (a little more noise) or even the finances. To each their own.
Nonetheless, I personally find that getting to near 100% hits with a .22 LR on a 6" steel plate at 150 yards standing off the sticks is all the training I need. Yep, that is quite a rainbow trajectory, but the tiny 40 gr slugs still ring the plate by the time they get there. I do not shoot game at 300 yards standing off the sticks anyway (it is not a game shot anymore, it is a gamble), and I found that if I can control the rifle enough to hit a 6" plate at 150 yards standing off the sticks, I have zero issue hitting at 300 yards leaning solidly on a rock, a tree, a backpack, etc.
The passing grade is 5 series of 5 shots each (25 successive shots) at 150 yards on the 6" plate. Any miss resets the entire count. Try it, it is not as easy as it sounds.
Two or three full power center-fire rounds from whatever rifle I will take to Africa that year are enough at the end of each .22 LR training session to remember what the recoil feels like.
Trigger...
As to trigger pull, I would not even consider a trigger less than 2 1/2 lbs on a hunting rifle. Sure a lighter trigger will be wonderful for the shots you take resting on a bag on top the Toyota hood, but by the time you are out of breath following a Kudu in the hills and running the last 200 yards to catch him before he crests the hill, that 1 1/2 lbs trigger is likely to mean that you will accidentally fire the rifle before you are solidly on the Kudu. Oh yes, it happens...
Bench...
I am not sure what purpose is served by shooting from a bench once the rifle is sighted. I have never found a bench in Africa when I was about to take a shot at game. A large majority of my shots in the bush have been standing off the sticks because the bush is typically too high to allows sitting or kneeling, never mind prone, and I have taken a fair number of shots at Huntershill leaning solidly on boulders because a lot of hunting there is hillsides hunting.
So, besides being needlessly punishing, bench shooting, I would propose, is actually counter productive for hunting. It gets you to expect a level of stability that is rarely found in the field.
What happens in Africa stays in Africa, but I can tell you - as I am sure many other outfitters can tell you - that we see a lot of people who punch 3 shots in 1.5" inch at 100 yards at the camp shooting range bench, who are utterly incapable of putting 3 rounds in a 10" paper plate at 100 yd shooting off hand, or even hardly capable of punching reliably, consistently, repeatably 3 holes in a 6" paper desert plate at 100 yd shooting standing off the sticks.
It seems to pay to train as you will actually hunt...
To each their own
My personal training regimen is to shoot ~ 5,000 (yep, five thousand) rounds of .22 LR at a 6" steel plate standing off the sticks in the couple months of spring before going to Africa...
Truth be told, this is just as much my end of afternoon Sunday personal relaxation time, as it is my training time.
Why do I practice with a .22 LR ?
#1 full power center-fire rifle training can actually be counterproductive
Some people can actually develop a flinch without even realizing it and muscle-memorize a whole range of negative habits, but even if this does not happen, the reality is that the recoil of full power center-fire cartridges will actually hide a whole range of shooting mistakes. Because it has virtually no recoil, a full size .22 LR rifle will show you a trigger jerk, a breathing control issue, a rifle position mistake on the sticks, etc. A .300 or .375 will not. Never mind a .458...
#2 full power center-fire rifle training will burn your barrel and your wallet
50 to 80 rounds of full power center-fire firing once per week for 3 months (a dozen times) will put close to 1,000 rounds through your barrel. Depending on caliber and load, do it 2 or 3 years in a row and you will shoot out your barrel. Additionally, you will spend (depending on the ammo you shoot) $2,000 to $4,000. That is a Roan or Sable trophy fee at Huntershill...
#3 full power center-fire rifle training can have physiological consequences
Let us not even discuss hearing protection, it ought to be a given, right? Depending on the rifle weight and caliber you shoot, recoil can be harmful. For example, my Mauser 66 .458 Lott is objectively too light at 8 lbs 13 oz. Shooting more than a dozen rounds with it causes me a small headache, the sure medical sign of a mild concussion. This is not good. Additionally, a number of aging shooters fall victim of retina detachment under violent recoil. We, aging men, need to be careful I suppose...
Why would you inflict all of this to yourself?
The bottom line is that shooting form off the sticks is better practiced with low to no recoil rifles. I like the .22 LR myself because of its simplicity, but its negative side is that it limits practice to 150 yards. A .223 will extend the range to 300 yards with little negative impact on practically (a little more noise) or even the finances. To each their own.
Nonetheless, I personally find that getting to near 100% hits with a .22 LR on a 6" steel plate at 150 yards standing off the sticks is all the training I need. Yep, that is quite a rainbow trajectory, but the tiny 40 gr slugs still ring the plate by the time they get there. I do not shoot game at 300 yards standing off the sticks anyway (it is not a game shot anymore, it is a gamble), and I found that if I can control the rifle enough to hit a 6" plate at 150 yards standing off the sticks, I have zero issue hitting at 300 yards leaning solidly on a rock, a tree, a backpack, etc.
The passing grade is 5 series of 5 shots each (25 successive shots) at 150 yards on the 6" plate. Any miss resets the entire count. Try it, it is not as easy as it sounds.
Two or three full power center-fire rounds from whatever rifle I will take to Africa that year are enough at the end of each .22 LR training session to remember what the recoil feels like.
Trigger...
As to trigger pull, I would not even consider a trigger less than 2 1/2 lbs on a hunting rifle. Sure a lighter trigger will be wonderful for the shots you take resting on a bag on top the Toyota hood, but by the time you are out of breath following a Kudu in the hills and running the last 200 yards to catch him before he crests the hill, that 1 1/2 lbs trigger is likely to mean that you will accidentally fire the rifle before you are solidly on the Kudu. Oh yes, it happens...
Bench...
I am not sure what purpose is served by shooting from a bench once the rifle is sighted. I have never found a bench in Africa when I was about to take a shot at game. A large majority of my shots in the bush have been standing off the sticks because the bush is typically too high to allows sitting or kneeling, never mind prone, and I have taken a fair number of shots at Huntershill leaning solidly on boulders because a lot of hunting there is hillsides hunting.
So, besides being needlessly punishing, bench shooting, I would propose, is actually counter productive for hunting. It gets you to expect a level of stability that is rarely found in the field.
What happens in Africa stays in Africa, but I can tell you - as I am sure many other outfitters can tell you - that we see a lot of people who punch 3 shots in 1.5" inch at 100 yards at the camp shooting range bench, who are utterly incapable of putting 3 rounds in a 10" paper plate at 100 yd shooting off hand, or even hardly capable of punching reliably, consistently, repeatably 3 holes in a 6" paper desert plate at 100 yd shooting standing off the sticks.
It seems to pay to train as you will actually hunt...
To each their own
Last edited by a moderator:
