3-gun drills

[chef.hunter.elliott]

Does anybody have some good 3-gun drills for me to practice. after this weekend, i realize i need to start practicing a whole lot more to be at the top 10%.

 

[benjamin-benjamin]

i would
1. practice reloading shotgun
2. practice reloading shotgun
3. then i would finish with practice reloading shotgun

 

[jtischauser]

Benjamin is correct. Although this weekend we did not do a lot of shotgunning.

After watching you shoot you aren't doing anything crazy wrong. Looking at the scores the biggest thing you can do is get better hits which usually requires slowing down. You had 100 seconds in penalties. That is unaccpetable!

 

[chef.hunter.elliott]

Now that I know the way things are scored I can look at the stages/targets and break down where I should have slowed down and gotten better hits instead of trying to blaze through the stage. Am I basically going to have to call my shots from longer distances?

 

[jtischauser]

All of those penalties are misses. You can't miss. If you don't know you're missing then you're not watching your sights. The two misses I had I knew I would be close and decide it was good enough but I saw the close shot and decided to live with the results.

 

[chef.hunter.elliott]

thanks jesse, i appreciate your help. i just need to slow down and spend some time on my sight picture and practice seeing what targets look like at different distances and get used to what an alpha will look like on paper.

 

[Chambers]

How about some 1-gun drills? You're only shooting one at a time anyway. Don't over-complicate it.

As mentioned here, most people starting out have the hardest time with the shotgun...not because they are necessarily good rifle/pistol shooters, but simply because it's the slowest gun .

Stuff you can practice...

Shotgun loading
Shotgun/rifle snaps
Pistol draws
Getting into rifle positions...prone, kneeling, sitting
Shooting from support

Most of it you can do in the comfort of your own home. Put a (par) timer to it everything you do, and work on beating the buzzer.

 

[chef.hunter.elliott]

That was a huge thing this weekend that jesse pointed out at the match was when i transitioned to a position with my rifle such as the last stage, i did not have a good stable platform that i could steady the rifle and make steady shots. the transitions to prone and kneeing are something i had never thought of before. i wil start incorporating those into my daily dry fire routine along with the other things mentioned above. i guess it was just something i never thought of being primarily a pistol shooter for a bit. thanks mike. oh and by the way the hat cam video came out awesome, even with the snag with the rifle. whoops. at least you didnt shoot your thumb off iike you thought at first.

 

[ef9turbo]

Slowing down for those 2-3 seconds a stage is better then 100+ seconds in penalties

Speak for myself right. SMH

 

[sergio10]

Hey guys i need some help with my long range. I just cant get steady any tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

[gondo]

Now that I know the way things are scored I can look at the stages/targets and break down where I should have slowed down and gotten better hits instead of trying to blaze through the stage. Am I basically going to have to call my shots from longer distances?

If you are going to be any good at any shooting sport you better just stick with calling every shot every time. That doesnt mean some extraordinary sight picture on hoser targets but you still need to know what the acceptable sight picture looks like even if its just looking down the top of the gun at a target 3 ft away because if you do that and YOU know that is all you needed to see to hit the target then you HAVE called your shot. Personally I think the more you shoot the more you figure out how BAD of a sight picture you can get away with. I win some club matches sometimes because i have less penalties then people not calling their shots, it is really apparent when you see someone hosing rifle targets or something and they go back and throw another one on a target because as they are shooting they realize they didnt have the right sight pic on a particular target and only threw a hoper and hopers will kill you... or at least they do me. Thats my 2 cents but there are a lot of WAY better shooters on here then me...

 

[runawaygun762]

What do you mean by long range? Are you talking MGM flash targets at 300, or are you talking 700 yards or more with a bit of time allowed to engage?

 

[jeffhughes]

The first example, even at RM3G there are not 700 yard targets .....

 

[runawaygun762]

Unless you are talking about F-class or benchrest rifle matches, getting perfectly stable is not going to happen. Humans have movement no matter what we do. The key to success with a rifle is learning what acceptable accuracy looks like. Obviously, you can practice various positions until getting in and out of them become second nature. My biggest hangup was not prone, but kneeling. I spent so many years with the support side tricep on the support side knee, that trying to change legs and using the firing side elbow on the firing side quad while bracing the support side on a barricade kicked my butt for a long time, and sometimes still does unless I consciously tell myself to do it as I move into position.

For nearly any position, you will almost always be dealing with a wobble zone, which for most looks through the sights like a sideways figure eight, but may be more of a circular pattern too. The ability to time your shot break as the sights move into the target area is where you will really separate yourself from others. If you have movement and you wait until the sights are on the target, by the time you break the shot, the sights will oftentimes be out of the target area. That often leads to people going into slight panic and jerking the trigger as soon as their sights get where they want.

As for increasing stability, the normal techniques of getting low and spreading out can be useful, but depending on what you are doing, you may sacrifice too much speed for the added stability. Trying to diagnose a shooter without observing is very difficult, and saying what you can do to become more stable may actually hinder your efforts online. What I mean by that is that you may be practicing high prone with elbows on the ground because you have been told never to put the mag on the ground or it will cause a malfunction (It won't) and I may assume the problem is firing during an inconsistent part of the breathing cycle (Which also doesn't really make much of a difference at intermediate ranges).

The best answer is to have a competent instructor watch you shoot and then offer advice, but short of that, if you are able to go into more detail about what you see through the sights, or even better, post a video with closeups of you shooting, some decently competent diagnoses of errors can be made online. Nothing, however, beats having a competent coach on the line with you if that is possible.

 

[sergio10]

What do you mean by long range? Are you talking MGM flash targets at 300, or are you talking 700 yards or more with a bit of time allowed to engage?

Yes the 300 targets to 450 been having an issue with them i preaty much have everything else down but am still working on it. its just them darn distant targets that point and laugh at me.

 

[sergio10]

Thanks .22LR and Jeff will get some videos up.

 

[James Peel]

Yes the 300 targets to 450 been having an issue with them i preaty much have everything else down but am still working on it. its just them darn distant targets that point and laugh at me.

Is your rifle and ammo capable of shooting 1 moa or less at 100 yards? If not, go no further and fix that issue.

Do you know your ballistics for the load you're shooting? If not, you need to chrono your loads.

Do you have a ballistics app like Strelok? If not, download it, enter your data, ie muzzle velocity, bullet weight, etc.. Be thorough and accurate when you enter data into the calculator because small changes make a difference.

If you've done all that, set a large cardboard target at 300 yards with an aim point near the top. Aim the rifle with zero holdover at the aim point and shoot five rounds as accurately as you can. The bullets will obviously impact lower than the aim point. Measure the distance from the aim point to the center of that group and compare that drop to the calculated drop. Adjust the calculator data if needed to match. Now use the calculated holdover and shoot another five rounds at the target. You should have a nice moa group around the aim point.

At this point you know where to hold for 300 yards and know that your rifle/ammo combination is capable of shooting a decent group. If you have a range that allows you to shoot out further, do it using the calculated holdover and see where you hit, just like you did at 300. Once you know what the gun is capable of and where you need to holdover at each distance, the rest is up to you to control your breathing, get the gun stable, and break the shot cleanly. But the best technique won't do a bit of good if you're guessing at where your bullets are hitting.

 

[runawaygun762]

This is an issue that I will be having fun with at the 3 gun match this weekend by Tooth and Nail Armory. They said targets will go to 350, and the farthest I've been able to go is 100 at my range thus far. Can you say "suppressive fire"?