Killing Demons

For a while now, my prone shooting has gone to hell, and over the past few days, I've figured it out. Turns out you can't lose 35 lb and still shoot the same position. I'd previously had a fairly high left knee to allow room to breathe and to help control the rifle under recoil. However, analysis over the past few days illustrated that that was forcing me over onto the right hip. Consequently, and because I have a low right shoulder due to the long reach I use, that shoulder was going over and pulling the elbow with it, resulting in the drag to the right I was observing.

The answer, as I found it, was to drop the left knee right down. The left heel is relatively close to the right ankle now, so there's relatively little body behind the rifle. It's a little unconventional, but my hold is very solid now and the zero isn't moving around the place as I'm watching. I've also moved to the older Anschutz style rounded hook buttplate and found its simplicity excellent and its coverage more than satisfactory. In fact, in a couple of ways, it indexes better than the System Gemini I had been using, so I've already arranged a trade for an Anschutz one and some cash. It's a far better fit for me in kneeling than anything I have as well, so I might pick up a second one if I spot it for that.

I'm also playing around with sight raising blocks at 8mm. This is a rather nostalgic look at the feeling I had shooting a wooden stock. I kinda miss that. I wouldn't mind going back to one in the future either I must say. I like the raised, comfortable head position and the width of the stock in the hand is far more comfortable than what I'm using now. Ah well, all thoughts for the future. Right now, I've got a solid position, if a little eccentric, I'm comfortable, relaxed and confident. The releases are assured and very clean and consistent. There's work to be done but it'll largely look after itself as time goes on and I'll deal with problems as they arise.

I only fired twenty shots today, had all the information and reinforcement I needed. Fired about four or five shots on one diagram to confirm zero and sight settings, all tens, moved over one and fired five more, resulting in this group. The squeaky one at five o'clock was me, shading. Turns out the wind was doing feck all as that's exactly where I pointed it.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j111/David_Franklin/Image0083.jpg?t=1309703820

The prone is going nicely now. I'm going to spend another while just reinforcing the good prone stuff, then move onto kneeling for a while, doing the odd day of prone, then more standing with a little bit of prone and kneeling and proceed like that. I'm going to be changing my club at the end of the summer as well in order to make shooting more 3P a realistically feasible proposition, and once I'm back to college I'm going to shoot more 10m stuff as well. Looking forward to further progress.