shaky

[ranger22]

Hi i am new here and I am shaky. I am wondering what type of gun will be better for me would a heaiver gun help me be more steady or would a lighter gun do the trick. Any ideas

[driftrider]

Do you drink a lot of caffeine? If so, stop. Caffeine before you shoot will cause you to be shaky or twitchy. You might not notice it, but your rifle does.

If you are shaky for another reason, I'd definately suggest a heavier rifle. I'd look for something that weighs AT LEAST 8lbs w/scope, but shoot for 8.5 - 9.5lbs. More weight means more inertia. More inertia means it takes more force to move the gun, so for a given amount of force the movement is slower and smaller. Light and ultra-light rifles are much harder to keep steady.

A second recommendation would be don't shoulder and aim for too long trying to get perfectly steady. Initially you become more steady as you relax into the position, but if you hold too long your muscles will fatigue and you'll start to shake more. Once you reach that point you might as well lower the gun and rest a few seconds and try again. Also learn how to find and use the "natural point of aim". If your natural point of aim coincident with your intended point of impact, you'll hit what you're aiming at every time unless another fundamental is screwed up (breathing and trigger control). If your NPOA is not on your intended point of aim (called "muscleing the gun"), you'll almost always miss despite otherwise good form. To find your NPOA, aim at the target, close your eyes, breath in then out to your natural respiratory pause, then open your eyes and see what you're aiming at now. If the sights/crosshairs are still right on target, you're good. If not, move your ENTIRE BODY to shift the NPOI and try again until the MPOA if dead on. This helps a lot because even though the sights may drift around they'll tend to spend most of the time around the NPOA, so you'll still be very close despite drifting point of aim.

Good Luck,

Mike

[bronko22000]

Ranger - drift rider gave you some good advise. In my younger years I shot NRA smallbore competition (3 and 4 position) and had a good teacher. Some of the tips he gave me were: 1. get your body in a position where, like driftrider said, so you don't have to muscle your rifle into position. Shoulder it with your eyes closed and when you open them you should be close to your target. Reposition as necessary. 2. You will not get the rifle to hold steady but the key is having the crosshairs start moving in circles around the bull. With parctice, and lots of it, these circles will begin to get smaller and smaller. 3. Only apply pressure to the trigger when the crosshairs are in the bull (of course). 4. Don't ever jerk the trigger.
Practice, practice, practice. You can dry fire your centerfire rifle and not hurt it or go to the range and shoot you .22 LR from different positions - prone, sitting, kneeling and standing (offhand). Just shooting off a bench all the time does not make you a better shot. It does get you familiar with your rifle and tells you how accurate it is. Once that is determined, its time to start shooting like you would in a hunting situation. Another hunting tip is use a rest whenever possible. Your backpack, bi-pod or shooting sticks, a tree, anything that will help you be more solid. I know there are situations where you can't use a rest and an offhand shot is the only alternative. But the animal should be close enough to ensure a vital hit and this is where all that practice comes in handy.

[ranger22]

Thanks for the replys so if I got a 243 model 700 with a varmit barrel this might help a little or should I be looking for something that is heavier without the big barrel.

[TUK101]

The heavy barrel may help a bit to stay steady, but if you plan to use this gun as a pack rifle for hunting, you more than likely wont be very steady when you go to pull up on a deer due to fatigue from packing the bugger around. But yes, a heavy gun is generally easier to keep steady than a really light gun. But above all else, practice will help you more than anything. One thing that has helped me is to shoot a .22 that feels similar to my hunting rifle.

[Retaks]

First of all you should use the sling to help steady the weapon. I just spent 3 months and 2 weeks on Parris Island. For those of you who dont know that is the Marins Recruiting Depot for the east coast. We did alot of learning how to hold our weapons steady by using the sling. When it is done right it works very well. For standing we were taught to put our arm through between the sling and theweapon then wrap our hand around and put your hand also between the sling and weapon. The sling should be tight on your tricep and your laeft hand should be somewhere around the swivel. Its gonna be tight on your arm. If its not tight its not right.Ill try to get a pic of what this looks like but it helped me drop my off hand groups from 10-12 inches to around 3 inchesat 100 yards. Also you need to practice holding the weapon like this. I do it for a bout and hour every other night ill hold it until i start to shake really bad then i stop for a few mins then do it again. I hope this helps.

[CZ2506]

There is a magicword to make you shoot better. It will get you over the shakes, get you on target faster, you'll shoot straighter, meet prettier girls and be the envy of all your friends!!

Practice.

Get a decent .22LR. rig it up with a scope and sling. pick up 5000 rounds of ammo. put all of the above advise into developing your technique. when you run out of ammo, get some more and keep practicing. Then start shooting your centerfire rifle in practice sessions, not just shooting for group size. Work on position. Then work on breathing. Then work on trigger pull. you get the idea.

Thing is you read these posts from guys (or girls) that are shooting sub MOA at 500+ yds, but you don't read how many rounds they shoot in a year. For a lot of them I bet it's in the thousands. I probably average 750-1000 rounds / year from 4 centerfire rifles. but if you throw in .22LR that number would quadruple!

Maybe that's a good question for a poll. How mayn rounds per year do shoot? Centerfire? Rimfire? How many from which caliber?

[Retaks]

I have to agree with CZ2506. Practice. He is right about shooting alot of rounds. Im not as good assome of people on here but i can shoot decent.Ive shout about 6500 rounds through rifles so far this year not counting military weapons i had the pleasure of shooting. I also have over 1000 shotgun rounds just shooting trap and close to 1000 pistol rounds also. I have a day planned on the range with some friends of mine and i have about 1000 more rounds for various rifles to go through that day also.

[ranger22]

Thanks for the tips if any body has any pictures of shooting using the sling. i would love to see them thanks.