I have this bad habit of "punching the trigger" of my muzzleloader. It is throwing my shot off by several inches. It's nerves most likely. I caught a scope in the forehead once while shooting a 30.06 and ever since then,I have been too "punchy" on my shot. Can't think of another way to put it? Anyone out there have any advice for this green-horn? Thanks!

Practice dryfiring. You will be able to see yourself flinch and learn to hold steady. Also next time you go to the range have some one stand behind you and hand you your gun sometimes loaded sometimes not but not telling you. You need to shoot it the same each time.

That would be kinda hard to do with a muzzleloader

What muzzleloader are you shooting and what load? My advice is to start with a cheap projectile such as a round ball with light powder charge and just have fun practicing your trigger pulling and learn that its not going to hurt when you pull the trigger.

Try shooting very light loads in your MZ and gradually working up the powder charge until you get to your hunting load.

I've used this tactic before with people who wanted to shoot a MZ but were intimadated.

Sorry my bad. I missed the part.

You could practice dry firing the caps or primers and then move up to shooting reduced charges.

Lots of .22 rounds. That's what I do anyway.

Tom

shoot other rifles till you learn. then go back to the ML, you have to learn to get a crisp break on the trigger if you wanna shoot acurately and consistently.
-Jake

All of this is because you got popped in the head with a scope. So........... it is not in your mind that guns are going to kick hard.

You can dry fire, shoot .22'sand shoot all of the reduced loads that you want but mentally you already know they aren't going to kick as hard so you likely won'tbe flinching with thesedrills any wayandlikely aren't going to see any improvement when you know that a full power load is in the gun.

You most likely got popped from the 30-06 because you were not holding the gun tight into your shoulder properly and you gave the gun too much room to accelerate before it was absorbed and stoppedby your body.

Honestly you are just going to have to buck up and make sure that you are holding the gun properly and tight into the shoulder and fire the gun. If you do this your body will absorbe the recoil and keep the scope away from your face. Assuming that you have a quality scope mountedwith proper eye relief.