Box Elder Wildlife Federation

[chuckshoun]

Boy, it's just too cold so shoot outdoors now, and will probably stay that way for quite awhile. So now is a good time to work on the basic fundamentals for shooting, for either a rifle or a pistol.
The fundamentals are what the champions concentrate on, in addition to practice. Brian Zin lost the pistol championship this year because he let one slip by. (In rapid fire he dropped an 8 while his nemisis cleaned the target) I'll go into the fundamentals slowly, and not overwhelm you-all with them all at once.

Aiming:
Take a piece of copy paper, and draw a horizontal line across the center on the sheet. Makes no difference if it's long axis vertical or horizontal. Put this up on the wall of a room (get the Frau's OK first), so you have at least 25 feet between you ant the horizontal line. For rifle, lets work standing: hold the rifle (scope or no scope) in your favorite shooting position, and aim at the horizontal line. Hold the position with the sights on the line for at least 30 seconds (you can breathe during this exercise). Repeat the exercise ten times. The objective is to keep the sights on the line.
With a pistol, do the same thing. If you do most of your shooting with both hands, OK. (I prefer to shoot with my right arm fully extended, as in NRA pistol target shooting). Keep the sight alignment and sight picture as perfect as you can.
For open sights, sight alignment should be maintained -- for example the top of the front sight centered in the notch/slot of the rear sight, with the tops of the sights in the same line. With a scope, concentrate on the horizontal crosshair. Since we are aiming at a line, it doesn't make any difference what part of the line you aim at, but your senses will draw you to the center, that's OK.
Do this non-firind exercise (10 repetitions) every day.

This is just phase one of the aiming exercise, so don't get bored and quit. There will be more soon.

Well, it's time for phase two of AIMING. By now you should be holding the sights pretty steady on that horizontal line. Nobody can hold the sights still with out some support, so if they move around a little, don't sweat it.

Now, turn that horizintal line target so the line is vertical, straight up and down. Repeat the same exercizes that you did with the horizontal line, but this time keep the sights centered on the vertical line. Keep a good sight alignment, front sight centered in the rear sight, and the top of the front sight even with the top of the rear sight. For you-all that use the scope, keep the vertical cross hair centered on the vertical line.

Be sure to hold the sights on the line for the thirty seconds , resting between each exercize (You can breathe during the exercize). Don't dry fire during these sighting exercizes, we'll get into that later. I'll let you-all work on the vertical line until Christmas, and then give you the biggest Christmas present ever! (No, not a new gun).