Big Bore: POA/POI Shifts

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WrongHanded

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I've got a question for though who shoot a lot of heavy recoiling loads off the bench and off-hand. ("heavy recoiling" being a subjective term)

Do you notice a change in the Point Of Impact between the two positions? I've noticed this occasionally, where a gun is zeroed at 25 yards from bags, but then will shoot a little higher off-hand. Maybe 1-2" depending on the load and the gun. I was wondering if the difference came from pushing down on the bags when benched, versus the less secure position of off-hand shooting, where the recoil may turn the muzzle up a little sooner.
 
Personally I would not push down on bags. Especially if if it's the barrel resting on the bag. Difference in POI could be recoil anticipation. Some difference in head position or posture. I noticed long ago that for me bench rest shooting that majority of benches and rests consequently are too low for me. I have to have correct height chair and raise the rest to get proper posture or free hand shots don't match.
 
Do you notice a change in the Point Of Impact between the two positions? I've noticed this occasionally, where a gun is zeroed at 25 yards from bags, but then will shoot a little higher off-hand. Maybe 1-2" depending on the load and the gun. I was wondering if the difference came from pushing down on the bags when benched, versus the less secure position of off-hand shooting, where the recoil may turn the muzzle up a little sooner.

Absolutely, and the very reason I stopped shooting handguns from a bench.

35W
 
My 30-06 certainly shoots higher from a bench than off hand. And it shoots lower yet from a tight sling. My bolt action .22 long rifle shoots higher from a bench than off hand. When I bench sight in a hunting rifle I use a soft rest pad over the hard bag on the bench rest. So far I have only shot my 6 mm and .280 from the bench. So I will need to test and reset them at some point if I were to hunt with them. Not likely that I will though.
 
Unfortunately it’s a necessary evil in my testing regimen.

I have a coupla long piped big bores used for hunting that get rested even when hunting with them. I have a tripod set-up in my permanent blind with a gun rest mounted to it and when not in the blind, I carry shooting sticks. Due to the fact I tend to believe that every animal I shoot at deserves me to take a quality shot, in the majority of scenarios, iffn I can't use them, I don't take the shot. In my blind, I generally also have my 77/44 that I can use if I really need it, but in all the years I've owned it, it has never come into play from the blind. The desire to use the revolvers outweighs the desire to just "shoot something". I do have a coupla handguns I feel confident shooting offhand, but those are only for shots under 40 yards or so. A change of 2" in POI at 25 yards would not be acceptable to me, unless that was the distance I limited myself to.

Max is correct about the grip being consistent, but like many things, it's about keeping everything consistent. I've found in the past that I pulled the trigger differently when shooting from a rest. When rested, the action of pulling the trigger resulted in a downward force on the barrel, but when I pulled the trigger freehand, pulling the trigger tended to make the barrel rise. I assumed this was done instinctively in response to recoil and it took practice to rectify it. I found that resting my arms on the bench made an impact on POI also, and learned to rest the gun and not my arms. I learned to "rest" the gun and not push it down in the rest and allow it to recoil the same as it would if I held it freehand. I learned that sighting down the barrel of a handgun rested low on a bench gave me a different sight plane as opposed to shooting offhand. I found that by raising the rest tended to make POI more closely resemble that of shooting freehand.

Shooting rifle is no different. One needs to practice freehand with a rifle too, IF that is how one is going to be shooting it in the field. Just with a rifle, the difference in POI is generally much less. Notice I said generally. With both, it takes practice both ways, not only to discern there is a difference, but also to realize why. For me, dry firing my long pipes and the position of the barrel and any movement, when the trigger was pulled, showed me what I had to correct. For me, trigger control was more of a factor than grip.
 
Try resting your forearms on the bags not the handgun.

Kevin

Most of the reason I now use bags is for load testing. Otherwise I generally shoot off hand. But what you say should give me the same POI, so it's worth remembering that.
 
Not unlike the “standing rest” used by British gunmakers when sighting in rifles. As close as they can get to off hand but still eliminate motion as much as possible.

Kevin
 
My 30-06 certainly shoots higher from a bench than off hand. And it shoots lower yet from a tight sling. My bolt action .22 long rifle shoots higher from a bench than off hand. When I bench sight in a hunting rifle I use a soft rest pad over the hard bag on the bench rest. So far I have only shot my 6 mm and .280 from the bench. So I will need to test and reset them at some point if I were to hunt with them. Not likely that I will though.

A few years ago I competed in local High Power matches and it was quite a learning experience and completely changed how I shoot rifles and handguns.

One of the most important principles that those guys pounded into my head was "natural point of aim". This simply means not influencing the rifle by pushing or pulling it, be it up or down, left or right, in order to align the sights with the target, or to keep the sights aligned on the target. @Bill M. your 30-06 likely has different POI's from the bench vs. offhand because of your technique of shooting from the bench.

Another just important principle is "calling your shot". This means knowing where the bullet will strike the target as soon as the sear breaks. Occasionally an older gentleman would show up at our matches and compete with a Garand. When he did, everyone automatically drop one spot on the scoreboard, even the Expert and Master-class shooters with their AR's. He fired his sighters offhand; when he fired, he didn't necessarily have to hit the 10-ring of the target, he only had to make sure the bullet struck where the sights were when his rifle went off. In other words if the sights were at 10:00 of the bull when the sear broke, and that's where the shot went, then all was good.

After I drifted from HP competition I got heavily into shooting revolvers. I guess I'm a slow learner because it took me awhile to apply the two above principles to shooting revolvers. To this day it is more difficult for me to shoot with consistent accuracy from a benchrest than it is offhand.I have a tough time keeping my grip consistent when shooting from a bench as I tend to relax it as I concentrate on keeping the sights on the target and focusing on squeezing the trigger.

My worst vice in handgun shooting in general however was not trying to control the revolver as opposed to allowing it to recoil naturally, allowing "follow through", another very important principle. David Bradshaw, a renowned handgun silhouette competitor (IMHSA) described this better than I ever could:

Follow through----think flintlock. Squeeze continues after hammer fall, until the bullet is beyond the muzzle. Follow through is shorter in rapid fire, yet always longer than LOCK TIME + BARREL TIME. You cannot own your bullet without FOLLOW THROUGH.

Hope some of this helps.

35W
 
I know David quite well. I don’t let the revolver recoil naturally as that is a recipe for the heavy recoilers to get away from you. It also slows follow-up shots which is problematic if up against dangerous game. Different philosophies for different purposes.
 
I will say free-recoil and trigger-pinning techniques are affirmatively damaging to one's performance in the practical shooting games. That stuff may work wonderfully for high-precision, slow-paced shooting, but it's just the worst for anything where speed/time is a factor.
 
I know David quite well. I don’t let the revolver recoil naturally as that is a recipe for the heavy recoilers to get away from you. It also slows follow-up shots which is problematic if up against dangerous game. Different philosophies for different purposes.

Please don't confuse my statement of allowing a revolver to recoil naturally as meaning to use a relaxed grip, that's not at all what I meant. My problem was I was trying to fight the revolver down out of recoil immediately after the hammer fell, not allowing follow through. Right or wrong, once I corrected this, things fell into place in the accuracy department. Also, and this is just my experience, in the game I've taken with revolvers, I've never had time, or so far, the need, for a follow-up shot. If one misses a fleet-footed animal such as a deer, one's chances, or perhaps more aptly, my chances of hitting said deer bounding through the mesquites at 25 mph are non-existent.

I will say free-recoil and trigger-pinning techniques are affirmatively damaging to one's performance in the practical shooting games. That stuff may work wonderfully for high-precision, slow-paced shooting, but it's just the worst for anything where speed/time is a factor.

It's generally accepted that todays handgun community generally focuses on magazine capacity and volume of fire rather than accuracy. I actually had a guy on another forum tell me that how fast one shoots is more important than how accurately one shoots. :confused: I dipped my toe in the CAS water a few years ago and learned really quick how to miss in the shortest amount of time possible. One of the veteran shooters told me "Shoot to hit first, speed will come naturally.". He was right.
And I have no interest in the run-and-gun games either, but to each his or her own. I've been reading Bill Jordan's No Second Place Winner where he states (not his quote) "Speed's fine, but accuracy is final". He goes on to say "If you cannot hit your target with the first shot, you best give up the quest (for fast shooting) until you can." and "Always remember, it is the first shot on target that counts."

Again, to each their own.

35W
 
I dipped my toe in the CAS water a few years ago and learned really quick how to miss in the shortest amount of time possible.

It's really common for experienced shooters to come into the speed-involved games and go through this progression:
  • Hit everything but be really slow and get smoked in the results.
  • Dramatically speed up while ditching accuracy, just trying to match the pace of the other shooters, and get smoked in the results.
  • Finally figure out how to retain accuracy at speed and start enjoying the game.
Lots of people drop out at stage 1 and 2 and never get to stage 3. Which is fine.

We seem to agree that different goals require some different approaches. I think that's all MaxP was pointing out, and all that I was trying to chime in with. There's stuff that works well for one type of shooting but not another. People can make their own judgments about which types of shooting are most interesting or useful to them.
 
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