One thing we wish someone had taught us much earlier in our shooting careers is the concept of a holding pattern. It’s the key to shooting accurately.
The holding pattern is the movement of your sights on the target, ideally slow, smooth, and small.
No matter what position you’re in, your sights will always be moving as you hold the rifle. Even the top Olympic shooters, who spend endless hours improving their positions, are aware of their holding pattern. Assume a shooting position and watch as your sights move on your target. The most movement you’ll see will likely be in the offhand (unsupported standing) position. There will be less movement in your kneeling and sitting positions. The least amount of movement will be in your prone or bench positions, but these aren’t usually practical for a hunting situation.
How to improve
You can improve your pattern in most positions by adding some support — lean against a tree, use a shooting stick, or rest the rifle on a sturdy branch. When we were preparing for our African safari, we bought a set of African shooting sticks and put them up in our living room. Several times a day, each of us would grab a rifle and set up on the sticks as smoothly (and as quickly) as possible, and each day our holding pattern on the sticks got slower, smoother, and smaller.
You can improve your holding pattern by conditioning your muscles. The general theory is that when you’re in position, you should be using only a small amount of your muscle strength to support the rifle. You use most of your muscle strength to keep your body in position. You should have enough strength, balance, and muscle tone to assume a position and hold the rifle while feeling more or less relaxed. You should find it easy. If you need to activate your muscles too much, you will see that your holding pattern will become jittery and will quickly disintegrate. Make sure you tone your arms so you can easily hold the weight of your rifle and work on your core muscles to improve your balance.
You can improve your holding pattern with practice — the right kind of practice. You don’t need a shooting range to do this. Just pick up your rifle and assume a position. Watch the holding pattern. Test and adjust your position — experiment with the structure of the position, the amount of relaxation in your muscles, the balance of the rifle. Admire your holding pattern.
Falling within the pattern
Your job as a shooter is to squeeze a shot off without disturbing the holding pattern — all well-fired shots fall within it. Shots that aren’t well-fired may land outside the pattern. The key to accurate shooting is your holding pattern. If you want small groups, work to improve it by improving your position.
The next step in training is to dry-fire in the midst of the movement. Accept the movement that your hold delivers and dry-fire as smoothly as you can. You should see no change in your holding pattern as you squeeze the trigger. If you do see any trigger-induced movement, practise your trigger squeeze for a while, then go back to practising the dry-firing.
The next step is to go to the range and fire live shots. Assume your hunting position, watch the holding pattern, and improve the position until your holding pattern is smaller than the ethical kill zone of your intended game. If the best position you can produce still doesn’t have a small enough holding pattern, go closer to the target. Relax until your movement is smooth and slow. Accept the movement. Squeeze your shot as smoothly as possible. Follow through, recover from the recoil, and get ready for the next shot.
Skid control
As you fire your group, you may notice that if you tense up and try to force the sights to stop in the centre of the target, your shots will tend to be quite far from the centre. This “oversteering” the rifle often results in “skidding” — you panic a little when the sights go off the target and start pushing the rifle around. You’ll overcorrect in one direction and then overcorrect in the other. It’s just like skid control in slippery driving conditions. If you try to force the car to the left, it’ll go farther than you want. And then you yank the steering wheel to the right and nearly put the car off the road. Driving experts say that you should ease off and do everything gently and smoothly.
The same advice applies to the holding pattern.
If you get into a skid-control situation and respond by steering the rifle, your holding pattern will increase in size and your shots will tend to land on the edges of it (as shown in the diagram).
Relax and accept the movement in your holding pattern. Don’t try to steer the rifle, just let it float over the target area. Squeeze the shot without disturbing the holding pattern.
Time to hunt
So here you are in the hunt. It’s quiet in the bush. You focus on doing a visualization. A big, beautiful buck presents. You raise; the hold is huge. What to do, what to do? It’s a little late for practise. Grab your shooting stick for support. No stick? Find a tree to lean against; move into a kneeling position; do something to improve the mechanics of your hold.
Then relax. Focus on getting the holding pattern placed over the kill zone. Determine whether you’ve got an ethical shot (that is, the holding pattern is smaller than the kill zone). Breathe, squeeze as gently as you can within the holding pattern, follow through, cycle the action, and watch the deer.
OK, that was you practising on your stand or as you sneak-and-peek on your hunting trail. It’s your visualization. It’s your training. Your trigger squeeze in this type of training is simply that. With the rifle on safe, squeeze the trigger. The follow-through is without recoil, so it should be perfect. You can mime the cycling of the action while you keep your eyes in your scope to watch your imaginary deer.
One of these times, it’ll be a real deer, a real shot, and a real trophy. Congratulations.
First published in the 2014 Fall issue of Ontario OUT OF DOORS.
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