Almost anyone can shoot a rifle off a bench and hit a target at 50 or 100 yards, even if they’re a brand-new shooter. That part of rifle shooting just isn’t very difficult.
However, the farther out you go and the tighter you want your groups to be, the more complicated rifle shooting gets. And when you get off a bench and into the real world, like in the field hunting? Everything changes. This is where truly being a good rifle shot matters, and these eight requirements, as taught to students by Gunsite Academy, are what you need to get there.
1. Mindset
You can’t shoot a rifle well if you have zero confidence in your ability, and you won’t handle it confidently if you are unsure about what to do with it or even whether you should be shooting. Confidence comes from practice, which breeds familiarity—but the other part of mindset is being mentally prepared ahead of time to defend yourself or to take an animal’s life (if hunting) and the willingness to do whatever it takes to accomplish your task well. When it comes to rifle shooting, mindset is all about attitude.
2. Position
You need a strong, proper stance when shooting a rifle from a standing position; one that allows you to move if needed but that supports your body under recoil so you can still control the rifle well. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, with your hips and shoulders square to the target and the foot on your non-dominant side forward far enough that you feel like you can’t be easily knocked over. Put a little more weight on your front foot than your rear, and lean forward into the gun a bit from your hips. If you stand straight up or, worse, lean back a bit, the recoil of each shot will push your torso back and you’ll quickly be off-balance.
3. Natural Point of Aim
You can read more about natural point of aim here, but the short version is, your body has a natural position that it wants to be in when it’s holding the gun and the gun is stable (therefore this is less applicable in off-hand shooting). If you fight this position by unnaturally holding the gun in place, you won’t shoot your best.
How do you find your natural point of aim? If you’re on a bench or prone, get comfortable behind the gun and aim it at the target, but do not fire. Close your eyes and take three deep breaths. Open your eyes again. Are the crosshairs still on the target? If yes, you’re there. But more than likely, you’ll be off. Move your body—not the gun—to adjust your position and try again. If you find yourself muscling the gun into position in any way in order to get the reticle on target, you’re going to throw off your natural point of aim.
This is a tough thing to learn and get used to, but keep trying and don’t worry about how long it takes you.
4. Natural Respiratory Pause
The less movement your body imparts into a rifle while you’re shooting it, the better, and that includes the movement from your breathing. This is why it’s best to not be breathing while you’re squeezing the trigger. Don’t hold your breath for more than a couple of seconds, or you’ll start to get shaky. Just breathe normally, and execute the shot at the bottom of one breath before you start to inhale for the next breath. This is when your lungs are empty and your respiratory system is as still as it’s going to get.
5. Focus
You can read this cup-of-coffee article to explain focus better, but what you need to know about rifle shooting is that you must focus on your scope’s reticle—not on the target. It’s human nature to want to look at what you’re shooting at, but this is not the way to accurate shooting. You’ll have to train your brain to see the reticle clearly and in-focus while you superimpose it on the target, with the target sort of blurry and out of focus in the background.
6. Compressed Trigger Press
You don’t want to yank or slap the trigger, and you don’t want to jerk it to one side or the other as you’re pulling it—all those things introduce excess movement into the rifle and therefore into the projectile. Instead, you want to press the trigger gently, straight back, with the center of the pad of your fingertip (not the very tip and not the crease).
Remember, you’ll be in between breaths, and you don’t want to stop your body from taking the next breath it wants—so you must do this relatively quickly. Don’t hurry, which will cause you to lose concentration and slap the trigger, but also don’t take that “the gun going off should surprise you” thing too literally and take forever to execute the shot. When it’s time to squeeze the trigger, do so deliberately and smoothly in the shortest amount of time you can while still maintaining good form. This takes time to learn.
And when you’re done, don’t let go of that trigger—that’s part of our next point.
7. Follow-Through
Good follow-through has two primary objectives: To make sure you don’t move the rifle while the projectile is still traveling down the barrel, and to get you in a position where you can very quickly evaluate the situation and prepare for a second shot if it’s needed.
The first part of this is holding the trigger back for a second after the shot breaks; this imparts no excess movement into the gun, as you might do if you yank the trigger and then let your finger spring immediately off. It only takes milliseconds for the projectile to leave the barrel, so you don’t need to hold the trigger long, but you’ll exaggerate the hold time while you’re learning and training your brain to do this.
The second part of follow-through is to reacquire your sight picture through your scope as quickly as you’re able. This helps you remember to keep your head on the stock until the shot is all the way finished (and beyond), and it puts you in a great position to watch your target and figure out how the situation has changed. Is that deer down, or is it staggering and in need of a second shot? Is that grizzly bear still charging? Is that bad guy still advancing? The faster you get back on target with the reticle, the better prepared you’ll be to make a follow-up shot if it’s needed. Which brings me to the last point…
8. Reload. Now!
When you’ve reacquired your sight picture, if you are shooting a lever-action or bolt-action rifle, go ahead and work the action without taking your head off the stock (this takes some practice and training to do consistently). Remember, all of the follow-through happens very quickly, in the span of a second or two, and you can just make this part of your routine. There’s no downside to reloading, and lots of upside.
Even if you noted in your follow-through that the situation is handled (the deer is down; the grizzly quit charging), things can change quickly. If that deer unexpectedly pops back up or a second bad guy emerges from somewhere, a bullet in your chamber is ready to go and you’ll be prepared to shoot as needed. When you’re pretty sure the coast is clear and you’ve taken all the time you need to be truly confident you won’t have to shoot again, then you can unload the rifle if you want to. But having a shot ready to go is important until you’ve had time to let things settle, so go ahead and shuck one in the chamber as soon as you reacquire your sight picture.
