GTA
All Springer/NP/PCP Air Gun Discussion General => Hunting Gate => Topic started by: barcabarca on September 10, 2012, 03:02:15 AM
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I have been shooting my springers lately in my yard, to keep a decent 1" or less group requires focus technique and a very steady consistent hold usually from a makeshift bench in my yard. I have a Diana 48 and a Diana 54 and a Diana 34Panther all in .22. At 25 yards its do able pretty reliably, I cant imagine shooting at something without a steady rest. Spring gun hunters: How do you do it? How close do you have to stalk to be successful. Don't you always need some kind of rest in order to be accurate enough to turn off the lights in one shot?
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It's always been harder for me to shoot from a rest. I usually rest my elbow or upper arm against my ribs, and let the gun float on my forward hand somewhere behind the balance point. I use my wrist like a turret sort of, and shrug my shoulder up or down if need be, to aim the gun, lightly tough it to my shoulder, and my trigger hand/finger barely touch/squeeze the weapon just enough to fire. That is the artillery hold =) And it does work! Even better than resting the gun on your palm, over a rest.
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I'm really interested in shooting offhand. After it everything else should be easy. I am getting pretty good. My backyard is only ten yards. I am pretty good at shooting inside an inch at that range. I just started shooting at 1/2" circles tonight. The largest problem I've had in the field is determining range. I do carry shooting sticks in the field. Their simple to make. I need to spend sometime somewhere shooting at 20, 30 and 40 yards. I put some tape on my field glasses and wrote down ranges for various focal points. This should be sufficient to get in the right ballpark which is really all I need. I think I'm zeroed at 17 and 36 yards, so at 25 I'm about a half inch high; at ten yards I'm about a half inch low. Point blank is an inch and a half low.
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A tree, off a knee, or a rest.
yes most find something to rest against.
I have many times used a kneeling stance. My left elbow rest on my left knee, the rifle floats on my left hand. The right (trigger hand) just guide the rifle.
My most accurate way to shoot in the field. I have reached out long distances this way.
Many of killer shots witnessed over the years, and some I am very proud of.
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i have been using my 48 for hunting for over ten years. i don't do anything but a preliminary sight in from the bench.when i shoot to check zero i use a monopod or the door jamb of my back door. i grab it (door) with my right hand, i'm lefty. and i sorta make a crook with my thumb and rest the gun in it. that way i have the same p.o.i when i shoot rested like that off a sapling at a bushy. i am deadly like that with that gun. maybe because i've shot it so much, but also just because the 48 has always been the most comfortable gun i've ever shouldered, like diana made it just for me! i regularly make 50+ yard kills with mine on bushys, bunnies, crows and occasionally chucks. :D
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Dont feel bad I am too in the same situation. Can hit 1 inch circle at 18 yards with a rest. Go to shoot at animals and having a hard time hitting them. The one rabitt I did get I shot him perfectly in the head. I need more practice I guess.
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When I'm hunting I'll use a rest if I can but I don't have any aversion to shooting free hand if I have to. It's like anything else, the more practice you get the better you'll get. When shooting free hand for me the key is to just shoulder the rifle, put the scope on target and as soon as I see the cross hairs hovering over the sweet spot I pull the trigger. What I mean is,,,, don't shoulder the rifle and then take a long time trying to hold the scope on target waiting for the slight movement of the crosshairs to stop..... because it won't. Quickly get your sight picture and as soon as you have it then fire.. The longer you hold the rifle up and on target the more the crosshairs will start to "float" around the target. Do I miss more shooting free hand ? Yes, but I usually harvest the critter I'm aiming at :)
Jeff
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When I'm hunting I'll use a rest if I can but I don't have any aversion to shooting free hand if I have to. It's like anything else, the more practice you get the better you'll get. When shooting free hand for me the key is to just shoulder the rifle, put the scope on target and as soon as I see the cross hairs hovering over the sweet spot I pull the trigger. What I mean is,,,, don't shoulder the rifle and then take a long time trying to hold the scope on target waiting for the slight movement of the crosshairs to stop..... because it won't. Quickly get your sight picture and as soon as you have it then fire.. The longer you hold the rifle up and on target the more the crosshairs will start to "float" around the target. Do I miss more shooting free hand ? Yes, but I usually harvest the critter I'm aiming at :)
Jeff
+1 ..
Seen happen a bunch of times with some guys I hunt with. They hold on target for what seems like forever. And the harder they try to steady the more I see the end of their barrel floating about.
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It is harder to shoot well in the field though, and I do get where you are coming from. I had an xl that could literally drill the bottom of a soda can at 75 yards every time when i had it together, but I never ever hit a critter with it. Fudge my hold a tiny bit, pellet would fly way off target. I think part of it is finding a springer that fits you well, that you can hold comfortably, and that shoulders naturally for you. Yeah, practice practice practice and become familiar with your gun- but it also helps a lot to have one that fits you just right. That's why I love wood-stocked Stoeger X10's so much. I guess it is the shape and proportion of the stock, maybe in conjunction with the balance of the shorter barrel- I don't know why exactly. But for me at least, the X10's are natural to shoot and the pellets hit where I aim them, period. Especially off-hand and with open sights. Maybe because it was my first springer, but I do believe ergonomics play a role.
EDIT- Actually it wasn't my first springer when I think abut it. I had owned a couple of Gamo's in the passed as well. But it was the one that made me fall in love with airguns =)
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I always shot my spring guns rested on something.
Took a monopod alot, and still do actually. Just a steadier base.......
But always prefer to use what Im hiding in, around, on.....
Use a 4 wheeler alot, makes a good hunting seat
I dont shoot well offhand at all, rifles or pistols.
If shooting offhand, a good quality trigger is a must.
God bless,
Farmer
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When I was a kid all my dad had was a springer rifle, I don't know anything about it, or if it is still in my parents house. But I got more than a few headshots on pest birds in the back yard with it. That gun was cool. awesome shots off hand.
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Like some of the others said a rest is a welcome aid. When I was squirrel hunting with my big cat I used a rifle sling to help steady it on standing shots. My Tech Force wasn't as hold sensitive so a tree branch would work just fine.
It is something that needs lots of and lots of practice to do well.
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Regardless of gun type, I find that my biggest hinderance to shooting at an animal well is knowing hwere to hold. I mostly shoot paper, and it is really easy to hold a steady 6 o-clock hold on a dot. It's not so easy to use a birds head as the "dot" even if the bird is just printed on paper.
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I went to the darkside :-)
My springer was very hold sensitive, causing my hunting to be very aggravating along with some bad shot placements. Due to the quick scenarios in hunting, tring to get the perfect hold was not always capable. I ended up with my mrod, and I shoot off hand, or for the +60 yard shots i use shooting sticks.
Good luck
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Shoot cans. By far my favorite target is just a can. Probably the number one airgun target there is. Letters on cans, knock em over and try to hit the bottoms, and i really like hitting the harder edges of them. A mid-power .177 springer might throw a pllet through a can so fast that it hardly moves if at al, so you start trying to hit the bottom edges where the material is a little more robust to knock em around. Also try shooting the tops off bottles. Line up your plastic bottles full of water and shoot the tops off, then perforate em all over- tons of fun. Shoot at stuff like paintballs, necco wafers, skittles, etc. Boiled eggs are fun, just any old kind of small, cheap food or candy makes a great three dimensional reactive target and hones your skills. I hate punching paper, and I normally reserve that for zeroing a gun or checking it's zero.
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Jeff (longIslandhunter) makes a very good point.
No need for the perfect hold. I use to be a very accomplished off hand shooter...open sight or scope, that was until I fell from the roof.
I had micro tears in my Sacroilliac ligament. This holds the spine to the pelvis, hurts to much to shoot off hand.
This is the reason for the kneeling shots.
At home I aim for rediculously small targets, making you focus hard on the cross hairs to land the shot.
Well when hunting, as long as the cross hairs are on the target or mildot for hold over, I let the pellet go.
I find it easier to put down a critter than I do, to hit a 4.5mm-5.5mm target.
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Of all my kills using a springer, I can say that only 3 or 4 have been unsupported...and most under 25 yards. Most of the time it`s either my right shoulder was leaning on a wall or tree, left forearm supported by knee or branch or the forestock is on a window sill.
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It's all about how much you practice. You also need to practice the way you hunt. If you sit and shoot from a bench for 2 hours and go through most of a tin that way and feel confident, and then go shoot at a squirrel from a 2nd floor window, or leaning on the door way, you will not be as accurate. You have to practice from the position(s) you normally hunt.
And Jeff 's advice was very good. Shoot as soon as the crosshairs are on target. The longer you wait, the more tired you might get, your breathing might change, etc. making it harder to keep it on target. Plus the critter could flee if you spend too much time trying to get the crosshairs to stop moving, which they won't. What I do is raise the muzzle and as soon as I find the target I take the shot when shooting off-hand. I got 2 squirrels with the 48 off-hand and NO scope while I was breaking it in before I scoped it. Then I scoped the 48 and I was not any more accurate as I was off-hand. The same with my 350's. This is why now I will only scope a tuned Springer.
I will conclude by saying that you really should get your Springers tuned if you want optimum accuracy, or have a hard time getting better than 1" groups past 25yds. If you leave your Springers stock, I would not recommend scoping them. They will shoot just the same at 25yds and you may even have an easier time hitting the critters without a scope. I hunted with my 350 for almost a year without a scope and I had a 95+% success rate even out to 40yds with crows and Groundhogs, and squirrels out to 30yds. Then I scoped it and didn't like the groups at all, started missing critters. I broke down and sent it out for a full tune, and haven't looked back. That changed everything. I will no longer shoot a non-tuned Springer.
Harry
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I use whatever I have at my disposal, be it a tree, my knee, or offhand, I ca get my hold right and sink the pellet in the killzone fairly easy. I'm not spoiled ;D ;D ;D
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Practice!
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I'm usually shooting from the cover of a tree trunk and whatever hangs off of it vertically or horizontally whether a branch or knot as well as placing hand on trunk and resting rifle on hand. The only gun I can shoot offhand well is my TalonP Carbine.
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Probably one of the best spring gun shooters around the world explains....................and what he does is shows you that a springer can be as accurate as a PCP!
Enjoy and listen to the whole video.........http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYXuO6atxlc#ws (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYXuO6atxlc#ws)
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I practice by shooting targets standing offhand...or sitting down using my knee as a rest...using a tree as a rest. Or just a lot of offhand shooting. Longest offhand shot I've made was 35 yards at a squirrel 15 feet up...and that was a great feeling of accomplishment.
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The only way to get it down to a automatic function is to get out there and practice. Take a day or days and head out to the stick's if you have access. Don't plan on doing any harvesting but just practice shooting from different postions. I've shot from about every angle and some that made me feel like Gumby lol. Ed
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One thing the above video doesn't cover is a factor that many American air gunners fall prey to and that is the unnecessary "need for speed". The hype here is always for the highest FPS and this driving force has given rise to air rifles that are even more hold sensitive and harder to tame than they really need to be. Take the Titan GP, this gun can spit a RWS 14.5grn out at 720fps for a 16fpe rating. In comparison air rifles in the UK are limited to 12fpe (at least they were when I lived there). So 12fpe for the same 14.5grn pellet is only 610fps which is 110fps less or about the same as the low powered version the Crosman offers. This decrease in fps/energy generation will directly result in less recoil and far less hold sensitivity without significantly decreasing the affective range or stopping power. If anything it could actually increase your range as it greatly increases the ability to put the pellet where you are aiming. 49 meters or just under 54 yards and reliably hitting a bottle top is some fine shoot and will stop most small game as any of our UK GTA brothers can confirm.
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I never fell under the more power hype and focus my skills on harvesting game with midpowered springers, springer pistola's and even the little pumpers. Ed
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I second the complaint about never-ending horsepower wars in these rifles.
As for accuracy, there are two things:
1 - Your trigger and how you pull it. How you pull it really doesn't matter (barring really huge errors) as long as whatever you are doing is identical every time.
2 - I've heard about various holds and all of that, but the best that I managed to shoot was to modify my que hold. Ie - I play pool (billiards). If you use your hand (3-5 fingers on the table) to support your wrist and lock it, you then can use your elbow as the other contact point. That is, instead of a typical artillery hold in your hand. If you are at a bench or flat surface (or say, a tree stump), get as much of your entire arm as you can into it. I usually rested my springer on the top of my hand or near the back of my wrist. My wrist was usually just an inch off the table. By manipulating my finger position, like when shooting pool, I could control the elevation so that my hold (shoulder,eye, etc) is identical otherwise. Sometimes I used a small bean bag on top if the rifle tended to dig into my skin.
Nothing forward of the trigger is being held/held down. Just resting on your hand/arm/etc.
Of course I am now a lot more lazy. ;) CO2 and PCP does that to you, since nothing much moves when the gun fires.
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Mike that is a very nice video.
Ive read numerous postings since I joined this forum talking about how powder burners are so different that airgun. Though this is true to a point. Shooting is still shooting. If you good at one, you will find the ways to be good at the other. This video gives infomation that though designed for his Airgun is very similar to accepted Military and Law Enforcement techniques in regards to Bone Support, Muscle Relaxation, Breathing, and Follow through. Any shooter without formal training or passed down technique from an older family member or friend could learn a great deal just from this vid.
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Probably one of the best spring gun shooters around the world explains....................and what he does is shows you that a springer can be as accurate as a PCP!
Enjoy and listen to the whole video.........http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYXuO6atxlc#ws (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYXuO6atxlc#ws)
He brought up some interesting points I had either forgotten or was not aware of ; flesh on flesh instead of bone on bone, proper body position to the target, breath control which we are all aware of should serve to make for better shooters.