Rational Marksmanship For Grownups

As a marksman I enjoyed owning various caliber bolt action rifles. Experimenting with calibers and loading for accuracy was great fun, and rewarded good concentration. If I had it to do all over again I'd have gotten a 270 Winchester Weatherby rifle made by Howa with the Browning-Enfield action. Its very smooth, with a monte carlo cheek plate stock so it was very natural to point.

That was the rifle I should have bought and focussed all my efforts on, instead of all the calibers I bought and perfected. I feel like I wasted a lot of money, though I did satisfy my curiosity learning to shoot each of them to their best, and now have the confidence to know that adapting to a new caliber is not that hard. People tend to be fussy about this, but the most important thing about a rifle is understanding there's no points for missing, so shoot the caliber which hits what you aim at, and understand its limitations.

MANY people who are otherwise sane and logical insist on buying and shooting (once) a caliber which hurts them, being gruff about it, and never touching it again. This describes MOST people who own a .30-06 or .308 rifle, both of which kick like a mule in a rifle light enough for hunting game. It is possible to learn how to shoot those calibers without getting bruised, but it takes a lot of practice, and a lot of bruising before you learn the trick to it, and few people perservere. Most of them would be better served by an AR rifle in 5.56x45 or .223 (can be shot interchangeably with few exceptions). Most people, and most wives and teenage daughters, are better served by a rifle with minimal recoil so they can aim and hit a target without getting a flinch. Big calibers are special purpose, and the various lighter calibers can do 90% of the big ones with less recoil. Few panicking new survivalist-type mall ninjas have any idea. As with most problems in their life, they do minimal research, throw money at the problem, and never touch it again presuming its easy because dumb people do it.

The shape of a rifle is important. That affects how it is aimed, but how you learn to shoot matters a great deal. Most military shooters I know don't really like proper rifle stocks, since they were trained on the M-16 with its pistol grip. I find pistol grip rifles unnatural because I learned on real rifle stocks. This is a great reason to avoid an AR rifle, at least for me. Soldiers trained on them love them. I didn't care for them much. The spring squeaking in my ear wasn't much fun either. Its distracting.

Most video game players don't hold a stock, but they get some experience on movement. Really experienced 1-Bravo (Infantry) learn to shoot while moving over rough ground and that's a specialized skill compared to the range, where you're holding still and reasonably comfortable. Moving around with a loaded weapon requires a high degree of training, particularly a good working safety that's on most of the time, and training to turn that off when a target is in the sights and not before. Few people who panic-buy a firearm "for safety" think that clearly or have that level of discipline. They are the worst possible owners of a weapon, because they'll end up killing someone or maybe themselves through ignorance and stupidity.

I have read any number of forum posts from people who even say things like "ah nevur clean mah gun cuz it shoots perfect already". Wow. Really? I've also read claims from yahoos who claim their short barrel carbine M4 clone will kill hogs at 500 yards when I know damn well that rifle is incapable of the feat so its just another 12 yo boy lying about his daydreams again. I have no time for those morons. They may live to see the end of puberty, or they may mouth off to someone close enough to slap them down and end up in ditch. Stuff like that happens in the real world. School teachers do nobody any favors letting that kind of behavior get so out of hand. They worry about identity politics instead of whether offending grownups might kill them. The real world has little forgiveness, and idiots I knew back in school like that died for it. Not nice, but it happened. I have no time for those idiots and encourage them to remain in the inner city and continue with their opiate habit since that self-corrects soon enough.

The advantage of shooting only one kind of rifle caliber in light enough recoil to be without a flinch and thus focus on accuracy is you only need to stock that caliber, and can reload for accuracy and find the sweet spot, which is different for each rifle. That's not a joke. Each one will shoot a caliber best through experimentation on reloading with bullet weight, powder type, powder amount, bullet seating depth, and even primer and brass brand. You experiment till you figure out which variation shoots the smallest consistent group, then zero in your scope on that spot and confirm it. After that, load to that spec with your fired brass and shoot once a month, year round, so you remain able to absorb the recoil properly. That's bare minimum, but it works.

Naturally, you get best accuracy from bolt rifles, not auto-rifles like the AR or AK. There's less play in the chamber pressure, which matters a great deal. Also, you tend to shoot less rounds and pay more attention to your aim because you don't have the psychological lie of "I can pull the trigger again if I misss so its not that important to aim well". Not having another round helps with this. Internal box magazines are great. They don't get bent or dropped or lost. Unloading them for crossing fences is slightly more annoying, but most hold less than 10 rounds, and many hold only 5 or even 3 if you have a magnum caliber rifle. And that's fine for most needs since you usually just get the one shot at the elk or antelope or deer and then it runs away if you miss, or drops if you hit properly. Holdover, rise and drop offsets, these are part of accuracy too. And if you can get closer to the target, get closer. Rifles are much more effective within 200 yards. A 500 yard shot is going to miss in most cases, and is unethical to take since a wounded animal at 500 yards is going to suffer a lot while you chase it. If you aren't troubled by ethical questions I really don't want you to own a firearm. Stick to video games. You can PVP there to your heart's content. Leave the wilderness to the adults who respect it.