Columns

Welcome back the to the “pro tip” column for GunsAmerica Magazine from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU). This is our fourth article for GunsAmerica and if you haven’t been following the previous columns from the USAMU you should take a look. There is a lot of good information in them.

My name is SFC Jason Parker and I shoot on the US Army Marksmanship Unit International Rifle team. We are currently in the middle of a very busy competitive shooting season and our team has done very well. So far in 2010 our team has combined to win 6 International World Cup Medals and captured 2 National Championship titles. We have seven shooters that will be competing at the World Shooting Championship in Munich later this summer. In case you are interested in our results you can follow all of the USAMU’s highlights on Facebook.

This month’s article is about some general shooting tips to help improve your marksmanship skills. No matter what kind of weapon you will be shooting, whether it’s a rifle, pistol, or shotgun, there is one way to improve. Practice. I once had a coach that told me that the best way to get to Carnegie Hall was to practice. I have applied these simple words of wisdom to many aspects of my life and they have always proven to be true. Even if you are already a good shot, practicing more often will improve your shot accuracy, guaranteed.

So… you have finally saved up enough money and made up your mind to take that hunting trip of a lifetime. If you have never taken an extended hunting trip …you ask yourself “What do I need? At this point, you probably have already picked a game species to hunt and the state or province where you plan on pursuing that game animal. If you haven’t, don’t panic, you still have time to put something meaningful together but you need to start right after you finish reading this article. In order to point you in the right direction I have listed the top tips to help you plan for that memorable hunting trip you are about to take. If you are going with friends or family members make sure that everyone is on the same page. Make your plans and coordinate your equipment together. Proper planning and preparation will benefit everyone. I can go on and on about this topic, but I will touch upon the main points of groundwork in order to keep things in perspective.

There is only one type of shooting competition that only has a trophy for second place. The trophy is generally made of granite, has an epitaph inscribed on it, and when it is awarded to you, you are surrounded by everyone you love, crying their eyes out because you are dead. It’s called a tombstone.

A gunfight is a competition, but it isn’t a standard shooting competition like those you see in timed shooting sports. Speed is a factor, but it isn’t the only factor. And there will always be factors outside of your control, such as the physical and mental state of the threatening party, his competence, how well we shoot under the pressure of a gunfight, and what we are doing while engaging our adversary to keep from getting shot (or cut, or bludgeoned, etc.).

Some things, however, you can control, or at least prepare to control, and many of these involve speed and can be practiced. They are how fast you are able to present your weapon, how fast you can fire it accurately, and how fast you can reload when you are out of bullets or in danger of soon being out of bullets.

Wyatt Earp, one of the most famous gunfighters of all time, is quoted as saying: “Take your time…but be quick about it! He is also quoted as saying something to the effect of “Fast is fine but accuracy is final”. The interplay between these two factors, speed and accuracy, is one reality we must always recognize, the faster you go the less accurate you are.

There are few techniques associated with the Action Shooting sports that are as impressive as the speed draw. Executed properly it can be done in under a second all the while firing an extremely accurate shot. I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you some of my tips and strategies to make your own draw, a speed draw.

First and foremost, before you attempt to practice your draw, make absolute certain that your firearm is unloaded. Anytime you participate in dry fire training verify that there is no ammunition in your area. Even with an unloaded pistol, always practice safe muzzle awareness. I’d like to begin by breaking the draw down into 3 separate positions. Position 1 is with your firing hand gripping the pistol while it’s still in the holster. It’s important to use 2 points of contact between your hand and the pistol, to ensure you get a good firing grip. The first point of contact should be the web of your hand (the area between your thumb and pointer finger) as high on the rear of the pistol frame as possible. The second point of contact is the top of your middle finger underneath the trigger guard. In addition, your support hand should move in unison with your firing hand to a position just in front of your stomach area, awaiting the pistol to be drawn.

Every sniper candidate in sniper school begins training without a rifle in his hand. If the most elite marksman start this way, how much more so someone who doesn’t have the time and finances to practice shooting day after day.

Whether the extent of your long or even medium range scope assisted shooting will bring you to the fall season of the whitetail, to a field of competition, or to the battlegrounds of Iraq or Afghanistan, your abilities as an elite marksman will start in the same place. They will start with breathing, heartbeat, trigger control and how you handle your rifle. Save yourself some money on match grade ammo and some embarrassing 3″ groups at the range with your competition rifle and try a few things at home to get you started.

Last month in Part I of this series you may have been shocked to find that I didn’t instruct you to go out and buy my “pet” favorite carry pistol. I have one of course, but I have changed what I carry over the years as my preferences changed. The point was that there are a lot of factors, but the most measurable “correct” answer is to measure what you are shooting well, and weigh those choices against the standard “bigger is better” considerations when choosing a handgun for carry. No, I’m not going to tell you what to buy this month either, but we will get into some interesting details about aspects that many people just gloss over, but that are vitally important and will affect your ability to survive your gunfight.

Choices have consequences. People have died for the inability to stay in the fight until they prevailed. Just recently I had a student report that he won his second fight, immediately following his first, because of a technique we taught him for reloading in combat. An enemy fighter suddenly materialized after the first fight was over, presumably out of “nowhere.” He was able to choose the best option, and simply shot said bad guy, because his head, and his gun, were still in the fight! He did not “unload to reload”. He did not stick his muzzle into the air where it might take a lifetime to re-index or block his vision (or act as a flag to tell every bad guy in the vicinity that someone is going to be out of action for a brief period). Rather, he had kept up his guard up when his first attacker fell and, after a threat scan to insure there wasn’t another immediate threat, he started to execute a reload. When a threat did materialize without warning he was able to stop mid-stream and change gears. I could not, of course, be more pleased.

Within the same week we received a report (in the form of an excellent but sad magazine article) from a young Marine who is disabled for life because he did not know how to do this. That of course was not pleasing. Forward this article to your friends! Nobody wants to learn these lessons the hard way, whether carrying a gun as a CCW, as a Police Officer on duty or off, as a security guard, or in the sandbox so far away protecting our freedom.

I am a .17 lover, in spite of my reputation for liking really big guns. Being a .17 shooter is sort of like other things your friends and family would like to keep in the closet. But trust me; it is okay to like the wee rifles because there are few things that go bang that are as much fun.

To buy and like a .17 of any size you have to overcome the opinions of “experts” and writer types who will tell you all of the “bad” things about them. If you begin with the foundation that it is likely few of these naysayers have ever fired a .17, it immediately makes you feel better about the smallest of the commercial rounds. That they foul badly, are inaccurate, blow like feathers in the wind and have no killing power is simply untrue. My sweet seventeens have mostly been centerfires, and their emphasis has been on speed. Many of them are honest 4000 fps propositions and the fastest bullet I have ever chronographed was a .17, fired over the Oehler at 4600 fps. I have shot numerous sub-half-inch groups, thumped lots of various small critters, a few coyotes and some deer. With my long term affection for .17s it will not surprise you that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the Hornady Rimfire when it was released over a decade ago.

Hello and welcome to our first attempt at a “pro tip” column for GunsAmerica Magazine from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU). If you haven’t been following the previous columns on the history and purpose of the USAMU, as well as a great article from the custom shop last month on Cartridge Overall Length, I suggest you check them out.
A few quarters in between your pad and the gun will allow you to test the proper pitch so that the gun is recoiling straight back into your shoulder. This is an example of adjusting pitch in the top of the stock with quarters.

My name is SSG Ryan Hadden and I shoot on the US Army Marksmanship Unit Shotgun team. As I write this I have just returned from China where I won a bronze medal for US in Men’s Trap. This is the second shotgun event in the International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF) World Cup Championship for 2010, and my teammates SSG Josh Richmond and CPL Jeffrey Holguin won gold and bronze respectively in Men’s Doubles Trap for the first event in March that took place in Acapulco. We shoot under the governing body of USA Shooting when we compete, but we are all United States Army Marksmanship Unit Soldiers. Medal winners in the ISSF World Cup earn slots for their home countries, and this is the first year that counts. So far the USAMU Shotgun team is coming out Army Strong.

That is a question I get a lot. Sometimes it is from folks who have little or no shooting experience and sometimes it is from folks who just want me to tell them that the latest weapon they have chosen wasn’t a really stupid choice.

Friends, I don’t have an ambiguous bone in my body but I cannot give you an answer without more input. Even then I don’t usually make specific make and model recommendations for I cannot know the totality of your circumstances or, without spending at least a day on the range with you, your skill level. It is truly a case of the Biblical admonition to “work out your own salvation”. All I can do is report on what you might expect to find, but you will have to go shoot the guns and do more study on your own in order to make an informed decision.