Various Shooting Disciplines & What Each Taught Me

A List of key lessons each shooting discipline taught me:

The skills learnt in each type of shooting all complement each other.
Exposure to these styles will make you a better shooter.
It is sad that some members of our already diminishing sport stereotype against other shooters without fully understanding the challenges each class of shooting comprises.

Let us explore how each of these shooting sports has so much to offer.
Do you have a story you want to share? Please post your comments below.

.22 smallbore match rifle & Air rifle .177 match (Olympic target shooting style)

Critical Importance on uniform breathing & patience to calm down.
Emphasis on Trigger release in the best stage of your breathing.
Trigger Finger position & break technique absolutely paramount.
Learning to use aperture sights trains the hand eye co-ordination more accurately from a true to distance perspective as there is no optical magnification available in most standard configurations.

You will learn to focus so hard that you must train to completely forget that the world around you exists. As at that point in time, all that matters is you & your equipment, ignore everything else.

10m Air rifle in Standing is even harder as you are doing all of the above whilst having to be in a vertical position with that 7kg rifle. You will learn how to position your hips & your lower back in an offset to enable them to cross balance your upper body & keep it steady.

.22 LR sporting rifle & Air rifle sporting springer class .177 cal:

Improves your fore stock hold, grip & placement technique.
Reiterates Importance of adequate, but not excessive cheek pressure.
No slings & fancy padded gloves with heavy barrels that add inertia to stop it all shaking.
The objective is shooting accurately with a versatile weapon & not to worry about 1mm.
Dont underestimate the accuracy of these lightweight guns, they are very capable.
An Anschutz 1712 is comparable to an Anschutz 1813, they both have the same Match 54 class action & I promise you that you will find they shoot identical at 50 metres with appropriate ammo.
The same is true for other good sporting rifles, they will routinely shoot better than you.

22 cal rifle rapid semi auto

Learning to use comparatively heavier triggers without cultivating bad habits of over-compensating them with your main gripping hand (usually left) causing left side pulling of shots.
Handling muzzle jump, anticipating/co-ordinating vibration, & letting off the Follow up shot.
Learning to push the hand down while pull the stock in just before firing the next round develops a multitasking ability

Shotgun Clay shooting (Trap, Skeet, American Sporting clay birds etc)

Quick acquisition of the same shooting brace position, posture & eye level from shot to shot.
No time to re-position things once the target flies out, you need to have practised all the directions & be prepared to shoot.
Learn to visualise your projectile as being an extension to your line of sight.
Quick Target Acquisition alongside range, travel path & wind estimation.
This discipline is harder than it looks, especially with high speed trap throwers.

Centrefire 100m

Hold it tight into your shoulder, but not so tight that your left hand starts shaking.
Dont worry about the distance, focus on acquiring your target. Stay in the moment & focus on your core technique.

Centrefire Sporting Rifle Rapid

You must accept that you wont be able to completely eliminate recoil & that follow up shots will be significantly less accurate given you dont have time to completely stablilise.
Its similar to .22 rapid fire, except that you will need to use a lot more cheek pressure after each shot is fired to assist in bringing the sights back on target.

Air pistol .177 target match 10 metres

Target Air Pistol, probably the hardest discipline Ive shot.
Shooting standing with only 1 arm extended, you will train your entire body to balance itself such that the right hand can float steady.
You will realise how timing is everything.
Dont anticipate the trigger finger movement. If you do, you will focus too hard on a precise trigger pull & that will come at the cost of sacrificing your target line up.

Repetition is paramount, so is endurance.
You will feel fatigue fast & it will hit hard exponentially, shot after shot.
A must shoot discipline to train you to the max.

I would think these principles are equally applicable to the 25m .22 match pistol discipline.
Are you a match pistol shooter? Please tell me what you think about my observations.

Details on the following disciplines coming soon as I get time to write more, watch this space:

Heavy Calibre rifle

22LR Pistol

Centrefire pistol

Heavy Calibre Pistol

Centrefire Rifle match / 3P

Are you a shooter who has experience with various things?
Please share what you felt was challenging in your disciplines of interest.
Please recommend any disciplines that are not in the list & tell us why you like them.

Happy Shooting people, go nail that bullseye.