The art of shooting long distances engages a different set of skills and techniques than tactical, cowboy-action, or skeet shooting. Some may say long distance shooting is golf, whereas tactical shooting is basketball.
Repetition, attention to detail, and the proper equipment can make an enormous difference when it comes to long distance accuracy. And, of course, these are just preparations you make to offset all the less-than-ideal conditions that you’ll almost certainly be dealing with in any real-world scenario.
Back to the Fundamentals
The key to performing nearly anything requiring precision under pressure is, to oversimplify a bit, practice. To be more specific, we have to fall back on an old football coach’s favorite saying. “Practice doesn’t make perfect,” he was fond of saying, “Perfect practice makes perfect.”
The key here is to realize that target shooting is never really just shooting at a target; it’s also training. The level of focus, patience, and expectations you bring to shooting at paper targets will inevitably impact how well you shoot in competition, hunting, etc.
Precision Shooting Discipline From an “Old Timer”
An old marine once explained why he was able to shoot 1-inch groups consistently at 100-yards while the rest of us were satisfied with 4-inch groups. He explained that back in the time of his basic training, Marines were made to dry fire their rifles a minimum of 1,000 times before they were allowed the privilege of live ammo.
To date, it sticks out as the most important and instructive thing we’ve heard regarding shooting accuracy. Consider how much time, not to mention mental energy, it would require to practice your aim, breathing, and trigger pull a thousand times with no live ammo. It’s a great exercise, when you think of it. With no anticipation or recoil, you can practice perfectly, building all the right habits, techniques, and muscle memory.
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But for goodness sakes, how damned boring would that be?
To tell the truth, the amount of time and effort it takes to become a truly excellent marksman is daunting. This is why you can’t afford to waste any time with improper training and the wrong tools.
On the other hand, we have much better tools at our disposal than the Korean War era Marine who was such a good shot. Since you probably don’t have the time or patience to dry fire thousands of times before you start plinking, you’re going to want to use these superior tools.
NEXT PAGE: Our Top 5 Sniper Rifles “Off-the-Shelf”