Over primer wads

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powderburner
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by powderburner »

It always seems that when the shot breaks if the rifle is on target the shot will be better than if it shifts at the shot. Which means one forces it to task instead of pointing naturally. When i do this the shot is wide and i also do not see the muzzle flash.
So if you muscle it to task you will have more of a tendency to relax at the break and shoot off.
Also i have to force myself not to lift my head as soon as i break the shot , i think this problem comes from shooting by myself and trying to keep track of the shot. I find i do not do it as bad with a scope, and if i keep my head on the stock i isially see the strike in the scope if the rifle is not muscled to the bull
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desert deuce
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by desert deuce »

Chris, have thought that actually doing videos of shooting would be a tremendous help.
One where the upper torso profile of the shooter in prone with the full length of the rifle in the frame.
To include what the spotter says and their report of the hit on the target.

Yep, shooting by yourself encourages jumping off the rifle to the scope. At 1,000 yards you have almost 4 seconds if you are shooting steel or have a favorable impact area behind the target.

Putting anywhere from one to three live rounds in a revolver cylinder with the rest of the chambers filled with empties, close cylinder and spin, works.

Loading magazines with either snap caps or dummy rounds works especially well for immediate action drills and marksmanship. And yes Virginia, I have fired a lot of different scattermatics and I have never had but one that did not malfunction....yet.

Nothing prepares you better that I know of for that moment in time when it really matters than a lot of draw aim fire one shot drills, draw aim fire two shots, draw aim fire three shots, etc. It's all about front sight. Mostly practiced shooters can get three hits on a knock down steel silhouette before it goes down.

Worthwhile to remember that most lethal encounters are over in less than seven seconds.

Most lethal encounters take place within ten feet. I have watched live and on video presentations where the knife assailant starts at 21 feet with the attack and the officer fails to draw and fire before the attacker delivers the first strike. The officer knowing it is going to happen. Oh, and if you have an IWB holster and pistol under shirt, you hardly get it out of the holster before you are carved up. And that knowing it is coming. Oh, and that element of surprise requires about 4 seconds to begin defensive reaction, sabe?

I haven't read the nationwide stats in quite a while, last time I did a seasoned police officer in a deadly force shooting percentage of scoring a probable lethal hit after the second shot approached zero probability.

Another little tidbit: A perp receiving a lethal hit from a firearm can still function for up to three minutes if the hit did not impair motor function. Read several reports of a perp receiving a lethal hit at close range and giving no indication that they have been hit. The most recent was six hits to center mass at about five feet with a 9mm with service loads.

What I am saying is forget the movies. Find the LEO videos and watch them.
Sometimes you get the chicken, and sometimes you get the feathers!
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desert deuce
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by desert deuce »

Gunfighting Wisdom direct from Wyatt Earp

“I was a fair hand with pistol, rifle, or shotgun, but I learned more about gunfighting from Tom Speer’s cronies during the summer of ’71 than I had dreamed was in the book. Those old-timers took their gunplay seriously, which was natural under the conditions in which they lived. Shooting, to them, was considerably more than aiming at a mark and pulling a trigger. Models of weapons, methods of wearing them, means of getting them into action and operating them, all to the one end of combining high speed with absolute accuracy, contributed to the frontiersman’s shooting skill. The sought-after degree of proficiency was that which could turn to most effective account the split-second between life and death. Hours upon hours of practice, and wide experience in actualities supported their arguments over style.
“The most important lesson I learned from those proficient gunfighters was the winner of a gunplay usually was the man who took his time. The second was that, if I hoped to live long on the frontier, I would shun flashy trick-shooting—grandstand play—as I would poison.
“When I say that I learned to take my time in a gunfight, I do not wish to be misunderstood, for the time to be taken was only that split fraction of a second that means the difference between deadly accuracy with a sixgun and a miss. It is hard to make this clear to a man who has never been in a gunfight. Perhaps I can best describe such time taking as going into action with the greatest speed of which a man’s muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick-shooting involves. Mentally deliberate, but muscularly faster than thought, is what I mean.
“In all my life as a frontier police officer, I did not know a really proficient gunfighter who had anything but contempt for the gun-fanner, or the man who literally shot from the hip. In later years I read a great deal about this type of gunplay, supposedly employed by men noted for skill with a forty-five.
“From personal experience and numerous six-gun battles which I witnessed, I can only support the opinion advanced by the men who gave me my most valuable instruction in fast and accurate shooting, which was that the gun-fanner and hip-shooter stood small chance to live against a man who, as old Jack Gallagher always put it, took his time and pulled the trigger once.
“Cocking and firing mechanisms on new revolvers were almost invariably altered by their purchasers in the interests of smoother, effortless handling, usually by filing the dog which controlled the hammer, some going so far as to remove triggers entirely or lash them against the guard, in which cases the guns were fired by thumbing the hammer. This is not to be confused with fanning, in which the triggerless gun is held in one hand while the other was brushed rapidly across the hammer to cock the gun, and firing it by the weight of the hammer itself. A skillful gun-fanner could fire five shots from a forty-five so rapidly that the individual reports were indistinguishable, but what could happen to him in a gunfight was pretty close to murder.
“I saw Jack Gallagher’s theory borne out so many times in deadly operation that I was never tempted to forsake the principles of gunfighting as I had them from him and his associates.
“There was no man in the Kansas City group who was Wild Bill’s equal with a six-gun. Bill’s correct name, by the way, was James B. Hickok. Legend and the imaginations of certain people have exaggerated the number of men he killed in gunfights and have misrepresented the manner in which he did his killing. At that, they could not very well overdo his skill with pistols.
“Hickok knew all the fancy tricks and was as good as the best at that sort of gunplay, but when he had serious business at hand, a man to get, the acid test of marksmanship, I doubt if he employed them. At least, he told me that he did not. I have seen him in action and I never saw him fan a gun, shoot from the hip, or try to fire two pistols simultaneously. Neither have I ever heard a reliable old-timer tell of any trick-shooting employed by Hickok when fast straight-shooting meant life or death.
“That two-gun business is another matter that can stand some truth before the last of the old-time gunfighters has gone on. They wore two guns, most of six-gun toters did, and when the time came for action went after them with both hands. But they didn’t shoot them that way.
“Primarily, two guns made the threat of something in reserve; they were useful as a display of force when a lone man stacked up against a crowd. Some men could shoot equally well with either hand, and in a gunplay might alternate their fire; others exhausted the loads from the gun on the right, or the left, as the case might be, then shifted the reserve weapon to the natural shooting hand if that was necessary and possible. Such a move—the border shift—could be made faster than the eye could follow a top-notch gun-thrower, but if the man was as good as that, the shift would seldom be required.
“Whenever you see a picture of some two-gun man in action with both weapons held closely against his hips and both spitting smoke together, you can put it down that you are looking at the picture of a fool, or a fake. I remember quite a few of these so-called two-gun men who tried to operate everything at once, but like the fanners, they didn’t last long in proficient company.
“In the days of which I am talking, among men whom I have in mind, when a man went after his guns, he did so with a single, serious purpose. There was no such thing as a bluff; when a gunfighter reached for his fortyfive, every faculty he owned was keyed to shooting as speedily and as accurately as possible, to making his first shot the last of the fight. He just had to think of his gun solely as something with which to kill another before he himself could be killed. The possibility of intimidating an antagonist was remote, although the ‘drop’ was thoroughly respected, and few men in the West would draw against it. I have seen men so fast and so sure of themselves that they did go after their guns while men who intended to kill them had them covered, and what is more win out in the play. They were rare. It is safe to say, for all general purposes, that anything in gunfighting that smacked of show-off or bluff was left to braggarts who were ignorant or careless of their lives.
“I might add that I never knew a man who amounted to anything to notch his gun with ‘credits,’ as they were called, for men he had killed. Outlaws, gunmen of the wild crew who killed for the sake of brag, followed this custom. I have worked with most of the noted peace officers — Hickok, Billy Tilghman, Pat Sughre, Bat Masterson, Charlie Basset, and others of like caliber — have handled their weapons many times, but never knew one of them to carry a notched gun.
“There are two other points about the old-time method of using six-guns most effectively that do not seem to be generally known. One is that the gun was not cocked with the ball of the thumb. As his gun was jerked into action, the old-timer closed the whole joint of his thumb over the hammer and the gun was cocked in that fashion. The soft flesh of the thumb ball might slip if a man’s hands were moist, and a slip was not to be chanced if humanly avoidable. This thumb-joint method was employed whether or not a man used the trigger for firing.
“On the second point, I have often been asked why five shots without reloading were all a top-notch gunfighter fired, when his guns were chambered for six cartridges. The answer is, merely, safety. To ensure against accidental discharge of the gun while in the holster, due to hair-trigger adjustment, the hammer rested upon an empty chamber. As widely as this was known and practiced, the number of cartridges a man carried in his six-gun may be taken as an indication of a man’s rank with the gunfighters of the old school. Practiced gun-wielders had too much respect for their weapons to take unnecessary chances with them; it was only with tyros and would-be's that you heard of accidental discharges or didn’t-know-it-was-loaded injuries in the country where carrying a Colt was a man’s prerogative.”
Sometimes you get the chicken, and sometimes you get the feathers!
gunlaker
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by gunlaker »

Zack thanks for that. It was very interesting reading.

I have definitely thought of video. Ideally I'd include wind flags and audio for wind calls too. That way it could also be analyzed later. Maybe 2 cameras and include mirage too. You could probably sell videos like that.

Chris.
horsefly
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by horsefly »

Good morning, Folks;

Mike asked a specific (and important) question: What is follow through?

If you are doing the same thing two seconds after the shot that you were doing before it, you are following through. You are not doing anything to disturb the gun during or after the shot.

Now, to add a little wind: as mentioned before, the temptation to raise your head and see what you did is always there. If you raise your head (or do any other things that disturb the gun or position) AFTER the shot, no big deal. BUT if you raise your head after, you will begin to do it before and disturb the lay of the gun. That is bad ... really bad.

After you release the shot, keep right on doing what you were doing before. Don't wiggle, giggle, raise your head or pass gas. The only thing that you should move is your trigger. There is time for all that other stuff later.

What you were doing before the shot, keep doing after the shot.

Y'all be good;

horsefly
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desert deuce
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by desert deuce »

Mike asked: "please describe what you mean by FOLLOW THROUGH?"

Horsefly pretty much beat me to answering and is solid information.

However, Mike asked what I mean which I take to mean what do I do to accomplish follow through.

In the sight alignmment, breath control, trigger control sequence my mind is as blank as I can make it and hopefully bordering on subconscious adherence to the state of sight alignment when the shot breaks surprising me. It seems that about the time sight alignment gives way to breath control my mind goes blank and all that matters is sight alignment and the trigger finger moves of it's own accord. If I recover from recoil and unconsciously reassume (still in that blank mind set) the pre shot condition of looking through the sights without changing body position I have accomplished follow through as well as I can expect. And no I am almost never on target post recoil.

Dry firing really helps with the basics, however, when you get to live fire you really have to ramp up the concentration for executing the fundamentals correctly, follow through in particular, for when that 84 grains of powder launches that 540 grain bullet it has a kinetic effect that is not present in dry fire.

Again, trigger time. Recoil Therapy is the path to nirvana.
Sometimes you get the chicken, and sometimes you get the feathers!
horsefly
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by horsefly »

Good morning, Mr. Deuce:

I appreciate what you said about HOW you get into the right frame of mind. For me, everything else disappears and the only thing I can see is the sight picture. I try to make it be absolute concentration. The rest of the world goes away for just a few seconds while the rifle does its thing.

From what I read, we are both doing or trying to do the same thing. That is to close out the rest of the world for a very short while. Just lay there and watch while my trigger finger does its thing ... and keep doing exactly that until the shot is well gone. How someone slides into that "state of mind" is an individual thing, I think.

Be the arrow.

Y'all be good.

horsefly
mike herth
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by mike herth »

Good answers, thank you. No more peeking up! A bad habit developed by not having a spotter.
semtav
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by semtav »

Might just be me, but I've always felt you can mask a lot of imperfections shooting prone , but if you don't do a lot of practicing shooting sitting or offhand it will just flat bite you in the arse.
semtav
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by semtav »

Might just be me, but I've always felt you can mask a lot of imperfections shooting prone , but if you don't do a lot of practicing shooting sitting or offhand it will just flat bite you in the arse.
John Bly
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by John Bly »

Here's a poem I wrote for my son when he started shooting. He had an issue with looking up to see if he hit the target. It's good for every shooter to review once in a while.



When ‘arf yer bullets fly wide in the ditch
don’t call yer rifle a cross eyed ol’ bitch.
Thars things ye must pay heed to which,
breathin’ an’ sightin’ an’ for Gawd’s sake don’t twitch.
Hold ‘er steady as she blows an’ resist the itch
to raise yer noggin to see forthwith.
Let the smoke clear a lit’l an’ recover a bit,
now take a peek to see what yuv hit.
"Perfection consists not so much in doing extraordinary things as in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well"
mike herth
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by mike herth »

I like it!
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JonnyV
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by JonnyV »

Yep I'm stealing that.....
rgchristensen
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by rgchristensen »

Poem:
Rudyard must be turning in his grave.....

CHRIS
rgchristensen
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Re: Over primer wads

Post by rgchristensen »

Poem:
Rudyard must be turning in his grave.....

CHRIS
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