okay... all you wild and crazed shooters out there!!!

[dave imas]

give me your thoughts on spot shooting versus line shooting versus center shooting...
dave

[TX Charlie]

OK Dave...
As age is adapting my physical abilities, the eyes do not function as well as I remember.  As a old motorcycle racer “The older I get, the faster I was!”, guess this axiom applies to shooting also.
I have listened to the arguments about scope power and do agree the reduction in power magnification is beneficial for me at this time.  With the higher magnification scopes, shooting at spots on the target was the method I used.  This is a great method for the spotter to help the shooter distinguish which is the correct target, and the shooter to focus intently on that specific spot on that target.  
On some days this is still the method I prefer to use, but other days I have been using less powerful scopes and many times focusing somewhat short of the target, having the target fuzzy with the crosshairs sharp.  This helps my concentration on the crosshairs and the point at which the shot is released.  Shooting with this “fuzzy target” method, does not allow seeing the paint chips, but it does let you see a target with a sharp, definitive dot on the steel.  It also allows you to see the bullet flight since your scope is focused short of the distance you are shooting.
If I am having a difficult day seeing, the “fuzzy target” method does sometimes help my scores ?
Shooting the cowboy silhouette rifle now and the 6 0’clock hold works well with this game, guess I might set up the Kimber to shoot center while holding on leg joins the body?  Been shooting Silo for 23 years and seems like it is just one experiment after another….

[shootingpaul]

well since I got this new scope..... I dont know it came with some mark right in the center..... looks like a dot or somethink like that; just were the cross hairs meet, it is about 1/4 inch big.... and a funny thing is that I always hit that dot no matter if I am on the target or not, even if I aim on the backstop the bullets seem to go where the dot is, so I dont know, I wanted to return this scope and get another one, but I like this "dot" shooting.

[drags]

I think i know what spot shooting is but what is  line shooting and center shooting?
Joe

[yankee]

Spot shooting would be shooting a bullet mark or paint chip or could be shooting a specific place on the animal. Line shooting would be shooting the top or lower edge of the animal. Center shooting would be shooting the center of the amimal.
If the amimal has a nice bullet mark or paint chip near the center I will use that.  If the amimal is clean I will pick a point or place I want to hit on the amimal.  My feeling is to concentrate on a specific point on the animal and bring the cross hair to that point and the gun goes off.
I have never been comfortable with line shooting or having the bullet hit where the rifle is not aimed.  Plus it can get complicated with "do I take a minute or minute and one quarter out".
Center shooting is fine as long as you keep the center small and don't get lazy.

[longgun]

When I younger and more steady I used the 24x and shot for the spots and did pretty good.  But not that time has become my enemy I have gone down to scopes with 16x.  I love to center shoot but actually find myself shooting in the legs, neck, horn, whanger, .....etc ect.  Now just trying to keep my shots in the black.   Truth is,  if the targets didn't have an edge, I couldn't hit anything anymore.  Someone use to say, the difference between a good day shooting and a bad shooting,  on a good day you get all the edge shots and a bad day you miss the edge shots.  That is the truth,  I think........Don

[Troy G]

Is Spray and Pray an option?  My goal is to center shoot the animal but since my dot is there for only fractions of a second I am actually just trying to get the shot off while I am still on the target.  I thank the good Lord when I hit something.

I guess I am going to have to send my scopes back and get the dot Pawel has.

[drags]

Thanks Yankee
The way I shoot is to come down from the top and cosentrate on an area on the target and get the shot off when the dot stops there, if it does. I was shooting rams at a match and the second and fifth rams had a bullet mark on the shoulders, my dot stopped on the shoulders and the gun went off and I hit the rams, they reset the rams and I hit them again, for the third time they painted the rams and I couldn't see the bullet marks and I missed both of those rams. Another time my spotter was calling my shots low so I broke the shots when the dot came to the top of the animal and that worked that time. I'm a older shooter and have been shooting two years, I'm shooting in class A right now and trying to move up. I would be interested in how other shooters shoot. Also I practice in the winter indoors I shoot an airgun in my cellar and an 22rf indoors at our local range, I shoot about 2500 rounds per year plus I dry fire also. Would like to know how much other shooters practice to see if I'm practicing enough. So far I'm just shooting highpower standard rifle, any input would be helpful.

[eroyd]

I've given up on trying to hold on a spot and instead try to move the X hairs as slowly and smoothly across the target as possible and try to break when I see paint in all quarters. The trick is getting the message from the eyes to the brain to the trigger finger as quickly as possible. What often works for me is to track the animal concentrating on one crosshair and when the other starts to enter the target squeeze the trigger. I can do it sometimes with perfect rhythm, but only sometimes. I am a 3A shooter with one leg in master.

[lucho]

Hey Dave glad we found a new forum!!!

I am a converted center shooter, now a spot shooter.  As is often quoted "Aim small, Miss small".

I have been practicing spot shooting for some time now and have found that if I concentrate hard enough on a spot the animal becomes irrelavent.  I no longer shoot chicken, pigs, turkeys and rams.  I just shoot spots.  Turkeys are no longer the hardest animal.  All spots are the same.  It is great.

I also have discovered that no matter how good you are, the dot never stops moving.  Just accept the movement.  Even Olympic air rifle shooters always have a moving sight picture.  Some key things to work on are:

1) making the dot movement centered on the spot (target).  This means getting your natural point of aim (NPA) correct.

2) slowing the dot movement.  this means being relaxed and having good form and position

3) not taking the shot when your not near the aiming spot.  ie take good shots not bad shots.  no, DEMAND! good shots not bad ones

there are plenty of other things to work on but these are the ones I am concentrating on now.

lucho master shooter, but no as good as Dave Imas

[dave imas]

Lucho,
it won't be long now grasshopper!  you have learned your lessons so very well.  i like your thoughts suggesting that spot shooting makes all the animals the same.  excellent way of approaching it.
dave

[dave imas]

for all of you center shooters out there...  it really isn't center shooting...  atleast your odds go up if it isn't.  without the aid of pictures let me suggest that the optimal place to shoot the target is different for each.  given zero wind, it is abit higher than center on the chicken,  in the shoulder of the pig, low of center on the turkey and in the shoulder of the ram.  As Yankee suggested, sighting in for line shooting can get tricky.  but with good zeros it can be very effective.  i've played with it off and on with sometimes great success.  i prefer spot shooting but when i am goofing off and shooting on 6x i can't see any so i am just kind of throwing things down range to see what happens.  i think spot shooting allows the greatest opportunity for success but any system will work as long as the shooter executes correctly.  as usual it comes down to the nut behind the bolt.

[jbeckley]

Ok Dave, since your giving away all of your shooting secrets ( which the best aren't afraid to do) lets get into your approach to the targets, ie come in from the top, one of the sides, or maybe coming up one of the legs.  Myself I like to come in from which ever side the head is facing, and on any of the ranges that I shoot on here the wind is usually blowing, sometimes real bad, but anyway on those days as soon as you see some black with your dot on it, and if you don't jump all over the trigger, things might work out for you.

[dave imas]

okay...  lets see if i can explain this...  it is much easier when i give clinics because i can show you what you want and why you want it.  i can put my hands on you and twist you around so you begin to feel what i am talking about...  but since we aren't at the range i'll put some feeble semblance here.

to answer your question directly, i come in from the right side of the animal...  then i come up from the bottom.   i come in from the right because i am right handed and use back twist in my position.  goofy shooters (left-handed) would come in from the left.  if we have 4 banks of turkeys in front of us and i am shooting at the far left bank, i will usually set my feet so i am pointed at the far right side of the bank to the right of my bank.  does that make sense?

XXXXX <my bank   XXXXX <my feet   XXXXX   XXXXX

i then twist back to my bank locking my back in a solid position.
i come up from the bottom because i don't put a lot of pressure on the stock with my trigger hand until just before i am ready to take my shot.  my dot rests just below the animal while i am taking my first two breaths.  with my third breath i pull back on the pistol grip pulling the rifle in tight to my shoulder while maintaining a completely relaxed front arm.  this raises the dot to the target.  i also cant my scope which forces me to arch my back to get the horizontal cross hair level.  a center of gravity thing that requires another story another time.  this probably raises more questions than it answers but...   that is how i come in to the target.

[tedfl]

Dave, you are right it does bring up a question that I have never really understood. At what point in you position is your NPA established? I understand that if you take a position, aim the rifle, relax with closed eyes, see then where the rifle is pointed and correct NPA by moving the feet but I don’t understand how this is accomplished when you add back bend and back twist.
By the way this is the kind of information I have been looking for.
Thanks to everyone
Tedfl

[eroyd]

Are minor adjustments to the final point of aim made with hands, arms small muscles etc. or do you strictly use your body muscles/position? So if the shot doesn't come up to where you want it, do you abort the shot and start again?

[dave imas]

Tedfl,

i set my npa to be off the target to the right and then twist into the target.  this, along with the slight arch, allows me to get my center of gravity correct, support the rifle with cartilage, and provides a horizontal stop for my position.  my npa is not on the target.  i used to shoot that way and i know many excellent shooters that still do but i found that the twist actually reduces the movement of the rifle (dot).

eroyd,
my rifle is supported by bone and cartilage.  other than pulling the stock into my shoulder there is no muscle supporting the rifle.  minor adjustments are made with my feet position, my forward had position on the stock, or, for ranges with dramatic elevation changes, with the placement of the stock in my shoulder.  i do everything possible to avoid using muscle to get the dot where i want it.  And yes, if i don't come on to the target correctly, i stop and rebuild my position so that i do.  i don't struggle or muscle through the shot hoping i can get it on target.  after shooting as long as i have i am pretty good at getting my position right the first time but on ocassion you can see me dancing up on the firing line trying to figure out what the hell i am doing wrong.  i would rather waste 30 seconds getting my feet set correctly than waste 5 shots with an inadequate position.
dave

[Heikki in FIN]

Good discussion is going on here. I must say that I never understud properly spot shooting until now, thank you Dave Imas. I'll have to try it next weekend. When I started 5 years ago, I was a line shooter and changed to center shooting 2 years ago. My standing position is close to what is described in NJshooting's page http://njshooting.tripod.com/Off%20Hand1.htm  but distance between legs is not so long.

Heikki

[dave imas]

Hi Heikki,

glad you joined the discussion.  i don't have my feet that wide either.  since we can't shoot with a jacket or glove and have limitations to the depth of the forearm of our rifles i throw my left hip out in an exaggerated fashion to meet my elbow.  this tends to keep my legs closer together.

one of the very cool things about spot shooting is that your mind will unconsiously drag your dot to the spot.  you just have to really focus on the spot.  one of the common mistakes is to watch the dot and attempt to force it to the spot.  the bad part about that is the we can watch the dot right off the target and then take a bad shot.  when spot shooting you absolutely need to focus on the spot.  i am beginning to feel like Dr. Suess.  this also speaks to dot size.  a dot that is too large will make spot shooting difficult because it can distract your attention from the spot and also obscure the spot because of its size.  i usually shoot a dot that is between .25" and .375".

dave

[tedfl]

Dave Imas:
I have a few more questions and hoped you would help.

So much that I read coincides with your style of shooting, However; I just don’t seem to understand how the total position is maintained. By that I mean when I add the twist to my back, as I start my approach and while concentrating on aiming I start to unwind back to the right (Right handed shooter). This unwinding or loss of tension is fairly fast and makes my approach, (whether it be left to right, from the bottom or from the top) difficult with the dot ending up on the right hand side of the target and me trying to twist back to the target. Add wobble to the situation and I am really in a fight.

1.   How do you maintain the total position?

2.   Do you have a lot of twist in your back (do you feel the strain it in your legs) or is it a small amount of twist? I don’t understand exactly what is meant by locking your back in a solid position.  

3.   Do you adjust your position for every target or shoot the entire bank by having less and less twist in your back?

4.   If you adjust your position, how do you do it, move feet etc.

All comments are welcomed.

Tedfl

[dave imas]

Hey Tedfl,

It sounds like you are putting too much twist in your back.  It should be a soft stop.  Not as far as you can twist but to the point where you back tightens up a bit.  It isn't just the back twist however.  It is a combination of foot placement, back twist, back arch, hip and head position.  Not an easy explanation using this forum.  We're holding a clinic at the Tacoma Sportsmen's Club the first Saturday in February right after the match.  You are more than welcome to come!

Once I find my feet I don't move them.  Not until all my shots are taken for both or all three strings.  I guess my back unwinds a tiny little bit with each shot.  Thinking about it, we shoot stacked targets out here so that allows me to not move my feet.   If we shot two or three sets of 5 side by side i would probably move my feet for each string.  And yes, if I need to adjust for targets I move my feet.  This allows me to maintain the same position.  It is much more effective to adjust your feet and maintain a consistent position.

hope this helps.

dave

[tedfl]

Dave, thanks for the information.
You don’t by any chance video the clinic and sell the tapes through the club do you?
Tedfl