How to perfect your Air Rifle shooting…
Hi Guys,
It should be pretty obvious that if you want to hit what you’re aiming at you need to keep the gun as still as possible when you take your shot. Some shooting positions are more stable than others, but even if your shooting position is rock solid there’s still a living, breathing, moving shooter pulling the trigger.
Getting it right takes time and practice and it’s something that should be practiced regularly.
BREATHING
To make an accurate shot you need to hold your breath while you take your shot, but how you hold your breath and for how long can make a big difference.
The reason that you shouldn’t hold your breath for too long is that when you stop breathing your body is starved of oxygen and the body’s functions start to deteriorate. Your muscles will begin to shake, your eyesight will deteriorate, you’ll be mentally distracted and you’ll start to move involuntarily.
If you fill your lungs with air your muscles won’t be relaxed and you’ll also find that your inflated chest lifts you up off the ground making it difficult to get a consistent head position on your cheek piece.
HOW TO BREATHE
While you’re making all the decisions you need to make before taking your shot you should be breathing normally, when you commit to your shot, breathe about half the air out of your lungs and then hold your breath.
If you find that you’re not able to take the shot within a couple of seconds, then you should re-compose. Relax and start breathing normally again to re-oxygenate your blood, then breathe out half of the air in your lungs, hold your breath again and take the shot.
Sounds obvious and simple, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t do it correctly. It’s something you need to practice so that it becomes second nature to you.
TRIGGER CONTROL
Finally it boils down to a most simple explanation - Trigger control is about firing your rifle without transmitting any movement to the gun in the process. You definitely don’t want to be transmitting any sideways movement to your gun when you take your shot.
The position of your hand and trigger finger is vital if your want to avoid pulling your shot to the left or right.
As you’re aware everyone’s hands are different and stocks are made for average shooters, hence you will probably need to experiment to find out what works best for you. The basic principle is that any movement that isn’t down the centerline of your rifle is not a good idea. The lesser the muscles you use, the less chance you have of pulling a shot or ‘snatching’ a shot.
So you should try to find a hand position where the muscles in your hand are as relaxed as they can be when the pad of your trigger finger is rested on the trigger blade.
Your trigger finger should be in a position that allows you to pull the trigger blade backwards down the centerline of the rifle. There must be no tendency for the finger to push the trigger blade to either the left or right. The hand must be positioned so that on releasing the trigger no lifting or pulling down on the rifle occurs.
With regards to grip pressure and thumb position, this is something that comes down to a personal preference. I prefer a very light grip, sometimes only having the pad of my palm and the tips of my fingers touching the grip. I shoot with my thumb around the pistol grip rather than adopting a thumb up hand position, but it’s best to experiment yourself to find out what works for you.
TRIGGER PULL WEIGHT
The trigger weight is a personal thing but try to avoid setting your trigger too light, in case your air rifle has a 2 stage mechanism. Very light triggers run the risk of going off before you meant them to and at worst being very dangerous.
If you have a long length of travel on your trigger’s first stage, make sure that the pad of your trigger finger is at 90 degrees to your trigger blade when the 2nd stage is reached rather than at the start of the 1st stage.
TRIGGER TECHNIQUE
There are two main methods of trigger technique that most shooters use.
When ready to commit to a shot, take up the 1st stage of the trigger until the 2nd stage is felt and increase and decrease pressure on the trigger blade in a ‘pulsing’ motion. The only part of your hand that should be moving when you take a shot is your trigger finger.
There are several mistakes that most often occur in trigger release such as…
1.Snatching the trigger – This is a very rapid buildup of pressure, made even worse if the finger takes a ‘run at it’.
2.Pulling through the first stage quickly and hitting the second stage pressure and continuing through.
3.Taking up the first stage then releasing the pressure a little before snatching at the second stage.
All of the above will transmit large movements to the gun as it fires, which should be avoided.
FOLLOW THROUGH
The aiming and firing process does not end when the trigger is released. The process of maintaining the aim during and beyond the release of the shot is called Follow Through.
Follow through is of vital importance, particularly in air rifle shooting, because the action of the air rifle is quite slow. When air is released which accelerates the pellet up the barrel before it finally leaves the muzzle and only then is it free of the influence of the shooter. During this period which is known as the ‘lock time’, if your aim is disturbed you might not hit your target.
There are several physiological reasons to follow through. When your sights / crosshairs are where you want them to be, you release the trigger but the finger doesn’t move instantly. A reaction time delay of approximately 0.3 seconds occurs before your finger moves. Through this period the aim must be maintained.
Also, the gun is held in position by some muscular effort that must remain the same until the shot has left the rifle. Without follow through there is the chance that the muscles holding the gun might relax a fraction of a second early, before the pellet has left the muzzle, moving the gun and resulting in a poor shot.
Good follow through can be obtained by maintaining the aim of the rifle for about 1 second after trigger release. This is more than enough time to allow the shot to leave the rifle. It’s good practice to try to watch your pellet hit the target. It isn’t always possible to see your pellet in flight, but if see where you hit or miss on the target then this will help with wind-age & elevation estimation for subsequent shots.
PRACTICING FOR PERFECTION
It will take some time and practice to perfect your breathing, trigger control and follow through but you will know you’ve got it right as you notice your groups starting to tighten with fewer and fewer ‘fliers’. You’ll still have the odd flier or two (everyone does) but with enough practice you’ll be able to feel when a shot was good and often you’ll know that a shot was a bad shot even before it hits the target.
When practicing I find it works best for me to try to remove as many other factors as possible so that I’m just concentrating on the part of my shooting that I’m trying to improve.
Either shoot from a bench or from the rested prone position and use something to support your rifle to make it as stable as it can be – remember, you’re not practicing a shooting position, only trigger technique, breathing and follow through.
Remember to set your paper target in level by using a spirit level along the top edge of the paper. The reason is that this will help you to hold your rifle level when shooting. If your rifle isn’t level when you take a shot, this will affect the point of impact (POI) of your pellet. This is known as ‘canting’ your rifle.
If you can’t shoot consistently tight groups – you can’t zero your rifle. If you can’t tell when a shot was a good shot or a bad shot and analyze what you did wrong then it’s very easy to start blaming ‘unexplained’ fliers on a bad batch of pellets or a bad scope – parallax error, range finding error etc.
A large part of target shooting is being able to learn from your mistakes, if you don’t know when you’ve made a bad shot then it’s all too easy to blame the air rifle, the pellet, the surroundings or whatever, except yourself!!!
HAPPY SHOOTING 
Briha
This was mistake I was making for a long time. Then I realised that holding my breath, plus using muscle power to hold the AR onto the target, was impacting my stability even more. You need to feel your heartbeat. Take the second attempt only when your heartbeat is normal. If you are accustomed to Pranayama, the normalisation process is faster. If you are a smoker (like me) the process is slower. 
