Follow Through Tips
One of the basics in many sports, as in shooting, is follow-through. When applied to rifle shooting, simply put, follow-through is holding the gun still after you have fired your shot.
Follow through must be held long enough to allow the bullet to impact the target where you were aiming. If no follow-through is there, the shot will most likely be flawed. Beginners as well as long-time shooters, myself included, need to be ever vigilant to keep their follow-through after the shot.
I use two techniques to improve and maintain my follow-through. The first is counting to two after the shot is fired. It needs to be slow ie: one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two to make it long enough and over-exaggerated. The second is actually squeezing your trigger a second time after the shot is fired where the target was or still is if not silhouette. Both of these have helped keep my follow-through at a level it needs to be at.
I think over time, the mind gets ahead of itself and sees the shot taken before you actually have squeezed the trigger fully. Sometimes I think I have an awesome shot and look behind to see my dad (who spots for me) in dismay that I am looking at him instead of through my scope still.
If you can learn to shoot with a long follow-through and maintain that in all your training it will help you considerably.
Insert free download – aiming at the spot
Trigger Squeeze
Trigger control is very important in silhouette. I used to have a coach tell me, connect your trigger finger and your brain, the goal is to establish this sub-conscious connection.
I like to place the trigger next to the joint in the index finger. I feel that the finger has the most feeling there as it is not as calloused as the end of the finger.
Think of the trigger squeeze as slowly moving the finger back until the rifle goes off. It should be smooth and not move the rifle in any manner. If a shooter has shot too many large rifles or shotguns they might not be smooth. Dryfiring to practice the squeeze will be needed. Remember to used a snapcap to protect your chamber.
I also recommend practicing mainly smallbore as the recoil in highpower reinforces habits that don’t help the basic position techniques.
Natural Point of Aim
Also known and natural center, this aspect of the sport is essential and is basically getting your body and the target you are shooting at in alignment.
To do this, have an empty rifle, and aim at the target you want to shoot at. Now, close your eyes and move your body side to side, moving the rifle barrel about a foot to each side of the target. Do this fairly slowly and then lessen the side to side movement gradually and slow back down to a stop. Now, look through your scope and see where you are at. Still on the target? Great, but if not you will need to move your feet to adjust to get on the target.
You mainly adjust with your back foot. These directions are for when you are looking directly down at your back foot. If you are too far to the right, move your back foot forward. Too far to the left, move the back foot backward. Too high, move back foot to the left. Too low, move back foot to the right. These changes will change your position in relation to the target. When you are first learning, it helps to just stand there without a rifle and over-exaggerate the movement in the back foot, you can really see how much it effects which direction your body is aligned with.
During a match, pay attention to where your targets are in relation to your body. In silhouette, it is not uncommon to have them not aligned with where you are assigned to shoot from. Use this technique to adjust accordingly.
Equipment recommended for shooting improvement
I believe that you do need a 20-25x scope in the game. This allows you to see the spot on the target that you need to be aiming at. As far as a rifle, fit it to your body so that it is comfortable and shoot and shoot and shoot, no need to be changing scope height, length of pull, etc all the time, set it up and get used to it with lots of training time.
A leather vest is also helpful as you can carry all your small equipment and ammo and he helps lessen movement. Flat shoes are also a must! Find a pair that are used in boating or skateboarding and put them in your shooting bag.
Once you have a basic understanding of the game, you need to read some mental training books. I recommend both With Winning in Mind and Bulleye Mind. They each will give you some insight on mental aspects that you can improve upon. My main advice here is to keep things positive and keep like-minded shooters around you too.
