Bench-rest Enfield No.8

No, not a joke! This is a newly introduced BR50 competition for the BDMP, shot for the first time this year.
I went along to compete against the high-tech "Wunderwaffen", hoping to avoid coming last.

As you can see, my No.8 did a bit better than that.

https://www.milsurps.com/attachment....1&d=1426353414 https://www.milsurps.com/attachment....1&d=1426353427--https://www.milsurps.com/attachment....1&d=1426353725




And the winner? A 14-year old girl using her dad's rifle. Already a competition air-rifle ace, this was just her 4th outing with a .22. She shot 25/25 10s, of which 18 were 10Xs. Awesome!

Reminds me of a 1000 yard shoot I went to and took a bog standard, off the shelf No4T from the local TA Armoury - so it was about 1984/5 or so. Horrible crap drizzly day. Here I was laying down at the rear edge of the firing point under my old winter warfare parka pulled over me and the rear of the rifle, using this old rifle against all of the all singing and dancing stuff that was the competition. Much to my amazement, the 6' screen held target kept going down whenever I shot - so it wasn't some stray shot hitting my target.

One of the range officers was standing behind me as I was laying behind cover (the slope of the firing point) as far as I was allowed on the firing point. I heard a voice saying '.....what the xxxx has he got there.......?' the RCO replied '......dunno...., but he's hit it every time so far'

I had too...... And won that stage (came about 7th overall though!) much to my suprise! Just luck on my part but a good day for that rifle in those conditions on the day!

I left a note on it for the sniper/user when I put it back telling him of my luck. The irony was that within a couple of weeks, they'd all been withdrawn and replaced by L42's

I posted the complete target as it illustrates something very important about setting up a rifle and selecting ammunition. And competition shooting, by the way.

The top left targets were for sighting in. It is irritating, but one has to live with it, that "el cheapo" scope mounting tends to shift every time the rifle is disturbed. I bought this rifle for a fraction of the usual price, because it had been sporterized and the receiver had already been inexpertly drilled for a home-made scope mounting. Not wishing to spoil the rifle even more, I left it as it was and continue to use the dubious mounting - although, of course, with a pretty good Leupold scope.

Comment 1
Once I had got the two 10s on the 2nd sighter target, I went straight to the scoring target. Time was limited - 20 minutes left for 25 scoring shots. A basic rule which I learnt from the Scottish RSM who taught me the fundamentals of target shooting was:

once you know you're on target, stop fiddling with the sights!

A fiddler might say the first shot is OK, but the 2nd shot drops into the 9, so he ups the sights - and the 3rd shot goes up out of the 10 ring. Worried, he drops the sights again - and the 4th shot falls down to the black ring. The fiddler is now so nervous that it is impossible to complete the target in a calm frame of mind, as he no longer has any idea of the correct sight setting. This "chasing the zero" is counter-productive and can wreck any target. A fiddler would also have deduced from the sequence of shots 9 to 14 that the rifle was drifting high, made a full downwards correction at the latest after shots 12 and 13, and that would have sent shot 14 outside the scoring area! Don't fiddle! Accept that you are not a machine, that there will be a shot deviation, and you must live with it, so practice to reduce your PWF instead of endlessly chasing the mirage of the "perfect" setup.


Comment 2
I have seen many gun and ammo combinations evaluated on the basis of no more than a 5-shot group. For real precision shooting, this is just not good enough. Look at the 5-shot sequences. 1-5 and 6-10 are so-so, not brilliant. 11-15 looks as if the combination is hardly competitive. But 16-20 and 20-25 show that the rifle is (as near as it can be adjusted) dead on centre, both horizontally and vertically. And yet these are all shots made with the same rifle, same ammo, same shooter, and within 20 minutes.

So a 3-shot group is only sufficient for rough ranging. A 5-shot group may be enough to decide which ammo should be subjected to further testing, by weeding out the obviously hopeless cases, but:

a final decision on the best ammo to use with a competition rifle requires much more than a 5-shot group.

" The irony was that within a couple of weeks, they'd all been withdrawn and replaced by L42's"

And jolly good too! - Otherwise we would never have the chance of acquiring first-class rifles at wall-hanger prices! :D