Freehand Shooting Practice

[Bergerboy]

How many of you practice freehand / offhand shooting in the off season? I bough a cheap 223 to bang gongs with.

[wolf308]

A little bit. But not as much as I’d like too. Stupid snow I never want to lose brass much and or en bloc clips. But that’s just an excuse. Snow is still stupid though

[Big Sky]

For offhand practice at 100yds, I use my 22 rifle. Way cheaper than centerfire.

For practice at longer distances, I use a 223 or a 6.5Cr. This is generally for kneeling, seated, prone, using shooting sticks etc.

Past 100yds, I really need to improve my offhand shooting. Regular practise helps me to understand what my distance limitations are with each shooting position.

[tikka250]

Yup any and all extra ammo/firearm gets used for offhand practice and not just 100 yards. In my opinion the only way to know if you can hit a target is to shoot at it so 500 yard offhand shots are taken quite regularly.
We have even taken to shooting at longer distances in the spirit of "because we can" and to date my best offhand shot was a 30inch gong at 800yards with an iron sighted brazilian mauser. Once again you don't know until you try!

[catnthehat]

In shoot offhand with both optics and irons and with the sling on a continual basis .
Cat

[teledogs]

Most of my offhand practice is done gophering in the summer with my 77/22. Great feeling whacking gophers at 100 yards offhand.

[obsessed1]

Off hand with a 22LR at least twice a week. Usually at 30-50 yds. Start out with a 3" gong...after that gets too easy I go to the 1.5". I practice with bolt, semi and lever. Scope, red dot, and peeps/ irons.....

[kujoseto]

Not enough! Just on occasion.
I shoot a mostly with the 22 lr out to 100m but will be doing more with the centrefire hunting rifles at 100, 150, 200, 300 m.
Definitely been adding more shooting off the sticks from kneeling and sitting and noticed it helped improve that quite a bit

[RickF]

Between 8 and 10,000 rounds a year in rifle silhouette. A couple thousand high power, the rest 22LR.

It all translates to other positions because every position is all about sight alignment, trigger squeeze, follow through.

Until I took up silhouette competition I only thought I was a good shot. I’m still working on it.

[duceman]

Originally Posted by RickF

Between 8 and 10,000 rounds a year in rifle silhouette. A couple thousand high power, the rest 22LR.

It all translates to other positions because every position is all about sight alignment, trigger squeeze, follow through.

Until I took up silhouette competition I only thought I was a good shot. I’m still working on it.

hi rick, has the schedule been put together yet for cranbrook this year? we're looking a big bunch of guys coming once or twice, hoping for a match on may long. lee

[duceman]

Originally Posted by RickF

Between 8 and 10,000 rounds a year in rifle silhouette. A couple thousand high power, the rest 22LR.

It all translates to other positions because every position is all about sight alignment, trigger squeeze, follow through.

Until I took up silhouette competition I only thought I was a good shot. I’m still working on it.

hi rick, has the schedule been put together yet for cranbrook this year? we're looking a big bunch of guys coming once or twice, hoping for a match on may long. lee

[RickF]

Hi Lee, you bet. Hope you are doing well!

I was wondering who duceman was. 😁

Send me a PM with your contact information, I will send you the schedule. Looking forward to seeing you this summer. Thanks, Rick

[Bergerboy]

Good to see many guys on here are practicing freehand. Personally I like using the 223 for freehand practice and I like the feedback from the gong that is not present with a rimfire. I load cheap 223 for about $0.35 a cartridge so the cost is really not a big deal.

[Speckle55]

I hunt Hare n Grouse

always free hand

some times i miss lol

David

[bsmitty27]

Free hand at 100 with iron and scope .22. Lots of fun and cheap.

[Smokinyotes]

This past summer the wife and I did 5000 rounds of 22LR free hand at 25-75 yards. She is better at freehand than I am.

[Roamer]

Looking back at the path my target shooting has taken amuses me. My rifles only ever used to have iron sights, zero scopes. I would shoot mostly sitting, but some off hand, I was what I though was an okay shot.

Then I got into shooting farther, went to a sled, got pretty good at shooting groups and hitting gongs. The initial idea was just to use the sled for load development / rifle setup verification, then practice was supposed to me from field positions. I think I became addicted to the sled / always chasing better accuracy, I didn’t shoot from field positions very often. Last year I remembered. So I now do my load development / rifle setup verification prone, off of a pack (which is on my back when I hunt) and I use a bag for rear support.

Just this year I started practicing off hand shooting again. Now I feel like I’ve gone full circle, except now I have scopes on almost everything, haha. I quite like 22lr for off hand as it is very affordable to shoot.

For hunters it is very important to practice from realistic positions, something I put on the back burner for too long. To be fair I was raised to always try to establish some form of support when aiming at game, but sometimes off hand is all you get.

[birdseye]

The land owner we have access has a good size hill,we staple targets to tires and roll them down and my boys take turns shooting the rolling,bouncing tires.it’s inexpensive and great entertainment,plus excellent for marksmanship.And it’s always best shots win the kitty usually only a few dollars and lots of bragging rights haha