Range day for the North-Cotswolds DMG

Erik Hamburger

Well-Known Member
The Range session Sunday the 26th. October 2014 was very successful; the quite modest turnout of members did have the advantage of everybody getting plenty of coaching from Paul Hill.

The members present brought an interesting mix of deer stalking shooting kit, ranging from budget rifles to the finest money can buy; factory ammo to the most refined hand loads, and simple small and cheap fixed power scopes to £2K+ precision optics.
What was remarkable is that during the initial zeroing session Paul Hill (Known as HME on this Forum) picked up on some basic errors some of us made, and some simple corrections to body position and hold resulted in an immediate improvement in accuracy and groups on the targets. So while one’s usual response to a ‘Group 3” high and 2” left’ would have been to blame the scope for being a little out of zero, it was actually due to the shooter and wrong techniques used.

After we were all happy with well-zeroed rifles at 100 Yards we all had a play with a .308 rifle set up with a red dot sight and Ching sling for unsupported shooting at running wild boar, in anticipation of the new running wild boar target that Paul will soon be offering. For most of us it was a new experience to shoot with both eyes open and no magnification in the optic, but the general feedback was enthusiastic, and the hit rate at 50 Yards was around 2 out of 3 – with unfamiliar equipment. For practice shooting we also used some subsonic .308 FMJ bullets which from the moderated rifle were very, very quiet, an advantage if you want to get some practice in without causing too much disturbance.

Next we moved back to 200 yards on a 6” iron target from the prone position, and shooting at an iron fox target using The Corinium Craddle, a high-spec set of quad sticks. With a well-zeroed rifle and newly found confidence we all achieved an impressive hit rate of some 4 out of 5 at 200 Yards which left everybody with an increased level of confidence in their equipment and themselves.

Thank you very much to Paul and Sally for their patience, good sense of humour and professional coaching.
 
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