Troutguide Wrote:I have hunted with .30-06 for 25 years and had great success. The first rifle i hunted with was my Fathers Rem. 700 and it had a super light trigger pull which I was good with. A few years ago I inherited a Ruger 77, the trigger is much heavier and I shot it a little and hunted with it the last few seasons, however I have developed or possibly had already developed a flinch when I shoot. So bad I started missing deer at close range. This has led me to the Grendel for a lower recoil alternative and a better trigger. I purchased a Howa 65G and am loving shooting it. I am working on the flinch with snap caps and lots of rounds down the range. I am able to shoot 1" groups at 100 with it but still have issues with the flinch at times. I recently took it hunting for the first time and killed a hog at 60yds with a perfect head shot. This was after trying to shoot with the safety on and flinching badly, so reminding myself to breath correctly and pull smoothly I nailed it. That evening I had another hog at 60 yrs and was worried they were going to bolt so I made a rather quick shot and missed. I assume I flinched again bc I didn't tell myself not to.
How do you work on the flinch for live targets and quick shots? Any tricks to fix the flinch? Like I said I can control it now at the range and do fine with snap caps its just the real life situations that it seems to come back. I used to shoot archery a lot and developed target panic, I was able to mentally correct that with practice holding on target and shooting to different counts mixing up how long I held on target before releasing. So I know I can overcome this too, just looking for advice on the best way?
TG:
What the other guys have said are all sound so if one of their techniques works for you, go for it.
First thing you need to come to grips with is the reason you are flinching. The most elemental reason is that you are allowing your attention to shift from making a good shot and directing your attention towards the effect of the shot on you. Normal result is for a guy to close his eyes, thrust the rifle away from him while jerking the crap out of the trigger.
Solutions? Varied but all of them are designed for you to keep your attention focused on the shot instead of the recoil and noise.
Best solution is to find a rifle and cartridge that has sufficiently less recoil and noise that you can shoot it confidently knowing you are focusing on your shot.
I have also had luck with insulating the shooter from the rifle by wearing plugs and muffs, eye protection, and light gloves.
Sometimes a change in stock design and a break works but is very costly.
One thing I am pretty confident in knowing is that you can take so many hits from a hard recoiling and very loud rifle before your body simply won't take them anymore.
So, you need to keep your attention focused on your shot. You know exactly what it feels like and sounds like when you pull the trigger so you got to accept it but you don't have to allow it to interfere with holding a sight picture through the shot. Push it to a periphery of your consciousness where it won't interfere with your mental focus of holding a adequate sight picture through the shot. You must want to make a good shot more important than any pain inflicted on you from the shot. If you can't make the shot more important than the single smack of the stock under recoil then you need a rifle and cartridge that will allow it.
You can also use some self talk if it works for you. Like as you are tracking the animal and taking your hold you can say to yourself something like 'calm, calm, center, center, center' and allow yourself to fire the shot. A good way to approach your shot on a game animal may be that once you get your rifle up and are going through your aiming process, breath and count to yourself up to maybe four or five breaths and with each breath and count, focus your attention more and more on your sight picture and making the shot. Consciously breathing short, sharp breaths while counting oxygenates your system, provides you physical strength, allows you to see better, and tends to give guys confidence that they are in control of their shot. Counting also is a distractor and if you are counting to yourself, you aren't thinking about the recoil or blast. So, you can push the recoil and blast out of your mind but then you must replace it with an image of what you must do for a good shot. With each count, focus your attention more and more on the sight picture and shot. At four or five count, you are ready to shoot because you have flushed negative thoughts or fears and have replaced them with doing what you need to do to make a single, good, shot.
It can get you through the relatively few shots you take with the rifle for hunting purposes. Just understand that you have a limited amount of hits allowed before you simply need to get a rifle with less recoil and noise.
LR55