Practicing with your firearm and live ammunition—whether at a shooting range or in the field—is unquestionably the best training for hunting season and shooting scenarios. However, if getting outside is difficult to accomplish, these 3 indoor shooting drills will allow you to improve your accuracy without stepping outside or burning a single live round.
1. Shooting Sticks Can Improve Accuracy
Gen 3 Tripod
Shooting Stick
Using shooting sticks would improve accuracy in the field and it is one of the best ways to ensure clean, one-shot kills on a hunt. These shooting aids are very common in certain areas, such as Africa, but are still under-utilized by hunters in North America.
Whether you prefer a monopod, bi-pod or tri-pod, these devices require a bit of practice before hunting with them for the first time. You want to ensure that you can deploy the stick, get on target and squeeze off an accurate shot quickly.
Before my first African safari, I practiced a few minutes every night with the rifles I would be using until the process became quick, smooth, and natural.
Replicate an entire scenario in your head—from spotting your quarry and adjusting the height of the sticks—to firing your first shot and working the action for a quick follow-up.
2. Snap To It
Trigger control is one of the biggest elements to accurate shooting. After ensuring that your rifle’s trigger is smooth and crisp, becoming intimately familiar with that trigger is the key.
Every trigger is a bit different, but accurate shooting can still be achieved even with so-called “bad” triggers if the shooter is used to it. Dry firing is the only way to achieve this familiarity.
A set of snap caps allow you to spend hours squeezing off shots without damaging your firing pin. Do so practicing a variety of shooting positions, taking care to squeeze off each shot accurately. Even spend time squeezing the trigger with your eyes closed, focusing entirely on the feel and the break.
3. Light It Up
Technology has taken dry firing to the next level with the advent of a variety of laser training kits. These kits often consist of a cartridge sleeve, one or more laser training cartridges, and a target.
Once the appropriate cartridge and sleeve for your caliber of rifle or handgun is chambered, each squeeze of the trigger emits a visible laser shot on the target, where it is displayed and recorded to produce a visible grouping.
This will allow you to see how your grip, position, and trigger control impact your groups— then you can make adjustments as needed. It will even record results for multiple shooters for a little friendly competition.
Practice these drills and you’ll emerge from winter hibernation shooting better than the average bear.
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