Precision Rifle Marksmanship: The Fundamentals - A Marine Sniper's Guide to Long Range Shooting. Frank Galli

to the primer being hit. However, our lock time does not just apply to the firing pin movement. We have to consider the time it takes for the brain to relay the will to press the trigger to the hand. Different shooters have different reaction times. That can mean a shooter with a slower reaction time using a bigger lead on a moving target. Then we have to look at the time it takes for bullets to the leave the barrel. We know about barrel harmonics, but did you know you can look up the harmonic nodes using a time stamp?

      The trigger is the start button and the stop. We are turning the machine on, not off.

      I see it a lot with shooters who hold their breath. They immediately disengage from the rifle because they are sitting there holding their breath prior to the shot. They hold their breath for a number of reasons, but mainly because they feel it makes the shot steady. It’s a huge relief when the rifle fires because they are quickly running out of air.

      Your precision rifle is a machine, we are turning on the machine in order to send the bullet downrange to the target. I would submit to you, the shot is not over until the bullet has hit the target, or we have confirmed a miss. Stay engaged with the rifle and sights until we are sure we need a follow-up shot, or we are sure the target has been successfully engaged.

      Calling Your Shot

      We have gone through the fundamentals of marksmanship, so you can understand what it takes to successfully engage a target using a rifle. All this information is great as a theoretical exercise. But how do we know we are doing it right in our practical application? The best way is with a competent instructor to watch you shoot and correct any errors in your form. The next best way to know you are doing it right is “Calling your Shot.” Because telling you how to do something is not enough. We need to put it in practice and look at the end result, as it appears through the scope.

      Calling your shot, again, comes from the competition world. It is very important to sling shooters. However, because we tend to do things slightly different, we have to modify the way it was done in the past. Unsupported sling shooting means the body will react to recoil to higher degree than shooting from a supported position, such as off a bipod. Because we focus on being straight behind the rifle, and managing the recoil, we will have far less movement of the system. This is easy to see by watching a video of a successful tactical shooter. Video makes it clear just how little the rifle will actually move, allowing the shooter to remain on target. This will help shooters fine-tune their training and take target analysis beyond the target to their sight picture.

      Fundamentals translate regardless of the position. What changes is the amount of practice we put into the task.

      The most common expression when talking about calling your shot is:

       “Where were the sights when the shot broke?”

      It is expressed this way because the instructor was talking about unsupported sling shooting. The shooter will move with recoil and rock off target then roll back on, reacquiring the sight picture. In the 21st century, we do things slightly different, so we have to adjust this thinking to account for supported shooting. How we speak to ourselves matters. In this case, asking the question in the past tense is wrong.

      The tactical shooter needs to ask, “Where are the sights when the shot broke?” It’s a small but important distinction that will begin to condition our mind toward the positive. It will force the shooter to focus on the sight picture during the critical moment when the shot is fired. Shooting is a game of milliseconds and if you divert your attention from the target, you risk drifting off target. In so many cases, shooters will not even notice this. They will establish their sight picture, consider the crosshairs on target and then begin to think about something else. It’s during these moments where we miss the movement caused by a poor trigger press, or a subconscious shift in our body. We need to carefully watch the reticle so we can answer: Where are our sights during the firing sequence? This is the modern, more effective way to call your shots. If the sights remain on target and we deviate from impacting at our expected location, we then need to examine the firing sequence, so we identify the issue. “Was it a case of letting a fundamental go; poor natural point of aim; a failed trigger press; or lack of follow-through? Or do we need to adjust our zero? Calling our shots will help identify any number of issues. It can even help in recognizing faulty equipment such as scope that fails to hold zero.

      If we have practiced and trained our body to execute the fundamentals correctly, during live fire the benefits will be immediately apparent. This also extends to positional shooting, from any position. Making this a part of the firing sequence will train you to be more effective.

      Recoil Management

      In classes, I talk a lot about the fundamentals of marksmanship and how they are the building blocks to all great shooting. When we break them down into a logical order, they address the core elements of a shot. From our body position to our sights, the fundamentals guide us toward a better result: hitting the target.

      When addressing the rifle, we look at natural point of aim: rifle pointed to the target with the body pointed to the rifle. Sight picture has become modified when using a scope from sight picture and sight alignment to aiming. Granted, we still have sight alignment, our eye relief, and sight picture is about edge-to-edge clarity behind the ocular. However, these actions are not part of the shot sequence because the scope should be set up ahead of time. When using a rifle scope, it’s more about aiming, unlike iron sights.

      Bipod design matters when it comes to recoil management.

      Once our body position is established, it’s about the firing sequence. In the past, we would tell the shooter to control his or her breathing giving it that slight pause before breaking the shot. Today, we look at the natural respiratory pause, breaking at the bottom of our exhale while avoiding the urge to hold our breath. Think about this. Movement, going from Point A to Point B quickly, increases our heart rate and breathing. The worst thing you can do under these elevated conditions is to hold your breath. So, we breathe through and merely break the trigger at the bottom of our natural respiratory cycle. Trust me, you have no concept of time under these conditions so don’t attempt to hold your breath.

      While ignoring our breathing, we want to begin to take up the trigger without moving the sights off target. Trigger control or the manipulation of the trigger without disturbing the lay of the sights, might sound easy, but it’s our most significant point of error. We combine trigger control with follow-through, the act of physically and mentally holding the shot on target. In our mind’s eye, we want to follow the bullet to the target until the recoil pulse has subsided. We do that by physically staying engaged with the sights on the targets. One hundred percent of your focus should be on the target/reticle relationship during this sequence. Once the recoil pulse has ended and we have observed the results of our shot downrange, we can then run the bolt for the next round.

      Part of setting up the rifle to the shooter is balancing the proper height on the bipod legs, so recoil will come back in a straight line.

      These are the fundamentals of marksmanship as needed to engage targets at a distance successfully.

      But there is more. Today we shoot slightly different than the originators of the fundamentals. They were sling or unsupported shooters. While various front rests existed, the technique did not change much when using one.

      For the modern shooter, a solid front rest is the most common way to engage targets. We use bipods, which means we have to modify our body position in a way to allow the shooter the ability to see the results of the shot. No longer do we rely on the spotter to do the heavy lifting. Back in my Sniper School days, the spotter was the Senior Marine who guided the trigger monkey on target and established the variables for the engagement. All the shooter does is follow directions