Bouncing My Head off the Concrete

M

Mike Marcelli

Guest
by Bill Marcelli:

I started to write this post on somone else's thread, but decided that was inappropriate. So, Wilbur, if it doesn't belong on this forum, please 86 it.

Don asked a question about a two weeks ago "so what is the most common and important attribute or capability of a successfull BR competitor, that when it goes away so does success."

For me, its been an unclutted mind. For a very limited time in my professional career, life was good. I had a true 9/5 job, took no work home, either physically or mentally, had weekends to practice, etc. When that situation went away, so did a lot of other things.

Experimentation. Whereas before I had the time and money to experiment with new stuff, even with the money, I never quite had the time, so experimentation suffered. Experimentation is good because it requires you to start with a known so as to be able to evaluate an unknown. (It keeps the boredom down too.) Does this new X work as good or better than the old X. I don't know. Lets shoot the old X and compare them. Nope. The new X is not as good.

Practice. Practice changed from learning / refamiliarizing to work. Damn wind never wants to cooperate and I found myself having less and less patience to wait and saying more and more in my head, the phrase all BR competitors despite, "It won't matter that much." UUUh.

Poor practice leads to poor performance. I found that I lost the ability to recognize gun problems from inability to recognize and deal with conditions. Like most humans, I chauked it up to poor equipment. (Funny how the equipment always seemed to work in the tunnel though).

Poor performance leads to poor placement at the matches, yada, yada.

So who cares? Why don't you get to the point you a-hole.

My point, after reading many of the posts dealing with tuners and water in the barrels and all this other CRAP, is that its obvoius that people are not doing what it takes to win matches otherwise, they'd know this stuff is all CRAP.

The key to winning is several fold, but here's a start:

1. Get a good rifle. You can't win doodly squat without a good rifle. Dumb schmucks like me sell great rifles all the time.

2. Get a solid shooting platform. Get a solid pedestal rest w or w/o a windage top. Forgo the toggle type tops until you get some matches under your belt because they don't all hold POI and those that don't will drive you crazy. (That's all I'm saying on that topic).

3. Make sure your gun doesn't move when you squeeze your trigger. If the cross hairs jump when the firing pin drops, you'll be chasing your tail forever. Read Speedy G's article in the BR Primer on how to tune your bags.

4. Once you are confident with your set up, practice. Practice as much as you can. NOTHING helps as much as practice. Don't practice with a cluttered mind -- its useless and worse than that, leads to bad habits.

5. Ban the words "It won't matter that much" from your shooting vocabulary. If you see the flags or mirage change enough to recognize they've changed, stop shooting and go to the sighter. Stop shooting and go to the sighter. Stop shooting and go to the sighter. This is important. Stop shooting and go to the sighter.

6. Clear your mind from such clutter as wondering whether there is water forming in your barrel or if your round is cooking, when in doubt, dump it. Who cares why. (If you practice enough, you'll know when you are going to have problems and when you are not. That's why practice counts so much.)

If you can do these things, you'll start winning or at least you'll know why you are not winning.

Its not about water in your barrel or bouncing off some tuner with mythical properties. (If you say, "it won't matter that much" and still pull the trigger on the stopped, five degrees of freedom, clamped down, frozen scoped watered up muzzle, that shot is GOING OUTTA THERE.) Its all about being so darn familiar with your guns and equipment that you can look at a condition, say to yourself, "If I do X, the bullet will go in" and make it happen that you'll win. The rest is all clutter.

Simple isn't it. Small ones.
 
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Patience.

Sit and watch the wind flags. Even the lying ones.

Watch the birds - they know how wind works.

Watch the trees, the grass, and the occasional golf cart that blows by in the wind.

Learn the cycles of nature.

And try not to do stupid stuff.

Sincerely,

Stupid
 
As Mickey said, good post!

And as you said, practice, practice and practice! And by the way, did I say practice!

I've practiced very little for the last three years...and it shows.
 
Steve Lee said:
As Mickey said, good post!

And as you said, practice, practice and practice! And by the way, did I say practice!

I've practiced very little for the last three years...and it shows.
Click to expand...
By the way, you could come down here and spend the day with me and shoot all you want. I'd even furnish lunch. Maybe Jerry Dailey and Brady would join us?
 
aww attitude and equiptment that works...what a clever idea.

my only exception to your statements is that a rifle in tune, with a tuner and a person that knows how to use it would get more pratice......less time chasing loads....

sounds like jackie to me...lol

mike in co
 
Ban the words "It won't matter that much from your shooting vocabulary."

I was just thinking something similar myself last week.
Except my phrase is "that should be close enough".
 
Hi Mike,
Sounds like maturity is setting in for you.
You are exactly right on the practice, practice and then practice some more.
And, as I have said before, do it in bad conditions. I can almost guarantee this is what you will encounter at the matches.
Don't expect the zeros and low ones in bad conditions. If you can consistantly shoot mid 2s when the wind is blowing all over the place, you will agg well in the match.
Of course, you do need an accurate rifle, the best ammo etc. but these things we can control pretty much. What mother nature hands us is a different story.
Gene
 
Gee Mike, I would have never known that you might get impatient:D
Oh, and I don't ever recall giving too much thought to pauses in firing unless it was at practice, and there had been a cease fire, and I had been dumb enough to think that I could remember the condition well enough to finish an incomplete group. Generally, except in very calm conditions, I too am a picker, and I have seen some very small groups shot that way at Visalia. Under typical middle of the day conditions, the big trick is not technical. The gun is usually in good enough tune. It's just that with all of the flags in disagreement, most of the time, and changing too quickly for anyone to run a group, the main challenges are picking the right condition to start a group, and remembering what that condition looks like until record shot number five has been fired. All of the other stuff pales by comparison. The hell of it is, that sort of multiple flag position memory only gets easier with regular and sustained prectice, and no amount of equipment expenditure can replace it. Ya wanna talk what's important? That's important! :D The other stuff is mostly a diversion. Tuners work, but they don't address this problem.
 
Excellent!

Here, here...!!!

This is THE kinda thread I like to see on BRC.!

Want to see threads like this florish! Real wisdom, food for thought!

Thanks Mike M.
 
ban

hecksf said:
Ban the words "It won't matter that much from your shooting vocabulary."

I was just thinking something similar myself last week.
Except my phrase is "that should be close enough".
Click to expand...

What do you think of "Good enough for who it's for". some who read this post will recognize that comment.

Paul
 
Paul, "Good enough for who it's for" is what my carpenter tells my wife and me quite often, but then he goes ahead and builds it as perfect as he can.

From what I've seen if you ever realize that the flags aren't quite the same as they were when you were shooting your group and you think "Aw, it'll go in.", it never does. The mistake is that you already realized that the conditions weren't the same but try to will it in. At Rachel's Glen, I saw vanes change directions with tails hanging straight down. The vane change was all it took to make the bullet go somewhere else. You don't have to worry too much about that in Texas as I haven't seen many tails hanging straight down. Straight out is more like it.

For those who care, we're the next thing to being done on sheetrocking and should get through shingling next week as long as the weather permits. We hope to be through with the new house and moved in by Thanksgiving.
 
For those who care, we're the next thing to being done on sheetrocking and should get through shingling next week as long as the weather permits. We hope to be through with the new house and moved in by Thanksgiving. Mike


Congrats Mike, it'll all be worth the HARD work!
Hope to see ya Mike in future matches..!
cale
 
Well...........

With all respect to Mike, I guess I can say I spent the day at Tomball playing with some some of this "crap" that doesn't seem to make any difference.
I just chambered up a new barrel for my HV, getting ready for the upcoming Texas State Championship. I broke the barrel in as usual, then put my "pet load" in, worked with the tuner for about three groups, and had it shooting "mid ones". I will give it a good thrashing tommorrow after the Club Match, but it looks like a pretty good barrel.
I agree with the vast majority of what Mke said in his post, and I am sure that there are a lot of shooters who think what many of us do is just a bunch of "crap".
But, that "crap" has allowed some of us to build rather successful , and consistant shooting programs, that allow us to stay at or near the top of the Competition in our Regions.
In the Marine Industry, (which my Shop does machine shop work for), we have a saying, "nobody but the fish will know about it". That means that we do not waist our time, and the customers money, doing things that simply do not make a difference in the performance of the part.
There are a few things in Benchrest that might not make a difference, unfortunatly, the vast majority of those little things that we seem so anal about do, in the long run, add up and allow us to shoot the aggs that we have to shoot in order to stay competitive.
Granted,there has been a recent rash of individules coming on this Forum pushing a lot of "facts", touting all sorts of ideas with no more proof of their worth in the 100-200 yard Arena than "I Say So". I would hope that shooters can differentiate between all of this and the ideas that shooters come up with and prove, in Competition, many times over.
In short, we do exactly what Mike refers to in his last couple of sentences of his post, PLUS, the "crap"......jackie
 
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jackie schmidt said:
With all respect to Mike, I guess I can say I spent the day at Tomball playing with some some of this "crap" that doesn't seem to make any difference.
I just chambered up a new barrel for my HV, getting ready for the upcoming Texas State Championship. I broke the barrel in as usual, then put my "pet load" in, worked with the tuner for about three groups, and had it shooting "mid ones". I will give it a good thrashing tommorrow after the Club Match, but it looks like a pretty good barrel.
I agree with the vast majority of what Mke said in his post, and I am sure that there are a lot of shooters who think what many of us do is just a bunch of "crap".
But, that "crap" has allowed some of us to build rather successful , and consistant shooting programs, that allow us to stay at or near the top of the Competition in our Regions.
In the Marine Industry, (which my Shop does machine shop work for), we have a saying, "nobody but the fish will know about it". That means that we do not waist our time, and the customers money, doing things that simply do not make a difference in the performance of the part.
There are a few things in Benchrest that might not make a difference, unfortunatly, the vast majority of those little things that we seem so anal about do, in the long run, add up and allow us to shoot the aggs that we have to shoot in order to stay competitive.
Granted,there has been a recent rash of individules coming on this Forum pushing a lot of "facts", touting all sorts of ideas with no more proof of their worth in the 100-200 yard Arena than "I Say So". I would hope that shooters can differentiate between all of this and the ideas that shooters come up with and prove, in Competition, many times over.
In short, we do exactly what Mike refers to in his last couple of sentences of his post, PLUS, the "crap"......jackie
Click to expand...

Jackie:

For the record, I didn't have you in mind when referring to "crap." I saw that someone made that connection, and probably should have responded then, but didn't. Sorry. I guess the connection came from the "frozen scope" reference. But, if you read that line by itself, all I meant was that if you have the hottest shooting set up you can imagine, it won't help if you miss a change in conditions. I think you'd agree with that as well.

Also, for the record, its difficult to post something that reflects everything I want to convey. I talked about the benefits of experimentation, but didn't include it in my "to do" list because I consider it the gravy in the mix. (If you look at the post, it says these things are a "start." It was not meant to be comprehensive. However, there is no need to experiment if you can't get a basic set up to work, right?

Anyhow, LW and I are playing hookie today and I'm off to the range to "experiment." Take care.

Mike
 
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