Using an M1 Canvas rifle sling

Courtesy of ray-vin.com is an excellent pictorial on how to use a canvas M1 rifle sling, all rights an credit to him.

http://www.ray-vin.com/tech/websling/webslinghelp.htm

Two GI videos on how to shoot the M1 rifle from youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcEvtSh7sW4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FxiVUbW9Fw

Scoring and Range commands during a Highpower match

In the interest of not having to repeat myself, I’m posing a quick description of how to score during a Highpower match, as well as range commands, eitquite, and what it all means.

A few notes regarding range commands and scoring:

RANGE COMMANDS, for vintage rifle, Remember all shooters start in position.

In general, if you are on the firing line, you will hear the following, in order, and I’ll define what they mean:

1)Shooters may bring their equipment to the line:  That means you can bring your mat, stool, ammo, spotting scope to the line and get set up, THIS DOES NOT MEAN you can touch or bring your rifle to the line, it should remain in the rack.

2)Shooters may bring their rifles to the line:  This means you may carry your rifle cased to the firing line. THIS DOES NOT MEAN you may handle the rifle, get slung up, etc.  When you remove your rifle from the case the muzzle must be pointed down range at all times and the chamber flag must be in with no removable magazine in place.

3)Shooters, as soon as your targets appear you are in prep time:  This means once your targets go up, you can sling the rifle and dry fire and adjust your scope and position.  THIS DOES NOT MEAN you can load the rifle.  When the targets go down your prep time is over.

4)Shooters, the next course of fire is……(description of course of fire follows and will be one of the following.

§  Slow fire Prone: 2 sighting shots and 10 rounds in 10 minutes. These are loaded and fired ONE AT A TIME, you do not need to take the sighters.

§  Rapid fire Prone: 10 rounds in 90 seconds. All shooters except those shooting a bolt action rifle will start with two rounds in the gun, and will reload with a clip or magazine of 8 rounds ONLY.  Bolt shooters will start with 5 rounds and reload with 5.

§  Rapid fire Sitting: 10 rounds in 90 seconds.  All shooters except those shooting a bolt action rifle will start with two rounds in the gun, and will reload with a clip or magazine of 8 rounds ONLY.  Bolt shooters will start with 5 rounds and reload with 5.

§  Offhand/standing: 10 rounds in 10 minutes. These are loaded and fired ONE AT A TIME

The next commands, after the course of fire will be:

5)On the line with one round load(for slow fire) OR On the line with 2 or 5 rounds load(for rapid fire, 2 for semi autos, 5 for bolt guns). THIS IS THE ONLY TIME YOU MAY LOAD OR HAVE AMMO IN THE RIFLE.

6)Is the line ready?  The line is ready?  Ready on the right?  Ready on the left?  All ready on the firing line…: (At any time during these commands, if you are not ready, yell out or raise your hand and we will stop and give you time).

7)You may commence fire when your targets appear!: (at this time as soon as your target is up you may shoot, once your target is down you must stop shooting) For rapid fire, once you have fired the initial 2 or 5 shots, you reload and continue firing.  For slow fire, once your target goes down and comes back up with a score and you have recorded it, you may load and fire the next shot at your discression.

8)Cease fire!:  After all firing is over, the director will ask if there are any saved rounds(alibis/jambs aren’t generally allowed, you have plenty of time to fix a jam, if your gun breaks that will be evaluated by the director)  If you did not get all your shots off, notify the match director how many rounds you fired, and he will relay that to the pits so the scorers know how many holes to look for.   Any shots that you do not fire count as misses(0) on your score sheet.

*If you fire extra shots your target will be scored for the low 10 shot values, and you will be warned.  If you believe someone crossfired onto your target, (ie next target to you has less than 10 shots) you will generally get the high value 10 shots, unless it is obvious which shot was the crossfire(ie caliber or placement not consistent with your group).  A crossfire by a shooter counts as a MISS for that shooter.

*If you do not believe you missed the target, and they can’t find all 10 shots, you may ask them to look at the target again and see if they can find it.  If they can not, the score will generally stand, unless for some reason the target puller finds the missing shot and the match director ok’s it to be counted for your previous score. If all the shots are in the black. or in a tight group, benefit of the doubt should be given to the shooter, this is on the honor system. The shooter can request a re-fire of his 10 shot string if there are no extra shots on the adjacent targets and the target puller confirms that he saw 10 impacts in the berm but cannot find all shots.(See the target puller requirements!!) We would like to avoid this as this isn’t the national matches.

*In slow fire, if you shoot and the target doesn’t go down, call for the match director as follows:  Mark Target number…….The director will call down to the pits to have them pulland mark the target.

*In standing/offhand position, if you are not able to fire the shot, and need to rest, if the rifle is loaded, you MUST keep the rifle horizontal with the muzzle aimed at the berm, not at the ground or up in the air.  You must keep the muzzle horizontal when loading the round.

*The shooter is responsible for correctly marking down his score for each shot and putting a total on the score sheet.

SCORING:

When you arrive at the pits, your target will be all the way down.  Once you are ready to do your scoring duties, you will half mast your target, that means the bottom of the target is aligned with the bottom of the target weight, and the target is showing only halfway up.  That lets the match director know that you are ready to go.  Once the stage starts, the person running the pits(person with the radio) will say “Targets Up”  to indicate to run your target up all the way and shooting will start.  When the stage is over he will say “Targets Down” and you will pull the target down to indicate the stage is over.

During a highpower match you basically have two types of stages, slow fire and rapid fire.

Slow fire scoring:

If you re in the pits, your shooter will shoot, you need to look at the target, or impact berm and decide if a shot was fired, then confirm by seeing a hole in the target.  If you confirm a shot/hole, then you pull the target down, look at the hole, and decide what the value is.  If the diameter of the bullet will touch the next higher scoring ring, the shot gets that higher value.  The scorer will then put a marking disk in the hole, with the opposite color facing the shooter.  Black on white or white on black, so the shooter can see the shot placement.  The target puller will then put a value paddle on the target.  That tells the shooter what the value of the shot was.  Starting in the lower left hand corner and working counter clockwise the values are, V(counts as 5, used as a tie breaker), 5(bottom middle), 4(bottom right), 3(middle right), MISS(top middle).   Any shot that is not on the manila paper is a miss, any shot touching the manilla paper but outside the 3 ring is counted as a 2.  On subsequent shots, the target puller will remove the previous spotting disk, and put a colored patch over the hole FIRST, then find the new hole and mark it.  Make sure to mark the value correctly.

*Note, it is much better to not pull the target down if you aren’t sure the shooter shot, as nothing sucks worse than shooting a good shot while your target is being pulled down….if you don’t pull it down and the shooter fired, we will call down on the radio for you to pull it down.  You need to pay attention, as if this happens a lot, it is extremely frustrating for the shooter and he will return the favor to you when it is your turn to shoot.  Good pit service is rewarded by good pit service for you.

If you are shooting, your job is to make sure your target goes down after you shoot, and then recording the value of the shot on your paper.  If you think the value is mis marked, you may call for a re-mark on the target(re-mark target #…..).  If you can obviously see what the value should be, don’t waste time and just write it down correctly.

Rapid fire scoring:

Once the targets are UP, the target puller will leave them up till the  person running the line says to pull them down.  During the course, the puller should watch his/her target and count the number of impacts or shots fired on their target. You do this by looking at the berm and watching to see 10 impacts behind your target! This will help them have confidence in finding all 10 shots later on, or confirm that the shooter did not fire all 10 shots.  THIS IS IMPORTANT. If you are not paying attention and cannot confirm that all 10 shots were fired on the target and there are missing shots the benefit will generally be given to the shooter if his shots are all in the black, or at least in a tight group, or if not you may force the shooter to refire his 10 shot string.

Once the targets are down, the target puller will note the values of all shots and write them down on the chalkboard, with the number of each value scored.  Our chalkboards are marked with X,10,9,8,7,6,5,M  Since we are using the older 5 targets, an X=V, 10=5, 9=4,8=3,M=miss.  You then mark each hole with a small spotting disk as for slow fire, hang the chalkboard on the top left side and run the target up so the shooter can see his score and shot group.  Once done, the person running the line will ask to pull down and clean up the target, at which point you remove the chalkboard, remove the spotting disks, and past up all holes with the right color sticker, and half mast the target when ready to go.

For example if the shooter fired 3-V’s, 5-5′s one 4 and one miss, the shooter would record on his score sheet: V,V,V,5,5,5,5,5,4,M  and the total would add up to 44-3V’s

Their chalkboard would look like the below where x means V etc…

X      3

10    5

9      1

8

7

6

5

M     1

Highpower Equipment

Highpower equipment:

For Vintage matches, all you really need is a mat or thick piece of carpet to shoot on, and a sling for the rifle, a pencil/pen and eye/ear protection.

You don't need to spend a lot of money on equipment, my comments on them are below.  You can get by with minimal equipment till you decide you are ready to take the next step and that it will help you.  A good mat, and a good shooting coat will make a noticable difference in both comfort and score.  A spotting scope makes scoring and reading the wind easier and reduces eye strain.  Everything else falls into the category of organizing and making your shooting match go smoother.

I like a shooting mat that has rubber pads so your elbows don’t slip when prone.  It is also good to get one with a waterproof backing so that you can fold it over or put it over your equipment when it rains.

I prefer the M1 web sling for all my rifles, it is easy to adjust(see link on blog page), and with a little modification to the width of the clip will fit most surplus rifles.  The 1907 leather sling has always felt stretchy to me, and I don’t like it, and you have to know how to assemble and use it.  I see more people fart around with this sling and not get it adjusted right , they would be better off using a  web sling and dry firing and setting their position.  I like to have the clip on the front of the sling as that allows me to swap from rifle to rifle easier, and I don’t store the sling on the rifle.  The pictures in the link also show the clamp in the wrong position, it should be on the other side of the sling so that your hand doesn’t rest on it when prone, but you get the general idea. We do not require that the sling be attached to the rifle for standing for these matches.

For the matches where we only shoot slow fire, you don’t need a spotting scope if you can see the value marker on the target.  For the matches with rapid fire stages,  you really need a spotting scope to see the chalkboard scores.   For spotting scopes, you get what you pay for.   For a good long term investment, Kowa scopes are great.  I prefer one with a 45 degree eye piece as that is the easiest to use when prone and sitting and you don’t have to get out of position to use it.  I also like a long eye relief eye piece which also makes it easier to see through.

If you have it set right, during the rapid fire stages, you can look in the scope while you are reloading, see where your first two shots went, and make an adjustment for your next 8 shots.  This can save you many points in a match.  If you have a long eye relief scope your chances of knocking it with your head when trying to look through it is less likely.  Get a good scope stand that has a wide base so it will stay put in wind.  When using a 45 degree eye piece, the scope can be lower on the stand and you don’t need a full length 5 or 6 foot set of rods.

A shooting stool is nice for scoring for regular highpower matches and nice to store your equipment in, but you don’t need it for our matches since you score for yourself.  If you are planning long term, it’s better to get one with wheels so you can wheel your equipment from place to place on other ranges where you have to move to a different shooting line.  At Tri-county, we have stools there at the range so you don’t need one to set your equipment on for standing.  If you shoot at other ranges it’s handy.

A good shooting glove will help pad your hand for long prone and sitting strings as well as prevent your hand from slipping on the rifle.   I used to use an open glove for prone since my fingers would not go to sleep as fast, and a fingered one for sitting as I have to grab the rifle to keep it in place(the mitt won’t work well for that).  If you can have your hand all the way forward to the ferrule when sitting then a mitt is good enough.  Now I have switched just to a nylon work glove with a grippy palm/fingers as that takes up less space and I don’t need to swap gloves between stages.  I give up a little bit of “isolation” from the rifle but I’ve accepted that.

Shooting coat.  You can have canvas or leather, button up or one with buckles and straps.   The simplest is a thin canvas coat with rubber elbow and shoulder pads.  This isolates you ok and helps keep you, the rifle, and sling from slipping, and is ok for prone and sitting.  For standing, a strap type coat will help a lot to hold your position.  There are versions with a back board as well that are even better.  I feel a leather coat is a bit too thick and prefer the canvas versions, although they take a bit more breaking in.  Get one with vents in the back for those days when it is really hot, and get a light color, again to reduce heat build up.  You won’t need the strap for the sling as that is illegal for service rifle use.  Straps allow you to cinch up, but are not legal for smallbore or Olympic type shooting,  decide what you want to use it for and buy accordingly.  If you have shot highpower a lot without a coat, and have sort of plateau’d, then getting a coat will usually get you another 10-15 points in score, with most of that in offhand advantage.

It’s good to have a clipboard to put your scoresheet, one with a cover is nice for the rain.  A block to hold your rounds for offhand is nice as well, and helps you keep track of your round count.

Shooting glasses are a must, if you can’t shoot with both eyes open, it is better to put some non clear tape over the left eye, or use a piece of plastic white milk jug or an eye cover that they sell.  This allows you to keep both eyes open and you get less tired.  By using a light colored cover your sighting eye will contract less and you will have better depth of field.

Score and record book.  If you really want to get better, it is good to use a score/plot book.  This will allow you to record your scores, sighting shots, light and weather conditions, sun position,  distances, etc and you can then develop and see patterns which will help you predict and adjust for the conditions and to spot weaknesses or habbits in your shooting.  Write down your sight settings from “bottom or center) as well for each distance and/or aperature sizes if appropriate, so that if something gets knocked or lost you can easily put them back to the right settings.  Put a white paint marking on your zero for windage and elevation as well so you can visually see that you are at zero before you start adjusting.

Sight black: this can be spray on(thicker and not as black), carbide lamp(somewhat messy but the blackest black you will see), or a match or burning piece of styrene.  The idea here is to blacken the front and or rear sights so that glare from the sun will not affect your sight picture.  Once you do this you need to be careful you don’t wipe it off accidentally or you are back to the original problem.  Some folks make sight covers to keep them protected between strings.  It all depends on the sights(aperatures generally don’t need it) and shape of them, a good angled blade generally won’t need much, a rounded or blunted sight might benefit.  Use it if you need it.

Good boots:  I use GI jungle boots.  They give good support for offhand and have good solid soles/heels which help in raising/supporting my knees during sitting.  

Champion shooters supply, creedmore,  and champions choice are both good suppliers of highpower equipment, or ask the other shooters.

A few notes on shooting:

There area lot of good books and online resources for shooting techniques and basics, so I won’t dwell a lot on that.  The main things to remember are sight alignment, natural point of aim, and releasing the shot without disturbing the weapon.  It’s very simple to describe and very hard to do consistently.   The two major things that people who are having trouble shooting suffer from are jerking the trigger when things look good, and not focusing on the front sight.  Trying to release the shot at a particular time while the rifle or pistol is moving will guarantee a missed shot.  As you get more experienced you have the impression that you are breaking the shot when things are stable and look good, but really you are still applying pressure without moving the weapon, you just are able to do that more quickly and without as much concious thought.

Focus on the front sight and sight alignment….I can’t stress that enough.  If you take a quick example of a rifle with sights 24″ apart and shooting at 200 yards.  Any misalignment of the sights with respect to each other by 1/32 will magnify as a 9.3″ miss from the point of aim at 200 yards.   Now, consider perfect sight alignment and you are holding 5″ off center and break a perfect shot.  That will still be in the black at 200 yards on the 5V target.  Breaking a shot on the edge of the bullseye looks pretty bad from the point of view of the shooter but will still be in the black.  However, having a slight sight misalignment and breaking a perfect shot will mean you just shot a 3 or a 4, almost twice as far out as aiming on the edge of the bullseye.  The effect is even more pronounced with pistols where the sights are closer together and any misalignment has even more impact.

The only way to ensure perfect sight alignment is to have the front sight perfectly clear and centered in the rear sight!  In rifle shooting, it is sometimes easy to focus on sight alignment, then slowly let yourself focus on the target, thinking that front sight placement is critical, but as you can see from the example above, if the sights are perfectly aligned, the target will be, can be, and should be, blurry and it won’t make any major difference in shot placement.  As soon as the focus shifts to the target, all bets are off.  Holding a bit of white between the bullseye and the front sight helps in making sure your sight placement is close enough while allowing you to keep focus on the front sight.  Once you start to let the front sight drift into the black it is hard to keep focus on the front sight and will loose alignment and think you shot a good shot, but throw it out the top or bottom.

Offhand shooting:  This is really more mental than physical.  You need to find a position that is as stable as you can make it, then just dry fire practice at home as much as you can to work on trigger control and strength.  You need to find a position that allows you to hold the rifle without using much muscle tension, or you will fatigue sooner.  Make sure your natural point of aim is on target, so that you aren’t fighting the rifle trying to always make it move toward the target.  If it isn’t, move your body or feet to make it align naturally.  Live with your arc of movement for that day.  Some days you will be more steady than others.  You can play with your hold and hand placement to try to give you more steadiness on a particular day, or in the wind(wider stance, hand further forward and pulling back on the rifle, etc, but in the end you have to live with what you have on that day.  Accept your movement, apply pressure to the trigger as you stabilize.  If you can’t break a good shot in 10-12 seconds, put the weapon down and rest and start again.  You can’t bring back a bad shot.  You have invested a lot of effort in getting ready to break a good offhand shot, and your body will want to just get it over with.  However you need to constantly fight that tendency and not break a bad shot.  I can’t remember how many matches I’ve been in where one point or one X or V made the difference, never give points up.  I've been in many matches where I threw my first two or three offhand shots, and felt like giving up.  I sucked it up and did not drop any more in the string and more often than not had the winning score.

For sitting and prone, you need to find something that is naturally aligned, repeatable, solid, steady, with a solid sling position that allows you to relax the non trigger arm fully.  Any use of muscles to steer or stabilize the weapon is wasted and inconsistent.  Figure out what works by trial and error at home with a sling and practice it.

Call your shots:  When the shot is fired, your mind should make a mental snapshot of the image of the front sight(that was in perfect focus) rear sight alignment and target placement.  You should hold the position long enough for the gun to come back to rest, before you look at the target or in the scope.  If you are paying attention, you should know exactly where the shot should be, and if it isn’t there, you know that it was wind caused and you can adjust for it in the next shot.  If it was where you called it and that was not in the center, try to figure out what caused you to break the shot with the sights aligned but not pointing in the right place.  If you cannot call where the shot was, you should not make any sight adjustments till you can.  Otherwise you are just guessing.   If you hold your position till the rifle comes back to rest, and look at where the sights are at, they should be aligned on the target if your natural point of aim is correct.  If it is pointing somewhere else that means your NPI is not correct and most likely that is where the shot will be.  When you break a shot, your body will naturally want to relax immediately afterward, if your rifle wants to be somewhere other than the target, that’s typically where most of your errant shots will wind up.  Pay attention to that and fix it.  Sometimes My hand will slip when the rifle fires, or it will move on my shoulder.  In that case it isn’t always possible to follow through as i would like, and it depends on the rifle.  Each time I need to rebuild my position for the next shot.  This should not be the norm however, the less recoil your weapon has, the less this will be an issue.

A few notes on preparation:

The key to good shooting is consistency and preparation.  To be consistent you have to build a good shooting position, natural point of aim(when you close your eyes and open then you should be aligned with the target).  Adjust your sling and body till this is correct.  Once this is set, do not move till the string is over or you have to rebuild the position again.  With a good natural point of aim all you are doing is fine tuning the sight picture and trigger control, and not fighting the rifle wanting to be somewhere else.  As soon as you break a shot your body will tend to relax and go where it wants to be and that will throw your shots off if natural point of aim is not correct.

Same applies to standing, once you are set, do not move your feet.  Set up your ammo and clips/magazines where you can easily get at them for reloads without moving position.  Have spares of them in your equipment.  Keep everything in one bag or box, so that you don’t risk forgetting something at a match.  Know your sight settings before you get into position.  Basically you want to be able to concentrate on shooting, not trying to find things, grab things, adjust things, or look things up, those are all distractions.  Mark your sling with the different lengths for sitting versus prone if you need to, again so you don’t have to remember or figure anything out.

What do I bring with me?  I've done this for a long time.  I used to have multiple shooting bags/boxes with equipment for different disciplines.  Occasionally I'd forget one or left something I needed in another box.  For a while I used to bring everything, then I found a really big box that fit everything.  I could never find anything in a hurry and my back was nearly ruined getting it in an out of the trunk of my car.  Now since I primarily just shoot vintage rifle/pistol this is what I bring, most of which fit into a small roll bag:

Clipboard and pen, Shooting glove, two M1 slings(one with the hook cut narrow to fit onto skinny front bands/swivels), ammo, ear plugs, eye protection,stapler and staples, sight black,  hat, small box with assorted stripper clips for different rifles, small box with: chamber flag, screwdrivers, M1 gas cylinder lock screw driver, SKS/AK sight adjustment tool,  allen wrench for M1 front sight, drift hammer and brass punch, a few small files, multi piece cleaning rod of steel for driving out stuck bullets if needed or cleaning, log book with sight settings and scores.   It will all nicely fit into a small roll bag, along with a pistol or two in pouches if needed and ammo. Only things I need to bring that don't fit into the bag are my shooting mat, spotting scope/stand if needed, and shooting coat.