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.