Cutting it Fine

by Hap Rocketto 

The most important skill a rifleman can have is to place shots in a tight group. A precise little flower of five or ten shots is the start of a bouquet that will bring happiness to the heart. It matters not where it is placed, only that it is small and dense. With a twirl of the fingers on the sight knobs the precise group is accurately moved from wherever it might be to the center of the target, bringing even greater joy to the shooter.

However, without the ability to call a shot the shooter is in a seemingly endless round of sighting shots. Calling a shot is valuable skill, second only to being able to shoot a group. It is a comfort to a shooter because he can adjust his sights with confidence. It is even more so to a coach during a team match. When shooting as a team the coach usually has to balance two shooters and the wind. In tricky conditions, without good calls, the coach’s ability to keep a shooter in the X ring can be severely hampered. With good calls the coach looks good and the scores are high.

So it was one fine spring morning at Blue Trail Range when my shooting partner Shawn Carpenter took to the line in a Connecticut Big Bore League match. Despite the fact that Shawn has yet to borrow a piece of equipment and return it unbroken he was using my .222 Remington 700. In computer jargon, fitting because that is what Shawn teaches, the .222 is a “user friendly” caliber that shoots straight and has little, if any, recoil and report. It is so quiet that sometimes the scorer doesn’t even know a shot has been fired.

By loading the ammunition myself, a tedious task, I kept Shawn away from my loading press and saved it from damage. He does not break things on purpose but he does seem to have a gift for destruction, he is a bit like a friendly and curious “bull in a china shop”-more a Ferdinand than the Minotaur.

Shawn wiggled into prone and was inside the X ring with his second sighting shots. Wanting to save powder and ball, as I said reloading is tedious, I asked him if he felt good and replied with a positive grunt so we went for record. He called each shot for me and I confirmed his calls. After a couple of shots he was building up on the five o’clock side of the X, between the leg of the X and the inside of the ring. He was calling them ‘good’ so I gave him a small sight adjustment up and left and he hit the X at the intersection of the lines and then began to build up on the nine o’clock side of the ring. Calls were ‘good’ and I clicked him right one or two. The rifle has an old set of Redfield International quarter minute sights and a click at 200 yards moves the bullet strike only about a half of an inch.

He came out of prone with a 100-10X and none of the shots had even touched the inside of the ring. A sighting shot in sitting was in the X and we went about our business, Shawn shooting and me occasionally giving him a click in one direction or another to try to keep him centered, based on his calls. Sitting was a bit shakier than prone and he managed to only squeak out a 100-7X. The two lost shots were called out and they were, but by not much more than a bullet diameter.

Shooting in the traditional manner we went into kneeling and quickly, two sighters, were in the X ring again. Rather mechanically we stayed in the center, Shawn shooting and calling and me having him put on or take off a click now and then. Those few shots that were not Xs were so close that under the old rules, where a thirty caliber plug was the only plug allowed, probably would have pushed the shot into the X ring.

So there we stood, literally, with a score of 300-24X out of a possible 300-30X. Shawn was standing in to shoot off hand and I ran the scope up to eye level and rose from my shooting stool so that I could watch the shots and be heard more easily. We had used all of the sighters allowed so, in Leg Day style; we had none left for standing. That was old hat to Distinguished Rifleman Shawn. We dropped a few points standing, each lost shot called and not far out, ending up a score deep in the 390s with a handsome supply of Xs.

As we were clearing the point a competitor from the team next point sauntered over and asked about my coaching method, such as it was. He had watched us and wanted to know why I was messing around with moving shots around inside of the X ring and just didn’t leave well enough alone. “Weren’t you guys cutting it a bit fine?” he asked. Facetiously I began by telling him that Shawn was shooting and calling well and so I had to do something to keep from being bored to death. I then went on to explain how, with things going so well, I was just trying to save every X. I mentioned that, as a coach, my job was to keep him within the X in windage and his was to stay in the X vertically. I will further note that all the tens and nines were high or low.

What I didn’t tell him was that, when Shawn was a brand new shooter on my high school’s rifle team in the early 80s, he was lucky to hit the backstop. The coaches cringed, trying to shrink as small as possible for safety. Every time his rifle went off the coaches feared being struck down by the lead ricocheting off of the floor, walls, and ceiling. In those days having Shawn move the sights was a cosmetic activity, something a coach did simply to put off the inevitable 40 grain four rail carom shot. Now, far from being a menace to those behind the line Shawn had become a sweet danger to the X ring and it was a pleasure to be able to watch him cut it a bit fine.