Friday, February 25, 2005
Practice Session
I started my FT trainging last night with my HW97. I gave my eight year old HW97 a really good cleaning about a week ago. I used FP10 and Hoppes in the bore to get it really clean. I was surprised that the velocity went up about 15 fps after the cleaning. It was a really deep cleaning so it hopefully removed any lead or rust build up in the bore. I had this rifle tuned by Paul Watts and it was shooting well but one night last year after about a week of me shooting poorly I took it apart and messed with the spring tar. Now it is a bit twangy but still shoots nickle size groups at 50 yards. It turns out I was shooting badly, the gun was fine until I took it apart. I will need to give it back to Paul to have him put it back to its original tune state. I have ordered one of his brass set back triggers for it. His set back trigger has two sear adjustements in it like the TX trigger. I think this will help some of the reach problem I have with the Maccari match stock.
The rifle was shooting great but it took me a bit to get used to sitting and shooting again. I haven't shot much sitting over the winter. It was a cold and windy night last night, I really don't like shooting in the cold weather but I need to get back to sitting again as the FT season is about to start. Shooting in the wind was good again too and I found that I still had a pretty good sense of where to hold to hit at 50. After a few adjustments, I was able to hit my 1" rabbit target pretty regularly.
I got the book "Ways of the Rifle" (buy it here) which talks about three position shooting and details in depth techniques on how to shoot each position. I have been using it to modify my standing shooting over the winter. It has really helped and I would strongly recommend it for anyone wanting to improve their shooting in any position. I have applied some of the standing techniques to my sittting shooting as well. Last nights shooting really showcased to me how much my standing shooting had improved over the winter. I really love shooting my HW97, I have three of them now and all of them are the older models with the muzzle weight that extends past the end of the cocking lever latch. One of them is the MkII which was the older style but with the updated power plant so it shoots well over 900 fps. All of my HW97 are very accurate and the first one I bought over ten years ago has well over 100,000 rounds through it and it still shoots accurately. At any rate, I have to get more practice in so I can get ready for the Cajun Classic in Baton Rouge!
The rifle was shooting great but it took me a bit to get used to sitting and shooting again. I haven't shot much sitting over the winter. It was a cold and windy night last night, I really don't like shooting in the cold weather but I need to get back to sitting again as the FT season is about to start. Shooting in the wind was good again too and I found that I still had a pretty good sense of where to hold to hit at 50. After a few adjustments, I was able to hit my 1" rabbit target pretty regularly.
I got the book "Ways of the Rifle" (buy it here) which talks about three position shooting and details in depth techniques on how to shoot each position. I have been using it to modify my standing shooting over the winter. It has really helped and I would strongly recommend it for anyone wanting to improve their shooting in any position. I have applied some of the standing techniques to my sittting shooting as well. Last nights shooting really showcased to me how much my standing shooting had improved over the winter. I really love shooting my HW97, I have three of them now and all of them are the older models with the muzzle weight that extends past the end of the cocking lever latch. One of them is the MkII which was the older style but with the updated power plant so it shoots well over 900 fps. All of my HW97 are very accurate and the first one I bought over ten years ago has well over 100,000 rounds through it and it still shoots accurately. At any rate, I have to get more practice in so I can get ready for the Cajun Classic in Baton Rouge!
