The hardest component to master in shooting is Windage, whether it’s pistol or rifle shooting. The second hardest is breathing, yup, not elevation or recoil, it’s breathing.
I taught shooting for many years in the United States Marine Corp and the breathing system I taught and still teach and use today is what they call the BRASS system. It means Breathe, Relax, Aim, Slack and Squeeze. The breathing part is the hardest. Before pulling the trigger, take a few breaths, and on the last one let about 90% of it and hold, then Relax, take aim collecting sight picture and target, note: concentrate on your front sight locating it in the rear sight, equal height and equal light left and right, (see my YouTube video on our RB Bass Channel) your target should be blurred, pick up the slack in the trigger, as some triggers have it before the trigger becomes a hard pull, and lastly Squeeze the trigger (proper trigger pull write up and video to follow).
So let’s go over this and some reasons why. It’s been shown that all that above should take place in 7 seconds. Say what? Yep. You take a breath, let it out and hold. It’s been proven that by the time your 7 seconds is about to expire your brain just said I need air. Consciously you know you can hold your breath much longer, but the brain just sent mojo downstream and you will waver, flinch or quiver and not even realize it. 7 seconds is actually a long time, try it. So take your breath, relax, aim, slack and squeeze. When you squeeze, do it with the meat of your finger, don’t wrap your finger on the trigger. If you can’t do this in 7 seconds….STOP…do it again. An involuntary flinch because you have no air will throw that round way off, just as much as your heartbeat. Believe it or not your heartbeat comes into play at long distance. You can see it when you turn your scope up all the way, take a breath, let it out and watch your scope jump to your heartbeat, that becomes a calming and timing issue.
With all this said, it won’t do any good if you don’t have the proper rifle grip, which is similar in gripping the pistol. When ready to pull the trigger, tighten your grip but leave your trigger finger relaxed….yes it can be done. Then pull the trigger, with the meat of your finger. The reason for this is that if your grip isn’t tight, when you go to pull the trigger, the grip tightens and pulls the rifle to the side and throws the round off. See my simple YouTube video for a visual, coming soon.
Remember practice, practice, practice…as in anything consistency is the key.
RB Bass Angler and Hunter
Mike Rogers