Those Inexplicable Misses

Those inexplicable misses

Range humour at Camp Perry, Ohio.  "I miss my husband but my aim is improving"

I’m not long returned from a hunting trip to the Sliabh Aughty in County Clare.  The trip was an unqualified success mostly because I enjoyed the company of the youngest and most recent member of my extended family to take an interest in fieldsports, old firearms, local history and the countryside.  He was doing things and visiting places for the first time that had occupied me for a lifetime and I got pleasantly caught up in his enthusiasm.  The single negative event was an outrageous miss on a fallow stag which rattled me at the time but have since come to terms with.  In the course of my shooting career I have had occasion to see many apparently well-aimed projectiles deviate from their intended path resulting often in nothing more serious than a few unrepeatable expletives when a large round hole in an area of the target where no round hole should ever be seen.  I have missed rabbits and larger game and on a very few sad occasions have wounded an animal which had then to be followed and dispatched.  Such is the nature of a miss that we almost never know the reason although target shooting provides more opportunity to analyse the causes of misses.  My most memorable miss or series of misses occurred during an F-Class shoot during a particularly windy day on a range on a Northern Ireland mountain and it reveals something all target shooters know but which sometimes bamboozles hunters.  On this occasion there was quite a wind blowing and the ballistic table for my 6.5 x 55 Mauser Rifle indicated 6  inches (2 moa) drift for a 10 mph wind at 300 yards.  The left to right gusting wind was considerably more than that so I adjusted 4 moa left and launched a sighting shot at the 17 inch target which must have coincided with a sudden lull because it struck ten inches left at 9 o’clock.  I studied the wind flag as best I could and tried again and hit right by about six inches and high by three inches.  I quickly realised the wind was unpredictable and tried aiming off for my scoring shots.  I fared reasonably well and came sixth out of sixteen or so shooters.  Later, when I became more familiar with the behaviour of the wind on that particular range I improved my scores but the memory of the wildly erratic shooting on that day stayed with me.  Several times I had a round strike on one side of the target and the next one strike on the opposite side.

 

Wind!! Ballykinler ranges. Four flags showing left, right and calm wind conditions over 600 yards

So why do we miss on game?  Obviously, as I learned from target shooting, wind is a factor but wind doesn’t explain everything. Really bad misses are off by more than the amount indicated by ballistic tables for the bullet and wind speed on the day.  Zeroing is also a factor and everyone has had the experience of firing a rifle which had been carefully zeroed previously and which for some inexplicable reason is now “off”.  For this reason many hunters will check their alignment shortly before a hunt.  Several times I have had the experience of a miss in the field which pointed to a zeroing problem and immediately checked this by firing a shot at a paper target.  This is not something a deer hunter would ordinarily do because of the risk of disturbing game but twenty years ago when rabbits were in plague numbers I always carried a piece of cardboard with a 1 inch dot.  This allowed me to check my sights almost at will particularly if a suppressor was being used. It revealed a lot about misses and why they happen.  The little 22 long rifle bullet is particularly wind prone and  I found the .22 magnum more so and wind accounted for a lot of misses on head shots at 70 yards.  It also revealed that perfectly zeroed rifles on windless days can miss too.  One particular rifle, an Anschutz seemed to miss on the first shot almost every time.  I soon learned that the first shot from a clean cold barrel was unreliable and I would fire two fouling shots into a backstop before attempting to hunt with it.  The strangest series of misses I have ever seen happened during a summer rabbit hunt in Westmeath in 1997 when rabbits had practically ruined the hay and silage harvest.  We were hunting with the intention of clearing them out of some aftergrass owned by a friend and were doing well with .22’s when a shower suddenly came in from Galway.  Being a warm day we ignored the rain and kept shooting but immediately started missing.  I popped up my cardboard target and we both fired and both missed high.  We started aiming low and resumed effective shooting.  The rain stopped and we found aiming under was no longer necessary.  The only conclusion I could come to was that the drop in atmospheric pressure had caused less drag and consequently we hit higher.  Perhaps there was also an element of mirage as well.

600 meters and things not going to plan in wind

A further cause of inexplicable misses was undoubtedly haste.  In those days a bag of sixty rabbits was not unusual and confronted with a dozen fat rabbits asleep outside their burrows on a sunny afternoon, the temptation to get down to business quickly was very great.  Here another pattern showed that has stayed with me all my life – that of the first shot miss followed by a fast second shot kill.  Semi-automatic rifles and shotguns  seem to be the worst offenders and Johnny Conlon, God rest him,  once spent a profitable half hour at Lough Bo training me to wait that extra millisecond before firing the first barrel and my first shot kills improved accordingly.  Snap shots are sometimes unavoidable and practice is the best way to prepare for them.  As with all activities where speed and precision must be combined, precision should be practiced first and speed follows with practice.

The ground's rough so you stand up in wind at 40 yards.  He sees you. You have a second to take a snap shot

Wind induced instability is a common cause of missing.  I remember stalking a herd of Red stags on a cull in Scotland and coming upon them on a high plateau and having to approach from low rock to rock on all fours until a shot presented. When one did present it was a laggard prickett at forty yards and I had to stand up to clear intervening obstacles.  I was immediately hit by a gale force blast from the direction of the Western Isles and the shot went over his head.  He ran 150 yards and stopped to look back by which time I was prone with the bipod down and took him cleanly through the spine.  I have shot National Match standing in wind at 200 yards and it can be done with practice but the standing shot in wind, breathless after a hard stalk on an animal that has been startled and compounded by a rush of adrenaline and cold, numb fingers is never easy.

And we wonder why we flinch?  This interesting bruise was occasioned by the infamous Mosin-Nagant 7.62 x 54 Carbine of which it can be fairly said that it kicks like a Russian Army Mule

Of all the causes of missing in rifle, pistol and shotgun shooting, flinch is the most insidious as it is within the shooter and even when all the preconditions for a perfect shot are in place, flinch can ruin it.  Flinching is the body's natural reaction to the knowledge that it is about to absorb a blow.  Chuck Hawks puts it better than I:  “Boxers duck when they sense a punch coming, and it is considered good defence. Shooters are not so lucky. We are expected to remain motionless and just absorb the full force of the blow delivered when our guns go off. And we are belittled if our bodies inadvertently try to duck the blow by flinching. Flinching is somehow seen by many as faintly cowardly, like whining or wife beating. Certainly it is poisonous to accuracy with any firearm.  Flinching can take many forms. Perhaps the most common, and least damaging, is a slight twitch of the shoulder muscle as a gun is fired. Some shooters always flinch in this manner, and they can still be very good shots if they do so consistently.  More serious is a generalised contraction of the muscles of the shoulder and/or arms and hands as the trigger is released. ……..occur when the shooter's eyes snap closed and an inadvertent lurch forward with the upper body accompanies a yank on the trigger. Any semblance of accuracy disappears with such a flinch…….I have been accused of being afraid of powerful guns, and being overly sensitive to recoil. I suspect that both are at least partially true, but when I observe the horrendous flinches delivered by some of the "bigger is better" school of shooters when their firing pin falls on an accidentally empty chamber, I have to wonder just how insensitive to recoil they really are. (Normally, of course, the recoil of the gun covers the flinch.) Apparently they are not immune from the flinches!….Certainly no one can solve a problem until they first admit that they have one. So come on, guys, 'fess up. Repeat after me: My name is ______ (Chuck Hawks) and I am a flincher . . ..”

Standing shots in wind are the tester.The long stockman coat probably doesn't help, nor what appears to be an object in a pocket

Many, Many years ago I learned three things about flinching.  In October when the hunting season is well advanced and perhaps there are a few nice animals in the freezer I tend to get sloppy and careless about my shooting and flinch sets in.  I first became aware of this when I missed a prickett in ideal conditions in the Slieve Bloom Mountains at short range over thirty years ago.  I was devastated, blamed my sight which proved to be ok when I checked it.  Fortunately I knew about flinch from my reading in those pre-internet days and had twigged that the problem is psychological.  I had enough venison on the freezer for a while so I took a break and went pike fishing, rabbit-shooting, duck hunting, target shooting and clay pigeon shooting.  The practice helped a lot and when I returned to deer hunting in November I had regained my “edge”.  The next time a prickett stuck his head up in a stand of rushes at forty yards he was “brown bread”.  The second thing I learned was to keep it to myself because I made the mistake, in an unguarded moment of admitting to the “friendly” local guard that I had missed a deer and was working on a flinch problem.  He couldn’t wait to get to Hugh Lynch’s pub with the news that Ward was “missing deer”. Dealing with flinch is easier if it isn’t public knowledge.  The third lesson was that if time permits, take a little time to make the shot.  Get comfortable.  Acquire the target. Control the breathing.  Make drop and windage allowances, Squeeze, don’t snatch the trigger.

This decomposing carcass was photographed in Scotland.  Someone got it all wrong and the gut-shot animal probably suffered for weeks

The flinch problem had resurfaced intermittently in the intervening thirty years and I have had time to think about it.  It explains “beginner’s luck”.  I was once asked to take a young man under my wing – a son of a friend - and agreed to take him on a feral goat hunt.  We stalked a small herd and I killed one and the remainder bolted.  The young man who was a competent enough shotgun shot did the unforgivable and swung his rifle like a shotgun on a crossing Billy and downed him cleanly with a neck shot.  Running shots with rifles are for experienced shots only but of course he didn’t know that and somehow got it right.  I gave him a lecture on the Hunter’s Code of Ethics but knew I was wasting my breath from the smirk on his face – he had declared himself an expert.  A week later he got his first shot on a deer at 100 yards with his rifle rested on crossed sticks – he declined to rest the rifle on a wall as beneath a man who kills running billies.  The result was a monumental botch as the gut-shot prickett took off directly away from us dragging a hind leg while the stunned novice stared open-mouthed as he tried to come to terms with the deer’s inexplicable refusal to die from the shot of a natural expert.  Fortunately I was on form and had  rested the rifle on the wall and immediately killed him with a neck shot.  A second lecture on  the Hunter’s Code of Ethics merely elicited a litany of excuses including; “I’m only wearing a T-shirt” and “technically I need glasses”.  I never afterwards saw that young man make a clean  kill or keep his trap shut and we eventually fell out after he went in a local pub and blabbed my gun security arrangements to a gentleman with known criminal associations. The story goes a long way to explain beginner’s luck, flinch, the importance of choosing your acquaintances carefully and keeping your security arrangements to yourself .

Damaged bases. A recipe for fliers

Some experienced hunters of my acquaintance in the Republic of Ireland place ammunition high on the list of the causes of misses.  They are undoubtedly right and they will endeavour to buy ammunition in batches once they have established the reliability of a particular batch.  Smallbore shooters are even more thorough and will attend test sessions organised by Eley to have their rifles tested with various batches.  They will then purchase a quantity of the preferred batch.  As a reloader I am aware of the importance of load development and matching bullet weight to rate of twist.  The Sierra reloading tables list both accuracy and hunting loads for each bullet and these help greatly.  The best hunting loads are a compromise between accuracy, consistency and power and the best killing load is not necessarily the most accurate or the most powerful but rather the most likely to produce a clean kill in a given range of circumstances.  Consistency is most important as the hunter most definitely doesn’t want “fliers”.  Power is important as the kinetic energy of a bullet must be such as to ensure a clean kill on the quarry species.  Accuracy is important but need not be of the .25 moa target standard and a consistent, powerful 1 moa bullet will do the job.  Careful reloading is essential and for hunting at least, good quality is important in both factory and reloaded components.  I cast my own target bullets and I take great care with consistency.  Each bullet  in a batch must match every other bullet as closely as possible for weight, diameter, hardness and shape.  Suspect bullets that are too heavy or are distorted are returned to the melting pot.  Even exercising the greatest care I still get an odd “flyer” and I should stress that a few are such that if they were to be used for hunting at excessive range, woundings would result so hunting with cast bullets is done at short to medium range only.  Undoubtedly modern hunting bullets produced on automated, computer-controlled production lines have a high degree of consistency but there is a very obvious difference between the performance of budget priced ammunition and components and the more expensive products.  I know reloaders who even prefer a top factory hunting bullet to their own reloads.  Personally I go in the field with one of two hand-loaded Sierra hunting bullets because I favour a heavier “hotter” load for Red deer and a lighter, faster one for Fallow.  It is an ill-defined area and each individual must use his own judgement and, at the risk of repetition, consistency and absence of “fliers” is of primary importance in avoiding misses and woundings.

A joy to shoot but a horror to cast.  Home casting rifle bullets is rewarding but flyers are an ever present risk

Copper fouling will cause the best shot with the best rifle to miss.  There is little can be further said.  Careful cleaning of a hunting rifle with copper solvent and carbon-removing light oil is essential. Likewise all screws should be checked periodically for tightness and the barrel should be free floating ad unobstructed.  Telescopic sights need not be the biggest, most expensive, heaviest or the most powerful.  A good 6x40 will suffice provided it has no movement in the crosshairs or rings.  Hunting rifles need protection in transit and a rigid case is essential and should not be stored under other equipment lest the scope be stressed.  I once inadvertently stepped on a partner’s gun case and he missed his next fox due to misaligned crosshairs.  No permanent damage was caused but rifles should “go on top”.

The last resort.  Am I missing because my bore is done?

I have probably omitted a few other causes of missing but the list below are the main culprits.

Wind Drift

Zeroing

Atmospherics

Haste

Wind instability

Flinch

Ammunition variation

Rifle issues

Luck

I have a theory about “fliers”.  Given the complexity of the many forces acting on a bullet from the time the firing pin falls until it reaches the target it is a little surprising we hit as often as we do.  Gravity, wind drift, atmospheric pressure haste, wind-induced instability, Flinch, ammunition and rifle variables I’m sure there is a statistical dimension to this and these factors variously work in train or cancel one-another out.  To over-simplify; wind-drift might drive a bullet in one direction while an ammunition variable might drive it in the opposite direction and the result might be no change.  On the other hand a zeroing issue working in train with a flinch might produce a wild miss.  Do we rely on luck to some extent when we send a bullet on its way?  Certainly it is possible to be unlucky.  Know a man who owns a very pretty classic rifle by a well-known manufacturer of reproduction guns.  It is reasonably accurate but is not a “tackdriver” which bothers the owner not at all since he just likes to “blather” away a few rounds once in a while and he shoots fairly well with it.  His acquaintances occasionally ask for an opportunity to shoot this historic piece.  On occasions when it has been fired by an acquaintance it invariably produces a dead-centre hit.  I wouldn’t even attempt to analyse the factors; environmental, physical and psychological that produce this phenomenon.  Whatever the cause the gun will be easily sold by the heirs when the owner goes to his eternal reward.  There is another wonderful story about an old shooter of my acquaintance who has since gone to meet his maker.  For many years he shot a reproduction Colt Cap and Ball Revolver and won many, many prizes with it.  It passed to a friend after his death who took the opportunity to dismantle, clean and inspect it.  He discovered the chambers were measurably  out of alignment with the barrel; a condition that would normally condemn a revolver to the realm of “cheap Italian scrap”.  Where now mechanical soundness?  He once bought himself an exquisite English muzzleloader which now belongs to me.  One Saturday morning he was asked how it was shooting.  He replied, “I don’t know”.  “How’s that?”  “I haven’t stopped cuddling it yet!”.  Humour is an essential adjunct to good shooting.

Humour is an essential adjunct to good shooting.