I'm making this thread to address some of the misconceptions that inexperienced shooters have when they come to their first N50 or USARB type precision BR match ...or when they first get acquainted with an experienced and accomplished precision air BR shooter. Clubs can exist where all of the shooters at the club are inexperienced and they are usually very happy shooting with each other until an experienced shooter shows up and upsets the established balance. The experienced shooter will usually have much more specialized equipment and it will be the first thing to come under the lens of the inexperienced.
What am I referring to when I say specialized equipment?
I'm talking about things that make life easier for the precision shooter. One of the main items in this category is the rest setup. New shooters often use items like sand bags or bipods to support the rifle because they are things they already have or can at least obtain with a low investment cost. The low cost items are fully able to support a rifle properly to make an accurate shot, but lack the ability to easily move to the next bull without a lot of wiggling, squeezing, and general fiddling to get the crosshair aligned and gun settled for the next shot. Here is where the mechanical front rest comes in to play. With a mechanical front rest....you can simple turn a knob or move a joystick to position yourself at the next bull. The accuracy of the gun is not improved in any way over the more modest means of support , but the convenience factor is improved dramatically. Will this improved convenience factor result in better scores? Maybe, if you are an inexperienced shooter. The reason for this is because you will be less likely to take a shot before you are optimally positioned or before the rifle is properly settled. An experienced shooter can shoot the same scores with the low budget items....but since precision BR is something they do a lot of....they don't want to.
Next up is the one piece rest vs the two piece setup. The consensus among people that have no experience with the one piece in air rifle BR is that it will surely produce higher scores. They mostly think that because some disciplines have rules that exclude the one piece setup and they apply the standard logic of thinking that if something is not allowed it is because it's unfair to anyone that doesn't have it. Most all of the rules in Precision Air Rifle BR were borrowed from established centerfire or rimfire disciplines that existed long before air. The air rifles used in precision air BR are rather anemic compared to even a 22lr rimfire rifle. The leading air rifles in n50 are about 1/2 the power of 22lr. The rifles used in usarb are yet another small fraction of that. There is no performance improvement in a one piece rest vs a two piece in precision air rifle BR. Anyone that claims there is has surely not tested that claim in a proper manner. If you shoot higher scores with a one piece it's probably because you haven't figured out how to properly set up a two piece or are simply careless when doing so. Maybe you have a bind somewhere creating a torque or you are not careful about your bag spacing or something else. Once you set up a one piece you really don't have to think about it again. I prefer a one piece because I can make the trip to and from the bench in one less trip. Rifle in one hand and rest in the other. If I use a two piece I have to make an extra trip. I also like the more rearward position of the elevation and windage controls. I made a thread a while back on my slug gun comparing the scores of a series of cards shot from both my one and two piece setup. Although I actually shot more xs off the 2 piece, they scores were identical. If I had shot 100 cards off each, there would be no significant difference unless I got sloppy on my setup. The 2 piece that runs on sand bags is actually easier to find a good setup using my slug gun than the one piece that uses hard rest points. Some one piece rests have no provision for adjusting the spacing between the front and rear rest points and are completely unsuitable with my slug gun that needs a specific spacing to shoot well. In N50...we made no rules about rest. This was because the guys that made the rules are experienced precision air rifle BR shooters and know there is no actual accuracy advantage to any of the setups in air rifle. Disallowing something would only serve to inconvenience the dedicated guys that keep the game going. The inexperienced guys come and go. Most people will never stay in the game long enough to be competitive.
Tethering is another subject that comes under false judgement. Some new shooters believe that there is somehow a score advantage to tethering your rifle to a big tank. The advantage is that you don't have to refill your rifle and can shoot all day without worrying about that. I've heard many say that they wish they could tether but can't afford the expense of an external regulator. Well, guess what? You don't need an external regulator to tether a gun with an internal regulator. All you need is an external tank that has a higher pressure than your internal regulator....but not higher than the safe fill limit of your rifle. If you can fill your rifle to 250 bar....then you can tether a 250 bar external tank and shoot until the pressure in the big tank goes below the internal regulator pressure. Everything you need to do this is already owned by pretty much every pcp owner. Don't expect your scores to go up when you start tethering unless you were prone to shooting below your internal regulator pressure, before. Your enjoyment factor will increase, though.
How about remote triggers? Man, those things are so unfair. Let's look at the reality of this for a bit. First off, we should examine the top scores and see what kind of trigger system they used. In the pellet class, all of the top club scores and national champions used a mechanical trigger. Wait, how can this possibly be? Well, it's clearly because it doesn't actually provide an accuracy advantage over operating a mechanical trigger on the rifle. The guns that have the remote trigger (Thomas) are the same guns that have the mechanical triggers that have shot higher scores.... by the very same people. In reality the remote trigger guns are equally as accurate...but certainly not more accurate. The remote triggers are a convenient way of firing the gun from a comfortable position. That's the big advantage....however, that big advantage doesn't show up on the target.
Lastly, we have the very common "he's not even touching the gun" comment. This one is hard to figure out because anyone can decide to not touch their gun if they want to. Often the first comment is followed up with something about how if the shooters cheek, hands, and shoulder isn't on the gun than they aren't really shooting it. In BR....There are no extra points for someone that hangs on to their rifle. There are no points deducted from someone that doesn't. The game of precision BR was invented to showcase the most accurate rifles. The job of the shooter is to manage his equipment and read the wind to make the best holdoff.... which will make the most of the rifle...every shot. Air rifle BR is not about who can hold the rifle still and interact with it the most. The guys that have the most accurate rifles and the best wind reading skills win...always.
N50 could change the rules to disallow mechanical rests, remote triggers, tethering...and require the shooter to make cheek, shoulder, and hand contact with the gun. This could possibly attract a bunch of new shooters. The problem is that the exact same guys with the exact same rifles will still be at the top of the leaderboard...and eventually the new shooters will figure that out and leave anyway. Most people don't stay very long in precision BR because it's very difficult to be competitive with those that have put in the effort. That's the bottom line.
If you don't compete in precision BR because you don't have the fancy support equipment and believe that you cannot be competitive without it....you are not seeing the real picture. If you stay in the game long enough to become competitive...you will come to the realization that everything I've written above is spot on.
Mike
