Fliers

[Peashooter]

While i do not really practice it myself to the letter, you cant really clean your barrel too often i feel, it might shoot better with a little lead in, but then i just grab a magazine ( normally single load ) blitz some lead thru the barrel, and then proceed with single shot tray.

I am careful with calling fliers, CUZ most times i get what i want all things considering, but i do have a tendency to drift in my sight picture and that making things move a little, so i will experiment a little on ways to alleviate this when the season kick off.
But generally things make sense to me, either i cause a little drift or the wind do, and then ever so rare i get that one shot that just do not make sense at all.

It do seem like i like to drift either Left or Right, so some times i shoot a 1 - 1.5 " wide line on a paper, which i assume are me or the wind CUZ i do click a bit on the L&R turret where as the up / down i dont touch as often.
Especially my Maverick, its POI tend to drift, so i give it a click, shoot a while and then things change the other way and i go the 1 click back. But it is probably just me chasing the wind even if on some days it feel / look pretty calm.

 

[damageINC]

I'm just happy it's grouping consistently now. I had started to get annoyed. It's funny back when I was a child I only had a 760 pumpmaster and iron sights. So all shooting was within probably 40 yards and hitting a can repeatedly was accuracy. The Edgun ruined that for me. 2" off and I get pissed now.

 

[JimD]

I recently noticed that the pellets that shoot the best in my guns also have significantly lower extreme spread and standard deviation. I thought H&N Baracuda Power in my P35-177 was the exception but I shot 4 30 yard challenge targets with them and then tried H&N Baracuda Match which have a significantly lower ES and std dev. I thought group sizes were about the same for these two pellets in this gun but the Match has consistently shot 10 points or so better on the 30 yard challenge scores. It may sound counter intuitive to try and link the velocity variation to the accuracy and maybe it isn't in all guns but if you were still getting fliers I would check the ES. If the spread is not below 10 fps for a 10 shot string, I wouldn't consider it an accurate pellet for that gun. Mine are doing around 6-7 - and my P35s are relatively cheap guns. One of the thing the Power pellets do in my 177 is throw the occasional flier. My "off" shots with the Match tend to be about half as far "off".

The other thing I've noticed - again from shooting 30 yard challenge targets - is if I don't position my bipod and/or monopod (in the rear) to have the gun pretty much centered on the bull without pressure from me, my shots tend to go off a little. Probably affects my follow through. I am not claiming that either I or my guns are great, I have yet to shoot a 200, but I am getting better by paying attention to what works.

 

[HogKiller]

Being an old guy that is trying to keep his heart beating....I've worked on 1. getting my trigger as light and smooth as I can ( I am using a 2 stage trigger) and 2. using full magnification to time the rests between the beats. Now my NORMAL rhythm is 60 so I have a whole half second to play with. Oh and luckily I've got a pretty good reaction time for an old guy. I never use a rear rest, I should some day for giggles, but I'm happy with dime size mag dumps at 30 yards with my Mavericks.

 

[damageINC]

Being an old guy that is trying to keep his heart beating....I've worked on 1. getting my trigger as light and smooth as I can ( I am using a 2 stage trigger) and 2. using full magnification to time the rests between the beats. Now my NORMAL rhythm is 60 so I have a whole half second to play with. Oh and luckily I've got a pretty good reaction time for an old guy. I never use a rear rest, I should some day for giggles, but I'm happy with dime size mag dumps at 30 yards with my Mavericks.

I don't really want my triggers adjusted light for safety reasons. But yeah dime sized groups is all I can ask for.

 

[HogKiller]

I don't really want my triggers adjusted light for safety reasons. But yeah dime sized groups is all I can ask for.

I do about 11oz., I do a bump test, ok I get a smidge violent trying to get it to go bang,

 

[JimD]

I like to find how far I need to adjust the sear screw and the gun won't cock and then turn it in a quarter turn or so from that. I also smack it around a bit when pointed in a safe direction to be confident it will not slam fire. I do not want to be on the hairy edge of too little sear engagement. I've tried going really light and fortunately the worst thing to happen was the gun wouldn't cock but I don't think right on the hairy edge is where I want to be.

A little dab of moly grease on the trigger parts also seems to lighten the trigger a tad.

 

[Orchidman]

One other possibility. I am a single shot shooter. Sometimes I think my fliers are from a backwards loaderd pellet.

 

[bigHUN]

Also, other may have mentioned it in one way or other...
A longer barrel helps with a combination of a higher burst pressure with shorter dwell time. Don't let the full blast to kick the skirt when exiting from muzzle?

 

[Dog]

Whew! Aaha the mysterious fliers.. Sorry to necro this thread but sounds like we all have this issue except maybe one. You get several one holers then 1" to the (pick direction). I always blame the cheap scope that won't hold zero or my shakey bench rest, never me, myself or I. I just don't want to be like some golfers that throw their clubs...