"Regal_US"What's really interesting is to look at the qualifying round scores at 75 yards, in light of Ted's video and his comments about practice, practice, practice, and reading the wind. Several shooters who did really well at 75 yards (some well known leaders in industry) fared badly in the match at 100 yards.
As many others have posted: Ted's generosity in sharing his technique is exceeded only by his shooting skills!
I went from a very inexpensive springer to a Daystate Regal, based entirely on Ted's Holdover review of this rifle, and at the time this seemed like a huge risk in $. Little did i know where this would lead, with different calibers, better scopes, tricked out rifles etc. AOA should be paying Ted a retainer for all he does to bring people into the sport.
His win at EBR is well deserved and I look forwards to seeing videos 2 and 3 in the how to win series.
Do you have a theory on why some of the leaders in the industry did ok at 75 yards but lost it at 100?
In my (very) limited experience of shooting at 100 yards, I found it a lot more difficult than going from 50 to 75 yards. It looks really far and you can hardly even see that little target without your scope. There is a lot more to it than rezeroing your scope, point and shoot at that distance. It can feel almost like trying aim with artilery with those steep trajectories.
Perhaps it is as simple as the fact that many of the people who usually participate in sanctioned matches might not be used to long range shooting. They compete at much closer range so perhaps they didn't put in the hours at 100 yards. Or maybe Ted's hunting background helped. The most difficult shots I take are trying to hit squirrels or chipmunks at 75-100 yards when they jump around, hide and camouflage in the trees. A static white target can't be harder than that...
I think it is a fair comment that the longer the range, the more shooting skills play a part. You need an accurate gun and a good rest etc but It's about practice, technique, reading the wind, making a smart ammo choice to win.
The thing I love about it is how he defied convention by winning using a bullpup and the smaller caliber. A lot of people who consider themselves to be "real target shooters" put their noses up at bullpups as if there is something that makes them intrinsically less accurate than rifles. So... in your face bullpup haters!
I particularly like that it wasn't any type of $3,000 +target gun that won too. I am looking forward to seeing the tuning video.
One question I have is around what he said about the benefits of using less power (I.e. Slower pellet speeds). My understanding is that ST barrels do better at slightly slower speeds than traditional rifled barrels. It makes sense that there would be a difference if ST barrels put less spin on the pellets. I wonder if his advice is specific to the Impact or FX guns, or if he is telling all of us that our groups would improve if we dropped the hst to output 820fps instead of 920fps?
I usually shoot the 25 cal heavies in the 830-850 range but that's mainly because my guns are set up for 25-28gr pellets at 915-930fps.
'lubing'
