Why is the 5th shot so hard???

Because it’s the fifth shot? Next time count to 2 and start over when you get to 2. 

Yen, you are not alone.  This is the 64 dollar question we all have and one for the ages. 

Boy, did you open up ‘a can of worms’ with your 5th shot question. Lots of variables here that can contribute to this phenomenon ( I.e., bad pellet, unexpected wind gust, velocity change, unintentional gun movement or recoil, change in hold technique, etc); but much of the time I suspect it is the shooter and not the gun or ammo. 

In my case, I think I choke because I get anxious about spoiling a good or great group, and my consistency suffered on that important 5th shot. I think this is common to many of us who shoot often and strive for optimum accuracy at specific and ‘known’ distances. 

I will be curious to read others’ experiences and observe their feedback. 
Tom
 

Anticipation makes us tense up which affects how much pressure we impose on the stock. It doesn't take much. 

Top shooters and coaches say target shooting is more mental than we think. Some of my best groups were shot in my 20’s with scopes that I couldn’t see the bullet holes but would walk to the target then get surprised. When I was on a high school rifle team shooting aperture sights, we had a sporting scope to look at the bullet impact. There were times that gunny wouldnt let us use our spotting scope for a card. Just shoot at the bull. I now realize it was because he was trying to show us that we could get worked up and not shoot a good match because of that 15 pound object on our shoulders. How many times do you shoot a target especially when not benched and start snap shooting. Just my 2 cents

oldsparky

because of that 15 pound object on our shoulders.

Your noggin must be the size of a pumpkin if it weighs 15 pounds!  Ha ha

It is mental…

Back about decade ago I was already competing rings shooting, indoors and outdoors 80 to 120 yards/meters with a bow and arrow.

I was training/practising like 2-3 times a week for 250 arrows (in the beginning let say 3-4 hours a day and later years about thousand arrows per week) and suddenly I got a problem missing the very last "X" in the round.

They called it target panic. I was laughing at them. But it got worst.

One of the International shooter guys sad, revers the order of rings….normally in competition you go 5 shots (or 3 shots) order in "Z" pattern. So I reversed the order and all came back to normal…How is that? So from that day I started practice/training shooting rings in random order.

BTW, during all these my competition years I went through several target panic periods, some milder some really nasty shit I could not hold the pin/dot on the "X".

I needed help, spoke to/paid couple coaches, and there I started getting seriuse with a mental training…also hide the dot/pin (cover it if you have to) and just concentrate for the center of the outer ring….and games like that.

Ones you get to realize the value of the mental state (off course you need to grow to that level of good-or-bad shooting) you will realize that you can become a stronger shooter.

I believe one of the best books which helped me the title is "Winning in mind", and the author was a airgun shooter…

Sorry I have no air target competition experience yet but just to give you a picture, and hoping some may recognize my targets not much of a difference….ring is a ring, end every ring have a center…no matter how far is it…

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by bigHUN.

call it a head space issue…Once you get the space between your ears to settle on the fact that you shoot good groups and all that is required is to shoot another good shot to make a good group you'll have it.  testing a rifle should never involve that fifth shot issue.  what does the sixth shot do?  Long ago, a very good centerfire shooter (Gloria Wright) taught me that shooting groups is easy…  "all you have to do is put the last three shots between the first two".  That's how it was explained to me…she used to shoot way better than her husband Dick Wright too.

Or, as is done here on AGN every now and then, just shoot three shot groups and call it good.  Doesn’t mean much, but hey, its a small group!  

I am really good at shooting 1 shot groups!About the best I know of!

Centercut

Or, as is done here on AGN every now and then, just shoot three shot groups and call it good.  Doesn’t mean much, but hey, its a small group!  

Hey Mike, 

I know many of our AGN shooters typically use several 5 – shot groups to assess accuracy, try out a new pellet, a new tune, etc.. I also see some others that may use 7 or 10 shot groups.  I know there is some research that you mentioned in previous posts ( I think anyway ); whereby 5 shots seems to be statistically the right amount of shots for measuring accuracy for a given group.  I almost always use a 5-shot group unless I am just curious to see how 10 shots might look. No rhyme or reason, I just do it for kicks. 

My question is, are there any times that a shooter should actually use 7 or 10 shots for a group vs. 5?   I think the answer may be different strokes type of thing, but I am curious too.

Tx..Tom