The Airgunner's Companion

In this extract from The Airgunner’s Companion: A field guide to hunting with air rifles, author J D J Braithwaite takes us through the importance of continued target practice

- J D J Braithwaite

Getting good at shooting an air rifle is only half the battle. Staying good is the other half and it does not happen by chance – it requires constant attention. As well as getting to know your combo, hunters need to maintain a motor/muscle memory in order to get the best out of hunting. Knowledge of how your set-up performs is the first step. Then learn how your trigger ‘feels’ and how to shoulder your gun correctly so that your face meets the cheekpiece in the same place every time, and that eye-to-scope alignment is consistent.

These processes need to be practiced so that they become intuitive and you no longer need to think about it. Shooting from different stances and positions, at different distances and angles should be practiced so that nothing surprises you in the field.

As a consequence of all this, most hunters will either have a practice range in their garden, on the farmland or be a member of an airgun club. Hunters might also be interested in target shooting competitions, but even if they’re not, hunters still need target practice to gain proficiency and maintain a sufficient level of shooting skill.

If I haven’t been shooting for a few weeks, I notice it immediately when I pick the gun up and have a few practice shots at a target. It matters not that I have been shooting for 35 years, the consistency in my shooting will have deteriorated – albeit marginally – and so a few test shots and thoughts about technique serve as a timely reminder until it all starts coming back to me.

“Hunting in the field is not the place to experiment”