Ready, Aim, Fire! Some people think it’s that easy to shoot a gun. You just point your gun at the target and squeeze the trigger, but that is just a misconception. There’s a science involved in using a gun effectively especially if your goal is to become a really good hunter (if not the best)!
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Choosing the right tools for the job
A good workman uses the tools he has at hand effectively. A hunter needs a gun and a prey.
Some people believe that they can just hunt anything that is in season and come up with good results every time. But for hardcore hunters, this isn’t the case. You have to put in the time and dedication to research on the type of prey you want to specialize in hunting, improve their shooting skills, and invest in the right tools to use to ensure a high probability of success each time you head out into the bush.
For example, if you’re going to devote your time to hunting birds, you don’t want to bring along an elephant gun as the sheer size of the bullets coming out of this would completely decimate the bird to a bloody pulp.
On the other hand, you don’t want to hunt big game with a small bore air gun as this would just annoy them and cause minor damage allowing them to run away and wasting all the time you spent tracking it down and waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger. So, you need to know what type of prey you’re interested in bringing down and bring the right gun along.
Goal Setting
Since we live in a very goal oriented world, it is quite logical to be able to know how to be able to focus one’s self in order to have some semblance of success in whatever field they immerse themselves in. Knowing different methods and their results can help you decide how to tackle your concerns and gain success too!
Hunting usually comes in seasons and there are different prey types per season that a hunter is allowed to bring down with a certain quota allowed before the hunting is declared as closed down or finished.
This is done to effectively control the population of certain prey animals or to prevent over hunting to the point of extinction.
So, what should you do while it’s off season?
Regardless of how high or low you’re tracking and shooting skills are, you still have to practice. Not doing so would make you rusty and when it’s go time, you might not be able to cut it.
So head out to the shooting range with the weapon you intend to use and make sure you have intimate knowledge with how it truly handles during field use. Different guns produce different forces and you don’t want to be surprised by the amount of power your gun possesses when you shoot it.
The more you practice, the better your body adapts to the recoil, the reverberations produced and also the power your gun has which allows for better adjustment when you’re actually using it during the hunt.
While there, you might also want to practice your shooting skills from different angles to build muscle memory and allow you to react faster because your prey isn’t going to wait for you to get into the proper position to shoot it. The moment it senses danger it’s going to bolt!
You could construct obstacles and different shooting positions that you could practice your shooting skills on to ensure that you can shoot your gun as comfortably as possible and have a high percentage of accuracy. A blind can be set up where you can pretend it is a boulder where you need to creep up to and assume a low position forcing you to shoot from a low angle to a target that is situated above eye level.
At the same time you could also construct a roost that you can climb up to and shoot your target from a high position and see if you are able to get good results.
All of these exercises are going to put you in different situations and shooting angles that you are most likely to face when you’re out in the bush. Remember that you’re less likely to get into a situation where your prey is just going to stand there as if you were shooting at it from a shooting range line.
Hitting your target from a high angle or a low angle
Hunters employ different shooting positions in order to shoot their prey. There’s a reason for this. Hunters who are hunting very dangerous prey who are very durable or can survive several shots and potentially injure them before they are killed opt to hunt their prey from a raised platform. This is to ensure that they are safe and away from harm. Shooting prey who opt to live in trees or can fly is done by shooting them from a low angle. The prey then falls to the ground and is collected by the hunter for further processing. Timing is also crucial for a hunter and his shooting angles. The sun is the number one modifier affecting the angles he takes as casting a shadow could scare away his prey. So the higher the sun, the lower the hunter gets.
Conclusion
In the end, shooting from different angles can bring in varying results and can either make you or break you. One thing’s for certain, you will have to take the necessary risks in order to hit something.
You may not come up with good results from the start. But, as time progresses and as you practice your skills more and more each day that you try and perfect it, you will become better and have more favourable results.
It will take a lot of time, dedication, perseverance and the humility to accept defeat before you finally become so good at it that your shooting skills will become legendary.
As they say, always aim high so that if you fall short of your target, you’ll still clear the benchmark.
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