I have always relied on the kindness of strangers

Another lovely morning at the range.

I began with a couple shoot-n-see targets set up at the 25 yard line so I could continue fine-tuning the sight on the .22 M-4gery upper for eventual use by my children as a learner's rifle. Each target had a central target spot, with another in each corner. Starting on the left and aiming at the center, I dialed in the sight so my grouping was approximately centered, then I moved to the corner targets for a little more fine adjustment, until on the right target I was shooting a fairly tight group. The dot in the Trijicon sight is 6 MOA, so that's a 1.5" circle at 25 yards, which, all in all, is not bad for a CQB reflex sight. The target spot themselves were 2" across, so all I had to do was center the dot in the square.

Moving the target out to 50 yards exposes the weaknesses in my technique more, but the grouping is fairly good.



Not bad considering the circle obscured the target.

At this point, I switched to the M-14, and I had four shoot-n-see targets at 100 yards, and two at 200 yards.

As the scope has to be re-mounted to the rifle each time I shoot it (I was using it as a spotting scope earlier), my first target was used for sighting it in coarsely with ten shots in three groups of three plus a finisher, the second used for a group of 10 to establish another adjustment, and the third for another group of ten for a finer adjustment. The fourth target I was really proud of. Except for one flier (which I knew right after I fired it) the other nine shots landed in a 1 MOA cluster around the aiming point.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of this due to my dismay at the performance at 200 yards. Two targets, ten rounds each, and blessed few hits on those, although (to salvage something of my self-esteem), the grouping was better than last time, and the shot placement was creditable to a man-sized target.
I have pictures, but they're not worth uploading.

Now, I should expect to have 1" of bullet drop from 100 yards to 200 yards, and I can easily manually do that overhold. That in no way explains my results. Definitely not Boomershoot quality.

Here's where the kindness of strangers comes in. To my right at the range were a group of guys, one of which was mostly spotting for the others. He looked at my targets, and after I explained what I was doing, he had this to say about my fourth target, the good one, "That's pretty good shooting, considering what you were doing."

My basic problem, it seems is that I'd not holding the fore-end at all. I have my right on the pistol grip, the butt in the shoulder, and I'm using my left hand as a fine-adjustment under the end of the stock at my right shoulder. The front of the rifle is on a bipod (GripPod, actually). So, with the front end resting stably on the bipod, I was letting it go about its merry business while I took care of business from the rear. That laissez faire attitude towards the front of the rifle is apparently causing me some accuracy problems at long rage. I could also add to the some end-of-session anxiousness which caused me to rush some shots. Perhaps the best thing to do is to sight in, then move on to the 200 yards immediately.