move the rifle to the point where it is naturally aligned. So, if the shooter is forcing the position, even a little, the body will subconsciously steer the rifle off target during firing. This is why we want to establish our natural point of aim.
The way to check for our natural point of aim is to align the sights on the target. While in position, go through a couple of breathing cycles with your eyes closed. Upon opening your eyes, see if the sights moved off the target. If the sights have moved, realign the rifle and your body as one unit on the target. Small movements will go a long way here. The movement should come from the shooter’s core and not the shoulders and/or arms.
Demonstrating the proper prone position to each student helps establish a quick baseline. Once demonstrated, it’s the instructor’s job to tweak the shooter’s position to fit his or her body type.
Edge-to-edge clarity, with no shading, is key. Be sure you are not hunting for a clear sight picture.
Taking a couple of deep breathes relaxes the body just enough for the brain to change our position, should it find that position uncomfortable. When we opened our eyes, if the sights are off target, we have to fix this alignment. We call this the gross adjustment for natural point of aim.
By practicing getting into position straight behind the rifle repeatedly, one can help shortcut this process by being square not only to the target, but behind the rifle. Indexing with the legs and the knees, the shooter wants to point his or her body to the rifle, which is pointed at the target. This will help align the shooter quickly and effectively in the field.
The fine-tune adjustment for natural point of aim is the dry fire. This will show the shooter if his position is perfect. Given time and opportunity, always dry fire before going live. If the reticle moves, that is a clue to adjust your position ever so slightly.
Sight Picture, or Aiming
Those shooting iron sights will first consider sight alignment and then sight picture. Because we are using a scoped rifle, we don’t necessarily need to discuss sight alignment in the same way. By setting up the rifle correctly in the beginning, we have, it is hoped, determined a good cheek weld. This is very good first step when it comes to sight picture. However, as a tactical shooter, we might find a situation where our cheek weld is slightly compromised. The way to fix any potential aiming issues from this is to use the parallax adjustment on the scope. The parallax adjustment, if set correctly, will essentially turn the day optic into a red-dot-type scope by putting the reticle, the target and the shooter’s eye on the same focal plane. As with a red-dot sight, most understand the dot does not have to be in the center of the optic for the shooter to hit the target. The red-dot sight is a parallax-free system; by using the parallax adjustment on the day optic, it will basically do the same thing.
Instructors see when students are holding their breath when shooting. The negatives far outweigh the perceived benefits of not breathing. The author teaches students to breathe through the shot, with it breaking at the bottom of a natural respiratory pause. If the sights are not lined up, keep breathing.
Proper sight picture is important. Correct sight picture means you have edge-to-edge clarity with no shadowing of any kind. If you find shadowing, even a small amount, it is recommended that you move the scope or move the cheek piece to line up the shooter’s eye directly behind the optic. Eliminating any angle is key. Your head should be square with the ocular lens of the scope so that your head quickly and naturally aligns to the proper sight picture. Any shadowing seen in the sight picture is a result of the eye looking at the inside of the scope tube. Building up the cheek rest or moving the scope to the eye will help eliminate this. Proper sight picture is key because that is going to tell us where the bullet is going to go.
How Do We Check for Parallax?
Back in the old days, most day optics had the parallax set at the factory. There was no adjustment on the scope. They usually set them around 150 yards to suit the average hunter. With most optics under 10x, parallax is not a big issue. It gets worse with magnification, so it is not uncommon to find an optic less than 10x with no parallax adjustment. We are referencing modern higher-powered optics with a parallax adjustment.
To check for parallax, line up the reticle on a target and move your head ever so slightly, side to side, or up and down. Don’t move your head enough to cause shadowing to appear around the edges. Use very small motions, to see if the reticle appears to “float” on the target. A way to demonstrate this is to take a pencil tip and hold it out between you and some object a distance away. When you move your head, the target will move away from the pencil tip, this is parallax. But, if you move the pencil tip on top of the target object so it is touching, then move your head, the pencil stays in place. We want to re-create this through the scope by adjusting the movement out. Just remember, in some optics, focus is not parallax and being parallax-free might put you out of perfect focus.
Much of sight picture is established when setting up the rifle. We don’t want to hunt for the proper sight picture, something I notice a lot of new shooter do. We want to fall in behind the stock and have our head naturally aligned to the optic.
The scope should be set up in position, placed on maximum power, if using a variable-power optic, and then fine-tuned in place. At this point, lowering the magnification for different positions will open up the eye relief, thus creating a more forgiving eye box. This minor compromise is necessary as different positions will move the head ever so slightly behind the scope.
Breathing
We do not want to focus on our breathing. Let’s start off by saying we need to breathe. Period. Holding your breath is the last thing you want to do when shooting. When we are hammering a nail or driving our cars, we don’t think about our breathing. Correct? Instead, we continue to breathe normally. The same thing applies when shooting a rifle. What we need to know about breathing while shooting is where to break the shot, which is at the bottom of our natural respiratory pause.
Let me repeat that: Break the shot at the bottom of our natural respiratory pause.
For years, people were taught to take a deep breath, let it halfway out and hold it. This is incorrect, and in many ways counter to achieving accurate fire. Why? Because we have no way of knowing what “halfway” is under typical circumstances, and we have no concept of how long we are actually holding our breath. The longer we continue with this practice, the longer we will hold our breath, and the first thing affected is our eyes. Your vision becomes impaired, your body begins to strain and you’re no longer in a relaxed state.
We all have a natural respiratory pause, even if we are running with 80 pounds on our backs; there is a bottom of the breathing cycle. That is where we break the shot. If your shot is not lined up right immediately, continue to breathe until it is. The best part about this is, under stress, we can exaggerate the process to help us breathe through a physical event.
We do not have to tell our body to breathe heavily when exerting ourselves. It just does it naturally. In order to clear out of this condition, we need to breathe more and not less. So, holding your breath in the case of shooting is a very bad thing and does not make the shooter steady. We just turn on a few pieces inside our brain that give us the appearance of being steady. We have image stabilization behind our eyes.
Breathing
