Project Appleseed

So I don't practice sitting or rapid prone very often, but when I do, I notice that my shots tend to go down and right by a couple minutes.  This is unique to rapid fire groups, with slowfire prone/etc I don't get the same problem.  The problem is repeatable on both centerfire and rimfire, so I don't think it's a flinching thing.  I don't yet have a good way to try rapidfire dryfire (beyond the first shot, which doesn't have the problem), so I'm having a hard time diagnosing that way.

I do very, very, very little rapid fire practice, so I'm just getting started figuring out what's wrong.  Current theories:

• bad trigger control
• grip problems?
• generally not good NPoA - I get pretty close to timing out every time, and I think I'm not getting a good enough position at the beginning

Anything else I should look out for?

Could be any number of things and hard to diagnose without watching you shoot.

A flinch doesn't have to be the scared of the recoil flinch we think of when hearing that term.  Anticipating recoil is maybe a better term and can manifest in different ways.  Clenching a hand, tightening a shoulder are a couple things to look for.  You can sometimes figure it out by loading a dummy round into the middle of your rapid fire mag and see what you're doing when you get a click instead of a bang.

Another possible cause could be an unstable position rather than bad NPOA.  Recoil (even a .22) could be moving you some which is either shifting your NPOA or forcing you to tweak your position which then moves your NPOA.

I've seen you shoot, and you shoot really well.  You didn't quantify how many minutes so I assume we're talking 2-4 minutes at most?  If I recall, you were a right handed shooter also.  I think the last one I saw you shoot was with a bolt, so I assume this one you're talking about is a semiauto?

I would suggest having a camera setup to record you from the most open side (the side that faces your chest), fire a couple of rapid fire (rapid fire per Appleseed means 1 shot per breath, in cadence), then replay the video and look for the following.
1. Trigger control (I've seen you shoot so I don't think this was your issue, but rapid fire tend to make people "bounce" off the trigger more from what I've seen)
2. Sling (is your sling slipping at all from shot to shot).
3. Position (as Lomshek mentioned, sitting is just not stable, just as I see 2 MOA shooters in prone end up shooting 6 MOA in standing, I wouldn't be too upset to see groups open up in a less stable position).
4. Support hand.  My new saying for 2021 is its a rifle stock, not a GME stock, you don't need to HODL it!    Goes over the heads of most older folks, but most of the younger folks like you get it. 

The most frequent cause (right-handed shooter) of shots trending toward 4:30 is position; specifically, having the support elbow off to the left of the rifle. As the arm tires during the string, the support hand follows gravity.

Ahh good idea on the dummy in the middle! 

I do also notice the first two shots on the first mag tend to be spot on, it's after reload stuff starts to go far off.

Quote from: GTEngineer on April 02, 2021, 01:46:30 AM
I've seen you shoot, and you shoot really well.  You didn't quantify how many minutes so I assume we're talking 2-4 minutes at most?  If I recall, you were a right handed shooter also.  I think the last one I saw you shoot was with a bolt, so I assume this one you're talking about is a semiauto?

Yup on semi auto.**  Yea this is moving the center about 3 minutes down and right (while sitting - with prone rapid fire it's a bit less).  Enough to drop a ton of points with a ~3.5MoA 10 ring.

** though now that you mention it, the problem doesn't happen as bad with a bolt action from what I can remember, so maybe that's a hint as to what I'm doing wrong.  I haven't shot that bolt action in months, I'll have to bring it to the range later this month and see if I can make a comparison.

Quote from: GTEngineer on April 02, 2021, 01:46:30 AM
I would suggest having a camera setup to record you from the most open side (the side that faces your chest), fire a couple of rapid fire (rapid fire per Appleseed means 1 shot per breath, in cadence), then replay the video and look for the following.

Ah that's a good idea, I should put a camera up on a tripod next time I do this.

Quote from: GTEngineer on April 02, 2021, 01:46:30 AM
1. Trigger control (I've seen you shoot so I don't think this was your issue, but rapid fire tend to make people "bounce" off the trigger more from what I've seen)
2. Sling (is your sling slipping at all from shot to shot).
3. Position (as Lomshek mentioned, sitting is just not stable, just as I see 2 MOA shooters in prone end up shooting 6 MOA in standing, I wouldn't be too upset to see groups open up in a less stable position).
4. Support hand.  My new saying for 2021 is its a rifle stock, not a GME stock, you don't need to HODL it!    Goes over the heads of most older folks, but most of the younger folks like you get it. 

Thanks, that definitely gives me a lot of ideas of what to look for.

Quote from: FiremanBob on April 02, 2021, 08:53:25 AM
The most frequent cause (right-handed shooter) of shots trending toward 4:30 is position; specifically, having the support elbow off to the left of the rifle. As the arm tires during the string, the support hand follows gravity.

Yea that's exactly it, trending to 4:30.  I've got my elbow almost as far right as it can go before the magazine starts entering the same physical space as my forearm.  (edit: while prone.  While sitting, I have much less clue what I'm doing)

It sounds like you could use a little more sling tension. Also, you may re,re-check your Npoa after the mag change. If you're muscleing a little to make up for npoa that is a little off, your support arm will sag to where you actually have a sling supported position(read down and to the right for a right handed  shooter.)  Slow prone at 600 will really drive home the necessity of a totally relaxed support hand and arm, and letting the sling do its job

Tom

Yea that could well be.  When I shoot slowfire prone I crank the sling tighter and my arm goes numb.

First 600 yard match on Sunday, we'll see how it goes.  (Edit: my personal goal is to keep horizontal dispersion at 600 yards under 2.5MoA, and not misread the wind so badly that I crossfire onto someone else's target.  Edit2: secondary goal to get >95 off hand, but that probably won't happen)

Welp thanks all!  I fixed half of it: I isolated the problem with going to the right, due to, of all things, slippage between elbow and inside of the knee.  Turns out it even varies by the type of pants I'm wearing.  So more generally, a stability problem.

Still need some more work to figure out the going down part, since that's still quite evident.  Here's the sitting target from last weekend's match:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/rFvzxEQMM6Lphf75A

My scope started breaking down at the 300 yard line, so that wasn't giving me any useful data on this specific problem.  And it continued to be broken at 600 yards, so I had to hold 12-o'clock, and it was funky.  But at the 200 yard sitting target you can very clearly see the 2 minute drop down (10 ring is about 3.5 minutes top to bottom, so middle of x ring down to the cluster of shots is about 2 minutes down).

Those four outside 9 shots, that was all me with bad trigger pulls.  I knew it as soon as I pulled the trigger on those.

But, did manage >95 average off hand (>190 total), so that goal happened at least   Not happy about the one 8, but whatever.  It was my first time shooting off hand at 200 yards, so I can't complain too much.

Squeeeeeze the trigger, even in rapid fire. That target isn't a result of your position breaking down. Darn near cleaned your second string, your npoa was better. Shoot em by the numbers, and trust your position, it works.

Tom

Yup, after figuring out the elbow slipping thing, I stopped getting the down->right breakdown.  Prior to that, essentially every rapid fire group I shot (mostly with 22lr) had a nice line going down and right from center out to about the middle/edge of the 9 ring, at 4:30.

And yea, I tightened the sling up a tiny bit in between the first and second strings.  That helped a lot.

And yup, I still have only shot a grand total of 80 shots rapid fire with 223 ever in my whole life, so I'm still getting used to the trigger there.  Definitely forgetting to carefully squeeze a good 25% of the time

Could it be the barrel heating up from rapid-fire? Or maybe a carbon ring forward of the chamber heating up? I have experienced the shifts in POI around rapid-fire stages and sometimes expect this occurs barrel heating or carbon ring heating is the culprit.  It did this past week at an RBC.  By the time I got to stage four POI on a second AQT it was off by an MOA upper left and I had to hold low right to hit the center. You may find some posts on the WWW searching for barrel heating and shifts in POI. If you suspect this problem, then it is time to clean that carbon ring out and give the barrel a thorough cleaning, maybe with Kroil and WJ Bore Cleaner. Then season the rifle again.