"Bolt-action Appleseed observations" by Kennebago

[Roswell]

Editor's note:
This thread was submitted to the newsletter by a 3rd party and has been published here with the author's permission.


One of my favorite things about Appleseed is the unshakeable "run what ya brung" attitude that runs down into the marrow of the program.

My favorite rifle is a 452 Varmint, so that's what I've been bringing.

I finished up my second Appleseed this past weekend (requalified), and I thought it might help some other people who are preparing for their first or second event with a bolt-action rifle if I shared some of my observations. Some of it probably isn't news to AQT veterans, many of which are far better informed than me, and to be honest most of this was probably absorbed from them in a few dozen threads scattered across the forum (and across a few years), but at least it is in one place here. And some of it would go for any rifle, not just a bolt - most of my AQT runs have been made with a bolt-action, so if I'm saying obvious things, I apologize.

I don't consider myself a good shooter, and I am really far from an expert. But these are my thoughts. If I'm wrong about anything please say so - one thing I still keep on-hand is my teachable attitude!

Bolt vs semi

Currently, my best semiautomatic run is all of two points better than my best bolt gun run. I'm just not seeing a disadvantage that can't be overcome (this might change with experience). If you're shooting a bolt gun, it just takes a little bit of preparation and some persistence.

I had some Internet Anxiety leading to the event over that, and it was completely unwarranted. If you've got a bolt gun, grab that thing and roll tide.

Keep your head locked on the rifle and work through each breath

This isn't a secret - to successfully qualify as a Rifleman you will need to be able to assertively work the bolt without breaking cheek weld, and to breathe as you cycle the action.

As a bolt gunner, this is probably the single most important thing I worked on ahead of the event weekend. Shooting in a reasonably brisk rifleman's cadence, my goal was working the bolt fast enough to be back on the rifle starting my trigger press at the same point in the breathing cycle where I would be just starting to press a semiauto trigger after letting out to reset.

Starting out, this sounded far more complicated than it was in practice. All you will need to do is lift the bolt while you start to inhale, begin to exhale as you push the rifle back into battery, and then be ready to begin your trigger press as you finish exhaling and approach the respiratory pause. Observe the front sight or reticle as it tracks upward back onto your target and let ‘er rip.

It sounds odd when written out, but a few minutes of dryfire is all it takes to get a good rhythm.  Shooting in rifleman's cadence this way is smooth and natural - during the AQT grind this past weekend, all I noticed was my reticle floating back up on target after running the bolt for each shot.

Magazines, and keeping them loaded

I shot a personal bolt-gun-best 230 this past weekend with my CZ, using three 5-round magazines. This required changing mags once on Stage 1 and Stage 4, and changing mags twice on the transitional stages. It was a bear, and was made harder by an outstanding (relentless) Line Boss. If I wasn't getting slung up, shooting, or getting unslung, I was over at my station prepping magazines as fast as I could.

I was also in the best frickin' Rifleman's Bubble of my life (so far), which didn't hurt.  But what really helped me get through that run was that every spare second I had was spent on loading magazines. That gave me just enough time to take a few cleansing breaths and get my heart rate in check before prep began.

My very first Rifleman score (220) was shot with CZ's 10-rounders at my very first event back in September, and while being forced to make more mag changes this time definitely took working more efficiently, it was not anything I felt unprepared to do.

Practice magazine changes while you are down there on your living room floor before the event, and without any question  5-rounders can carry you all the way through the AQT. I used three magazines to preserve the "shoot two, reload, shoot eight" rhythm on Stages 2 and 3, but if two 5-rounders is what you've got, it'll work (talk to the instructors). That would probably be easier than what I did (which was shoot two, reload, shoot three, reload, shoot five).

Don't panic on Stage 2

The first time I shot Stage 2, I fell apart. I think I got off five rounds - I wasn't shooting in rifleman's cadence, I fumbled my reload because I was back on my heels, and I took forever to build a good cross-legged seated position. Rookie mistakes with a semiauto, and real killers with a bolt gun.

To hit this stage successfully, I think shooters need to figure out which kneeling/sitting position is the correct balance of fast enough to get into and stable enough to land hits in the black. For me, this was crossed ankle (which is theoretically not my first choice for stability). I practiced dropping into my chosen position a couple of nights before the event, which helped. I'd guess this is where people make the most improvement between their first and second Appleseed, because outside of Appleseed I'd never been asked to get into a seated shooting position before.

Focus on getting your hits. My approach was that a shot in the black here is all you need. To hit 210 / Rifleman, my math says it's okay to shoot 4s and 5s on this stage and run over the time limit with one (or even two) rounds unfired. Remember that throwing rounds outside of the 3-zone in a rush to finish will score the same as a round you didn't fire, and you should resist the urge to dump your last few rounds for the sake of getting all 10 shots off. I tried to work methodically, get hits, and really focus on running the bolt as I breathed.

Get your scope right (if applicable)

This won't apply to iron sight shooters, but I'm assuming most bolt-action shooters in the United States are using scopes.

This one obviously isn't unique to bolt guns, but most of the scopes I see out and about in the world are set up too far to the rear for shooting prone. If you have to make a conscious effort to scrunch your head backwards in prone to get rid of scope shadow, you are going to be sore at the end of the day and you will probably have consistency issues. I knew I would probably have issues with this being a first-timer over the summer and wouldn't you know, I had to push my scope forward quite a bit more than I thought I would need.

Even at that, I had to adjust it further Sunday night after the shoot and I felt cramped for eye relief all through the AQT grind. In the end, what I had to do was ignore some neck pain and figure out which tooth I was pressing into the stock through my cheek when I had an acceptable sight picture. I then focused on pressing that same tooth into the stock for the entire grind.

It worked that day and I earned my patch, but there isn't a reason in the world to shoot like that. I had to lift my head and re-settle it several times through each AQT, and on a few stages I had to do it more than once. For a semiauto shooter, that's inefficient and means speeding up your cadence. For someone who has to manually cycle the action, wasting that time means the difference between getting all of your hits in Stage 2 and running over the time limit with a bunch of rounds still in the magazine (or worse, getting sloppy and throwing shots in a rush to beat the clock).

Play around on your living room floor and have tools available to make adjustments during prep periods. Far better to sort your scope out on Day 1 shooting squares than it is to fiddle with it during AQTs.

Get your cheek weld right

Running a bolt gun means breaking NPOA to at least some degree for every single shot. Keeping your cheek welded to the stock through all four stages is critical to keep unnecessary variables out of rebuilding NPOA as the rifle goes back into battery, and having a comb that is too low relative to your sights will make consistency here much more difficult than it has to be.

If your stock, rings, and ocular / rear sight all work well with your facial geometry, awesome. My general impression is that scope shooters who are used to shooting off a bench will occasionally be willing to accept something closer to jaw weld or chin weld than cheek weld, which is a problem that a bench will cover up and the AQT will quickly expose (and that working a bolt gun will compound due to breaking NPOA each shot).

Some new stocks make this easy to address, like Magpul's X-22 or Ruger's anniversary package. Shooting a CZ, I didn't have this option, and I wasn't willing to modify my stock for a riser kit.

In the end, I added a stock pouch before attending my first event and I was really glad I did. It does a great job, and I store hex keys or whatever else I need that day in it. With consistent cheek weld, I was able to focus on Neckpain Tooth Index or whatever else it happened to be at the moment rather than where the rifle was on my Y-axis.



Number your magazines

This one seems really obvious to me, but I never see it at my local ranges and I haven't seen it at the Appleseeds I've attended, either. It's a little ugly, but this is a dead-reliable way to never mix up your 2's and 8's, or whatever combination you are using. I carried this practice over from handguns, where mags / mag springs can be a weak point in the system and being able to quickly identify which mag is faulty helps solve feedway stoppages. So I guess the same benefits would apply, but I've never seen a rimfire magazine go bad like I've seen centerfire handgun mags go bad.



Paint pens work great for this. I mark my CZ magazines on the spine, starting with an X or a V depending on whether they're 10-rounders or 5-rounders. I haven't marked my only steel magazine yet, because I am kind of attached to it. This past weekend while using 5-rounders in the transitional stages, I set my nest up with Mag 1 (two rounds) and Mag 2 (three rounds) and separated from the unmarked mag (five rounds) with a chamber flag. This ended up working pretty well, since I could easily tell which magazine was which when it came time to reload.

It looked something like this:



For 10/22 magazines, which are (irritatingly) little cubes, I mark the side of each magazine near the front. I'm admittedly new to 10/22s, but marking magazines that way helped several times on Saturday while making reloads in prone as I was able to glance down and make sure I was oriented correctly before driving each magazine into the magwell.



Rapid-fire AQTs

These are uncommon, but if you are given the option and you are shooting a bolt gun, don't be intimidated because a rapid-fire AQT will work to your advantage. It sounds counterintuitive (how could a faster test help a slower gun?!) but in effect, what this does is let you take your time on Stage 2 (which is where a bolt-action's speed disadvantage is greatest) by trading off time from stages where a bolt gunner should have more time than they really need.

That, and they're FUN!

That's all I've got. Nothing profound (I'm not much of a philosopher), but I hope that assembling the stuff that helped me will in turn help somebody else getting ready to attend their first Appleseed, so they can focus on more important things than shooting issues.

Those guys in red and orange hats do like to talk about this one day in April from a bunch of years ago...might be worth paying attention to. 

Good luck, and persist!