Reference

Part 2 in my Statistics for Shooters 3-part series focuses on how to analyze muzzle velocity consistency, which is critical for us as long-range shooters. This article shows how to apply the concepts from Part 1 to get more insight and make better decisions related to muzzle velocity. It provides practical answers to some age-old questions: Should we look at ES or SD? How many shots do we need to fire in a string? How do we get the most value from the shots we fire at the range? I spent an absurd amount of time arduously crafting this article and creating visuals so it was approachable by shooters who aren’t math nerds because I firmly believe these concepts can help a TON of people in the long-range community.

Many shooters have an uncomfortable relationship with math and aren’t impressed with fancy formulas. However, statistics and probability are insanely applicable when it comes to rifles and long-range shooting in particular. I have literally spent months crafting this 3-part series of articles specifically with the math-averse shooter in mind. I invested all that time because I strongly believe that understanding just a few basics can help us gain actionable insight, make better decisions, and put more rounds on target.

There have always been a niche group of shooters pushing the limits when it comes to distance. But over the past few years, advancements in manufacturing combined with better understanding and tools around predictive ballistics have ushered Extreme Long Range (ELR) shooting into the mainstream. A decade ago, the few shooters who could hit targets at a mile or more were considered super-human. Today, distances once considered impossible with shoulder-fired rifles can now be hit on-demand by just about any shooter with the right equipment and desire to learn. I’ve been a long-range addict for several years now, but that ...

Here is the tentative schedule for the upcoming 2017 Precision Rifle Series (PRS) point race events. Some of these details were posted on Facebook a few weeks ago, but the link expired … and the match details haven’t all been uploaded on PrecisionRifleSeries.com yet. So I ask Shawn Wiseman, the PRS Director, for the latest list, because I wanted to pencil in a few dates on my calendar. I’m sure they’ll have all the event details uploaded on this PRS website very soon, but I thought a few of you guys might appreciate having this for reference. The 2017 schedule shows ...

The recent August issue of Outdoor Life featured a Q&A session I had with their gun editor, John Snow. I wanted to share that here with you guys, and OL kindly gave me permission to do that. So here’s what John wrote: Lifelong hunter and gun enthusiast Cal Zant tapped into his engineering background to create PrecisionRifleBlog.com, one of the most informative sources for shooters on the web. OL: How did you get involved in the outdoors? CZ: I grew up in West Texas and have been around guns my whole live. I don’t even know how old I was when I ...

By understanding how rangefinders work, you’ll be able to employ them more skillfully in the field. This article should equip you with the fundamental principles. Laser rangefinders (LRF) all work using the same basic concept. The rangefinder emits laser beams at the push of a button. Those beams bounce off distant objects and the rangefinder’s high-speed clock measures the total time it took from when the beams left the unit until they returned. Since we know how fast the beam was traveling (speed of light) the unit can simply use that time measurement to calculate the distance it traveled, and ...

Back in 1993, Precision Shooting Magazine printed a landmark article about the findings of a group of benchrest shooters who turned a huge Houston warehouse into a precision shooting laboratory. The warehouse, owned by Virgil King, included a 325 yard long straight-away through the heart of it, which provided an ideal shooting environment where the breezes never blew, the mirage never shimmered, the sun never set and the rain never fell. So began the most insightful, revealing experimentation into practical rifle accuracy ever conducted. Over a period of six years, the levels of accuracy achieved in the Houston Warehouse went ...

You know NASCAR? Yes, I’m talking about the racing-cars-in-a-circle NASCAR. Before NASCAR, there were just a bunch of unaffiliated, regional car races. NASCAR brought structure by unifying those races, and created the idea of a season … and an overall champion. NASCAR identified the top races across the country (that were similar in nature), then combined results and ranked competitors. The Precision Rifle Series (PRS) is like NASCAR but for rifle matches. The PRS is a championship-style point series race based on the best precision rifle matches nationwide. PRS matches are recognized as the major league of sniper-style rifle matches. ...

There are a lot of articles and forum threads out there comparing MIL and MOA, but most either aren’t objective or they’re overly complex. I’ll try to avoid both of those pitfalls in this article. Executive Summary A few months ago I asked Bryan Litz whether he personally used MIL or MOA. Bryan is an expert among experts in the shooting community, and after reading his books I’ve gained a respect for his scientific approach to decisions like this. His response was so concise and objective, I thought it could serve as the executive summary for this whole comparison: “You ...

I’ve had to reference back to these torque specifications a couple times, and thought it’d be helpful to post. It is a list of the recommended screw torque settings for most rifle parts, like action screw torque. These come from a lot of different sources (including manufacturers on the phone), but one great one is Brownell’s “Torque Specifications for Gunsmiths” Article.  As that article explains, these specs are subject to change as companies change their manufacturing processes, materials, and design.  However, many people believe consistent torque is at least as important as the actual number of inch/pounds (especially when talking about action screws).  Here is an excerpt from that article that ...