Summer Shooting Practice to Stay Sharp for Hunting Season
Everybody needs practice. There’s no such thing as too much, even on long, hot summer days.
Summer is an excellent time for summer shooting practice, especially if you’re preparing for the upcoming hunting season. Long daylight hours provide more opportunities to spend time at the range, work on shooting fundamentals, test equipment, and become comfortable with the positions and shooting supports you may encounter in the field.
For hunters, the goal shouldn’t simply be to fire more rounds. Good practice means developing consistency, understanding your limitations, and learning how to build a stable shooting position when a convenient benchrest isn’t available.
Donna Boddington demonstrates good form standing off shooting sticks using a .22. Saving ammo and sore shoulders, a good .22 can be used for almost all “position practice.” (Photo by Craig Boddington)
By Craig Boddington
For many, summer days are for fishing. For others, playing golf. I don’t golf. I do some summer fishing, but for me, these long days are perfect for shooting. Whether seriously or just for fun, many of us compete in various shooting disciplines.
These days, I don’t compete, but I love to break clay targets. To some extent, shooting is shooting. Any and all trigger time is good for other types of shooting. Most of my shooting throughout the year is on informal ranges, where we can tack up targets and shoot handguns and rifles.
Left-handed Boddington demonstrates the formal crossed-leg sitting position for a right-handed shooter. In the field, formal target positions can be modified endlessly. They offer a solid foundation, so should be learned. (Photo by Craig Boddington)
The range I use most frequently is up a canyon on a friend’s ranch. It’s cold in the winter, with heavy shadows off the ridges early and late, and blistering hot in summer. Happily, the bench sits on a roofed slab and is shaded most of the day. Except when it’s 110 degrees and much time is spent waiting for barrels to cool.
Even so, I prefer the long daylight of summer range days.
The slab also accommodates a small range house where we keep the basics, including targets, a staple gun, shooting rests and sandbags. We also have some steel targets and a good clay target thrower. On some range days we’ll shoot the whole works—rifles, handguns and shotguns.
Stay Sharp Before Hunting Season
Everybody needs practice. There’s no such thing as too much. However, shooting rifles is most important to me, and that’s where most of my range time focuses.
Summer is a long time from hunting seasons, but I’m always thinking ahead to the next hunt, keeping myself and my equipment sharp. That makes shooting practice for hunting season less about cramming before Opening Day and more about building skills gradually throughout the summer.
Typically, I’ll start on the bench.
A rock-solid benchrest is a necessary tool. It’s essential for checking loads, determining what accuracy a rifle is capable of, and establishing zero. The bench is also useful for concentrating on fundamentals such as trigger press and breath control.
A solid benchrest is essential for determining accuracy and establishing zero, but offers little practice value for field shooting. (Photo by Craig Boddington)
Comfortable and steady, the bench is seductive. All too many of us, I fear, fire a few rounds off the bench and call it “practice.”
If raw rifle accuracy is your interest, then you could do all your shooting off the bench. However, if you’re a hunter, the bench has little resemblance to field shooting. We take portable benches afield for prairie-dog shooting. Otherwise, I’ve never seen a benchrest in game country.
Practice the Basic Shooting Positions
To get real practice value from your range session, get away from the bench.
I think it’s important to have a firm background in the four basic shooting positions: prone, sitting, kneeling and standing. When shooting at game, there are no judges and no rulebook. You can modify these positions endlessly with sticks, bipods, rocks, trees and fenceposts, but they’re still the foundation.
With practice, prone with a bipod is almost as steady as a bench. A bipod is preferred by many long-range shooters, which is good, but Boddington believes it’s a mistake to become too reliant on just one shooting position or stability aid. (Photo by Craig Boddington)
I’m not as limber—or as slim—as I once was. It’s no longer easy to get into a good crossed-leg sitting position. Nor am I as steady in an unsupported standing position.
That makes it even more important to practice the basic positions, and I still do.
The last thing you ever want to do is have to take a shot at a game animal from a standing, unsupported position. But guess what? Sometimes that’s the only option.
Standing is the least accurate and least steady position; it probably should be practiced the most. Know what you can do and what you can’t do. It doesn’t matter if it’s the biggest buck you’ve ever seen. If it’s beyond your certain ability, there is no shot.
Practice With Shooting Sticks and Bipods
At the range, we also modify the basic positions with bipods and tripods. Because we hunt in Africa, we practice a lot off shooting sticks. Over there, they are almost universal.
Do not go on safari without practicing a lot off shooting sticks.
My wife Donna and I are so comfortable off sticks that we take them just about everywhere because they are useful in many places. If you normally carry a bipod, you should practice with it a lot.
We all establish comfort zones, preferred positions and shooting aids. That’s fine and natural, but it’s a mistake to marry just one method.
Think outside your box and practice as many ways to get steady as possible.
Use a .22 for Affordable Position Practice
The good news is that for summer rifle practice, it isn’t necessary to burn up expensive ammunition and soak up a lot of recoil.
Take “the great teacher” to the range: a good .22.
Almost all position practice can be done just fine with an accurate .22, inexpensive ammunition and virtually no recoil. The reduced recoil makes it easier to concentrate on fundamentals while also keeping practice sessions more affordable.
With a .22, use small targets. Inexpensive interactive steel .22 targets can provide great fun while still making the practice challenging.
Use smaller targets with a .22. At 25 yards from field positions, a small interactive steel target is lots of fun and plenty challenging. (Photos by Craig Boddington)
The important thing is not simply hitting a large target from a comfortable position. Make your rifle shooting practice reflect the conditions you may encounter while hunting.
Make Your Range Practice More Like the Field
Get as creative as your situation allows.
On our little range up a friend’s canyon, we can shoot safely in almost any direction. So we move a few yards uphill, left of the bench, and practice using tree trunks and limbs for support.
There’s not much in the way of fallen logs or boulders, so we replicate them with a toolbox or upended storage bin, adding daypacks and rolled-up jackets to get the height right, as we might in the field.
To the right of the bench, a ridge rises steeply. We set up and practice uphill shots at distant rocks, always a tough proposition for getting steady.
That type of practice is far more representative of hunting than simply sitting comfortably behind a bench and shooting at the same target all afternoon.
Don’t Overdo Summer Shooting Practice
Despite the long summer days, it’s important not to overdo it.
Getting ready for hunting season—and increasing your repertoire of stability options—is not a one-day process. We intersperse rationed centerfire shooting and barrel cooling with .22 shooting.
This helps, but nothing is gained by shooting too much and getting flinchy.
Most of us carry some kind of small pack afield; a plump daypack can be used to augment stability in many positions. (Photo by Craig Boddington)
Using a range box and a pack, Donna replicates a tough uphill shot from a field rest. (Photo by Craig Boddington)
Rather than trying to cram for Opening Day, it’s better to budget time for multiple range sessions.
Recognizing that many of us have limited access to ranges, and that public ranges often have rules that preclude flexibility, I’ve got some ideas. They’re not cost-free, but worth every cent.
Consider Professional Shooting Instruction
Think about getting training.
There are quality shooting schools all over the country, in full swing during the summer months. Under good instruction, you can make significant progress in a relatively short period of time.
It doesn’t matter how experienced you are. You’ll pick up valuable tips you never thought of before and shed bad habits you didn’t know you had.
My primary experience is at the SAAM shooting school in Texas, so good that we try to go every couple of years just for a tune-up.
Professional instruction can also be useful because another set of experienced eyes may identify inconsistencies that are difficult to recognize on your own.
Build a Stable Field Shooting Position
When addressing any shot, evaluate the situation and “build your house.”
Decide on a suitable position, figure out what you have available to augment it, and then deliberately build your position.
That is exactly what we’re doing when we set up make-believe field rests on the range.
Prairie-dog shooting offers an endless array of shots, from close to far. Here, Boddington is practicing with a tall bipod, using a .17 HMR for closer shots.
The idea is simple: don’t become dependent on one shooting position or one piece of equipment.
A hunter may have a bipod, shooting sticks or a pack available. In other situations, natural terrain may provide a useful support. The more familiar you are with different positions, the better prepared you’ll be to evaluate your options in the field.
Use Varmint Shooting to Improve Field Skills
Summer is also varmint-shooting time.
Back East, folks are potting woodchucks across huge green fields. Out West it’s prairie-dog time. I’ve never lived close to woodchuck country but, after the .22, the prairie dog is the “next best teacher.”
It’s even better for learning to dope wind.
When I was a kid, Dad and I learned field rifle shooting from prairie dogs. Today, there are no prairie dogs close by, but I still do summer prairie-dog safaris now and then.
In prairie dog towns, Boddington likes to wander around and utilize field positions. Not as many hits, but much better practice for field shooting.
Portable benches are great for longer shots and judging wind. However, as on the range, I spend much of a shooting day away from the bench, roving the edges of a colony, carrying sticks and bipods, and taking shots from field positions, often using a short-range tool like a .22 or .17 HMR.
You don’t hit as many, but with confidence on small prairie-dog targets, few shots at big game are daunting at any sane distance.
Summer Shooting Practice: Key Takeaways
The best summer shooting practice is purposeful practice.
A benchrest remains valuable for establishing zero and evaluating rifle accuracy, but hunters should spend plenty of time practicing away from the bench. Prone, sitting, kneeling and standing positions provide the foundation, while shooting sticks, bipods, packs and natural supports can help replicate the conditions encountered in the field.
A .22 is an excellent way to practice positions without the expense and recoil associated with extended centerfire sessions. Just as importantly, multiple shorter range sessions throughout the summer are more useful than trying to prepare for hunting season in one marathon session.
Most of all, know your abilities. Practice enough to understand what you can do consistently and recognize when a potential shot exceeds your certain capability.
When hunting season finally arrives, that preparation can make the difference between simply being familiar with your rifle and being genuinely confident in your ability to use it in realistic field conditions.