Jewish Marksman's Shooting Update

Another weekend passed without me being able to crack the 90% barrier using the 70 year old Israeli Mauser in the High Power match.  But we nudged a little closer.  Last month, I shot 86.5%, and this month 87%.  Probably the biggest barrier to real gains was a lack of practice this past month, due to the fact that I participated in my first half-marathon (13.1 miles) which took a bit of training for.  For those interested, I did finish, averaging a 9:55 mile.  I only had time to practice some standing position and prone position shooting with the scatt. I had never done any serious slow fire prone shooting with the scatt and mauser, and noticed a number of triggering flaws but did not have time to figure them out.  So long story short, here's how I did:

Standing: 183-2 (91.5%).  This was a big improvement over last month's 85%, and was actually the third best score in the 13 person match!

Rapid Sitting: 169-0 (84.5%).  This was a disaster, including a six and a (gasp!) miss!  Last month I shot 90.5%.  What went wrong?  Basically a month without practicing sitting with a timer left me completely out of tune with how long 60 seconds actually is, and I rushed, rushed, rushed when there was absolutely no need to. Actually the score is not that bad all things considered, even with the miss.  But really, given that it is the same target and a stable position, my sitting should be as good or better than standing.

Rapid Prone: 174-0 (87%).  This was a decent improvement over last month's 83.5%.  But like sitting, I am still rushing things.  In fact, I miscounted my first 5 shots, fired shot six on an empty chamber, but still had plenty of time left after all was said and done.  If I slow down I am confident I can break 90% here.

Slow Prone: 170-2 (85%).  This was basically no change from last month's 87%, and in fact, the target looked eerily similar with 4 or 5 7's dropping out the bottom.  I learned from the scatt that this is probably due to bad trigger technique, so I need to work on that.  I tried using a smaller front aperture  which on the scatt resulted in tighter groups, but at the range did not seem to make much difference, and in fact darkened and blurred the bull uncomfortably.  So I will probably go back to the bigger aperture and just work on trigger technique.

Total: 696-4 (87%) versus last month's 86.5%.

Once again, shooters in the club took notice.  I shared a position with another shooter who was quite impressed with what the Israeli Mauser could do compared to his AR-15.