Goal Setting

November 13, 2006

Every once in awhile you need to write down your goals. The ones that make the top out of the myriad of nice to haves. Here are the ones I want to work on for my shooting in 2007.

1. Shooting Clean Rapids. These are my strongest stages that will form the foundation for beginning to move up and win matches. I want to get to the point that my rapid fire stages are consistently cleans. That means perfecting my positions. Sitting will need a more solid position less susceptible to heartbeat. It also means truly knowing my zeros and being totally comfortable with adjusting for light and wind at 200 and 300 yards. That Holliger AR upper is capable of quarter sized groups. That means a goal of shooting high X count cleans is doable. It's up to me to do the rest.

2. Getting Offhand Consistently Above 90%. I'm a reliable 85% to 90% offhand shooter now. It's time to gear shift up. I know I can do it because I've done it. Step one is to examine and rebalance managing the energy in the performance. I can shoot X's. I have good focus on the front sight, the breath control, good isometric geometry for my gun-body dimensions combinations. This is about clearing the way for it all to come together another 10-15% more often than it is now.

I need to practice a dance routine that places muscle rest between each shot. I need to record separate zeroes for Offhand and Sitting to acknowledge that I hold slightly different sight pictures and I need to become confident about those pre-sets. Now that I have 80's for 600, may need to experiment with using 69's instead of 75's at the short ranges. They will exit the gun quicker and every little bit counts for minimizing the error integral. And I need to stop goobering the first shot of the string. That took me out of the runnning for Leg Points on both EIC's last week. The goal is to get the first round deep into the 10-ring every time as if everything was an EIC match and then keep it there. From now on, there are no offhand sighters!

3. Garand/Springfield. I want to be able to translate 1 and 2 to other rifles. I want to shoot cleans with the M-1 Garand and M1903A3 Springfield in particular. The goal here is a little different. The objective is 10 ring cleans using as-issued rifles and CMP issued ammo. Both my guns have good barrels with almost no erosion. The 2007 goal is to earn CMP Gold Achievement Medals in both of these rifles.

4. Long Range. I need a long range rifle. Noodle, noodle, noodle. It'll probably be a heavy barreled M1A because I have promised myself not to take the plunge into Match Rifle until after I earn my NRA Master rating. Maybe I'll win that Palma Rifle. I have one raffle ticket. In the meantime, I need to finish working on my M1917 Enfield. It still needs the Timney trigger installed and I need to load 175gr ammo to get it ready for NRA Medium Range (MR) matches. Goal is to get it all ready and tested by the BRRC "Last Ever" 600-yard Long Range Match, the NRA rules change on Jan 1, 2007. If that fails, shoot it with the AR-15 and 80gr's.

5. Lee-Enfield And finally, I want to master my No.4 Mk1 also to the point that I can shoot consistently good scores with it. I've always had a deep affinity for the SMLE's and I'd like to be as good with it as any other boom stick I take past the Ready Line.