GUNS Magazine January 1958

40 BULLETS
I THROUGH
SMALLBORE RIFLE MATCH SCORES OFTEN EXCEL
CAPABILITIES OF GUN AND AMMO. YET YOU CAN
WIN WITH THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT AND PRACTICE
OMPETITIVE SMALL-BORE rifle shooting is the most fas-
c cinating, the most exacting, the most exasperating
sport I know, but it has the plus factor of satisfying a
person's ego better than any other sport.
You don't need to be big, you don't need bulging muscles,
you don't need the lightning reflexes of a swivel-hipped
All American scatback to be a rifleman. This is a game
at which a good little man can beat a good big one
and a woman, or a teen-ager, or a doddering oldster with
bifocals may beat them both. But it's not easy. Nobody
has ever yet reached perfection, though some fifty thousand
of us smallbore riflemen are still trying.
What you do need includes proper equipment, good eyes
(or their lensed equivalent), good ears with which to listen
By EARL M. SAUNDERS
Limber ankle enables author to
assume comfortable kneeling po-
sition, weight on right heel, instep
down. This is a difficult position
for a great many shooters to take.
to advice and instruction, and the stubbornness of a mule
to back up your will to win with practice. A little luck
will help put icing on the cake, too. Luck won't win for
you, but if you're holding right and squeezing right there'll
be times when an unguessed gust of wind will curve a 9
over into the X ring, or vice versa. The lucky man gets
the X; the other man blames it on defective ammunition.
Actually, the 40 shots that win a big match often make a
tighter group than any rifle or any ammunition will shoot
from machine rest. A little luck and a lot of skill and
- -
experience add that extra something that makes record
and champions.
I named proper equipment first in the list of essentials
because it's a simple thing yet one that often puzzles the