Marksmanship and ethical range

By Bob Gough

How good a marksman is the average recreational hunter? Over a lifetime of range shooting, recreational hunting, and 27 years of soldiering with the Australian Army, where I led several military shooting teams and trained and coached soldiers to be proficient with firearms, I have learned two things: that marksmanship is a perishable skill, and that there are no ‘natural’ marksmen or women.

Marksmanship is a practical, and therefore a perishable skill and skills do vary, so ethical hunters should practice regularly to develop their skills and ‘muscle memory’. Some hunters only attend the rifle range to sight in their firearm, and this is to me unethical. At the other end of the scale, when I was training for a shooting competition I would fire a few hundred rounds a week, and dry fire for an hour each night, and since moving to North-east Victoria in 2002, I would fire on average 500 to 1,000 rounds of deer calibre centerfire ammunition, and around 1,000 rounds of .22 calibre ammunition in practice annually, and I know several other shooters who would equal or even double that figure. To some this may seem excessive, but ‘anything worth doing is worth overdoing’ and shooting is challenging, rewarding and fun!

An individual's ‘ethical range’ is the distance that the firer can place every shot they fire into the kill zone regardless of weather conditions. For a hunter to know their ethical range, they must practice firing the rifle they intend to hunt with, at a rifle range at various distances using in the usual field firing positions of prone, sitting, kneeling and offhand, as well as using any bipod, shooting sticks or other aid. An ethical hunter will know from their shooting practice how far they can shoot using a bipod or on their elbows from the prone position, sitting, kneeling, standing offhand and using shooting sticks.

For example, an ethical hunter who can put all rounds into a 200-millimetre circle (deer kill zone) at 50 metres offhand, at 100 metres sitting, at 150 metres using shooting sticks and at 200 metres shooting prone or from a bipod, knows their limits and would not take offhand shots at deer at distances greater than 50 metres. They may however, regularly practice shooting offhand at 100 metres at a deer target to improve their skills.

Similarly, an ethical shot-gunner will know that he or she can break all clay targets at 20 metres, but not at 30 metres, so will not take 30 metre shots at game until he or she has practiced sufficiently to improve their skills and can break all targets at 30 metres.

Military studies have shown that regular marksmanship practice on simulated and lifelike targets improves field performance. This is why the ADA insists on using a lifelike deer target for hunter training and encourages recreational and volunteer hunters to practice their marksmanship skills regularly.

To sum up, marksmanship is a practical, and therefore a perishable skill and skills do vary, so all firearms users should practice regularly so that they train their body and mind to make every shot as good as they can, and so they know their own ‘ethical range’.