Shooting fundamentals

The unit standard asks you to show the fundamentals of handling a rifle, including stance, grip and aiming. Anel teaches them as five. Stance or position: stable and balanced, with your body behind the rifle. Grip and hold: the butt firm in your shoulder pocket, hands firm but not tense. Aim: lining up the sights and the target. Trigger control: a smooth press straight back. And follow-through: staying still and aiming until the shot has gone. Breathing helps too: many shooters fire in the natural pause after breathing out.

The lower and more supported your body, the steadier the rifle. Lying prone is the most stable, then sitting or kneeling, and standing is the hardest. The unit standard says the assessment shot must be fired unsupported: you may hold the rifle with two hands, but you may not rest it on a bag, bench or bipod. Your assessor tells you which position to use, so practise the one they ask for.

Aiming has two parts. Sight alignment is lining up the sights with your eye. With iron sights, the front sight sits centred in the rear sight with their tops level, and your eye focuses on the front sight. With a scope, you need a full, round picture with no dark shadow ring, which comes from the right eye relief and head position. Sight picture is holding those aligned sights or that crosshair on the target. Marike has used a scope for years, so she practises with iron sights too.

Trigger control is where most misses happen. Only now does your finger move onto the trigger. Press it smoothly straight back without jerking, and let the shot break as a slight surprise, so you do not flinch in anticipation. Then follow through: keep your head down and your sights on the target for a moment after the shot. Anel tells Marike that a good follow-through is how you know where the bullet went.

The unit standard asks that the ammunition used is appropriate to the rifle. Before you load, check every headstamp against the calibre on the barrel. Keep different calibres apart: never loose together in one pocket or box. And do not fire damaged, dented or corroded cartridges; take them to a dealer for safe disposal.

The unit standard asks you to identify the target, what is behind it, and where the bullet will come to rest, before firing. In the veld, that means positive identification: you see the whole animal clearly, never shooting at movement, colour or sound. Then you check what is beyond it: rifle bullets can travel several kilometres. You want a solid backstop, like an earth bank or hillside. And you avoid shots where the bullet could hit water, rock or hard flat ground, because it can ricochet in any direction.

Marike's first practice groups at 10 metres, unsupported, on an A5 target. Her first group gets 7 of 10, because she is used to resting the rifle on her bakkie's bonnet. Anel works on her standing hold and trigger press, and by group four she puts all 10 on the target. The assessment needs 10 out of 10, so practise until it is routine.

Before you move on, do the exercise, Which fundamental?, and answer the four questions on screen. Then, in your own time: write down the calibre stamped on your rifle. Next lesson: what to do when the rifle does not fire as it should.