Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters light weight rifles and offhand/field position shooting

Does anyone have any experience with rifles like the Kimber Montana and/or the Remington Titanium in respect to how well they are to shoot offhand, or if they tend to shoot to a different point of impact if you are shooting from various field positions (shooting sticks, over a back pack, etc)?
Thanks

Royce

Royce, I have no experience with the two rifles you mentioned but I have a great deal of experiece shooting silhouettes offhand. It's my experience that the lighter the rifle the more difficult it is to shoot offhand all other things being equal. That's mostly why no one showed up with a 7lb silhouette rifle. There were other reasons too, but light rifles only speed up what I call the "the high speed wobbles" of offhand shooting.

A silhouette shooter??? You expect me to listen to anything that someone who spends hours shooting at fake animals says???
LOL- I have spent many hours trying plink the poultry myself- It's a heck of a lot of fun, isn't it? Mine was mostly smallbore.
On another post I started a discussion about building am ultra dependable hunting rifle at about the weight of a Remington Mountain rifle, and several people brought up the Kimber, which did look appealing because of it's very light weight.
Partly because of my silhouette shooting experiences I have some reservations about how these ultra light rifles would work when the wind is blowing 20 MPH and the only shot one has at a wounded animal is from 200 yards offhand.
super T, what type of silhouette do you shoot? Smallbore, cowboy, centerfire?

Thanks for your input.
Royce

Royce, centerfire only. I used a almost stock Remington 7mm/08 most of the time. I quit some years ago when the rifles started to get really weird. The game changed and I didn't. But I learned alot about shooting and met a bunch of great guys in several western states.

super T
Agree with that about learning a lot!!!
Royce

I like the Tikka T3 Lite.Its not a super lite weight,but mine in 270WSM with a Burrris Fullfield II ,Sling,and ammo is 7.5lbs.What is nice is that the barrel is not a pencil type and you get that good weight forward feeling for shooting off hand.I have a Rem.Mo.7 308 in a Brown Precision Pounder.With leuopold Mts.,rings a 2-7 Burris Fullfield II ,sling and loaded its a hair under 7 lbs.That is my Woods rifle and points like a fine 20 gauge double for fast running shots.It would not however be my plains rifle because it is hard to settle down shooting deliberate offhand. My 3 cents Huntz

Huntz
I have two Tikkas and like them a lot- Or, at least one I like a lot... The other I lent to a good friend and HE likes it so well he is still using it and I think his wife is next in line.
They and the Remington Mountain rifle seem to be about as light as I think I want to go on an all around hunting rifle.
Royce

The Rem Ti I have is harder to hold steady while shooting offhand than an average weight rifle. One can and should practice shooting offhand just before the hunt.

I have a second lightweight 700 in 7-08 with an Edge stock and #2 Lilja, it points well and is very steady when shooting offhand. Of course this rifle weighs a pound more than my Ti.

Both of my lightweights shoot consistently off the sandbags or benchrest, I attribute this to the McM Edge stock's stiff forearm.

MtnHtr

While bear hunting this past spring with Silver Bullet I had no problem hitting a small rock a few times at 500 yards offhand with a Ti. Shots hit within 6" of each other. I just used the top of the bottom plex for a hold.

Easily done, it's not difficult with the Ti rifle.

I find that minute of deer is easy to hold with my ti gun. I also tend to have my gun in my hand like a pistol most of the time, so i am much faster to get on target than anyone who packs a rifle on shoulder or safari sling. the difference in a heavy gun and a light one is pretty minimal on deer sized game.....at ranges you would shoot offhand. I rarely shoot more than 150yds offhand, no matter the gun.

SU,

My Ti is quite a bit lighter than most Ti's due to the McM Edge and aftermarket parts, IIRC it's under 6lbs scoped. It took a bit of getting used to at that light of weight but after some practice I was hitting the gong at the range pretty regular.

I should have taken into account my Ti is not your average Ti.

MtnHtr

Get a .22 RF about the same weight as your centerfire and practice, practice, practice.

Husquvarna: +1

Holy chit! I guess I need to practice more!

when I got my ti I was concerned about its unsteadyness. I did lots of dryfire and some range practice. I can tell just in the wobble in the sight picture I have largly compensated for the light weight. it wont ever be a 8lb rifle but its much better than it was at my first range session.

Royce,

I shoot alot throughout the year with every type of firearm you can shoot. I can also tell you that I miss more than I like, but that is a part of shooting.

Around where I live, we have lots of gophers that we shoot, and while most people shoot them with .22 L.R., I opt for high velocity.

I try to shoot the most in offhand position, because in a hunting situation that could be your only opportunity, and anyone can hit anything over a rest. The purpose of practice, no matter what it is, is to get better at what you are practicing.

Heavy rifles offhand is not a good rule of thumb for accurate shooting, unless the balance of the rifle is taken into account. I have 4 custom made varmint rifles, all doing different tasks. My 220 Swift has a 27 inch heavy, fluted barrel, and to shoot it offhand is a chore. The weight is there, but it is so far forward that shooting it offhand is not easy. Sillouette shooters may have cheaper guns, but the weight distribution is much easier to manage offhand.

I have found that the physics of offhand shooting can be parallel to driving a car. If you are going into a curve on a road, the best control is to slow down before the curve and then accelerate into the curve, thus pulling you through the curve, rather than pushing you to the outside of the curve due to centrifical force.

What does that have to do with shooting? I have found that if you shoot offhand, it is impossible to hold a rifle perfectly still. So I find that if you control your motion by moving the rifle up and down in linear fashion, the motion is now more controlled than weaving in every direction, trying to steady the shot. Timing, is of course important also, but if you are moving your rifle ever so slightly up and down, you then only need the timing to hit the target as you come up or down on it.

Most of my offhand shooting is with a .222 Rem. and a .223 Rem. that I had built by the same guy, (Dennis Olson, Plains, MT) and one has a heavy, fluted barrel, the other a lightweight, pencil barrel. I have good luck shooting both offhand with the up and down motion.

This has worked well for me, and as I said, I do miss, but I do hit much more than the average offhand shooter. I have also noticed, that my misses are almost always low, again due to the timing of your shot.

I hope this helps.

A crisp 2.5 to 3 pound trigger makes a world of difference in a light rifle.

Shrapnel
Having spent nearly 20 years in Bozeman, and now living not very far away, I am familiar with the ground squirrel shooting.
I can pretty well hold my own in offhand shooting.
What my question boiled down to, was " all other things beings equal, ( shooter ability, like cartridges, good trigger pulls) are the very light rifles more difficult to shoot under field conditions?"
By the way, are you the same "Shrapnel" that Mike Venturino refered to in one of his articles?
Thanks

Royce

I have found in shooting my Win FWT and Remmy Model 7s that when push comes to shove in the field, I cannot shoot any better or worse than with a standard weight Winchester rifle. If you're talking a quick offhand followup on a wounded animal under 200 yards, it doesn't seem to make a lick of difference except that the lightweight rifle can get into action quicker.

Off shooting sticks, I cannot shoot heavy any better than the lightweights (meaning, they all shoot well off sticks).

The number one thing I have learned in shooting lightweights (and it would probably apply to heavies as well for that matter) is to TURN THE SCOPE DOWN. Lower power makes life easy.

Royce,

Eileen and I have shot a bucnh of big game with light rifles (at most 7 pounds with scope, down to under 6 with scope) and while they are not as easy to shoot offhand both of us have done it several times, out to 200 yards. Eileen in particular is good at shooting her 6-pound NULA .270 offhand, as to her it feels easier to shoot offhand than do heavier rifles.

We have never had a problem shooting off a rest with them, but the rest should be soft, and when shooting off sticks the rifle should be resting on your hand, not the sticks. But this is par for the course with even heavier rifles.

I have killed several animals between 300 and 400 shooting off sticks from sitting with my NULA .30-06, and several between 300 and 430 when shooting from prone with a daypack as a rest, no problems.

JB