By Jim Dickson | Contributing writer
Many times you will have to shoot off hand without a rest when hunting, and in such situations you need every advantage you can get.
The gun must be held steady on target to make a good shot. Some guns hang steady and on others the muzzle just won’t seem to hold still. How steady a rifle holds on target is an obvious factor in accurate shooting but how many shooters have experimented with enough guns to know which ones are more steady than others?
There are no hard and fast rules that are never broken here with some of the firearms you would think to be the least steady turning out to be among the most steady.
For example, a stocked Mauser military pistol gripped with the left hand over the front of the forward mounted magazine is rock steady. The little M1 carbine should not handle as good as it does or be so steady yet it is one of the best handling and steadiest guns you will ever fire. The current Auto-Ordnance M1927 Deluxe semi-auto version of the Thompson submachinegun with Cutts compensator and twin pistol grips is one of the steadiest firearms you will ever find and is a strong contender for the title of the steadiest gun of all time.
Some guns are good at being steady such as the Winchester M1892 and M1894 carbines but they are left in the dust by a truly steady lever action like the casehardened steel frame, octagon barrel, 45-70 Henry. You don’t realize how much difference there is until you use them side by side. It is the difference between good and great.
Most commercial sporting rifles that I have seen are at best merely good and some truly terrible at holding steady on a mark off hand. A good place to start is to choose the smallest mark available and see just how steady and how long you can hold the gun on it. It will be a great help if you can compare multiple guns at this time. Don’t let a salesman influence you. Remember, he wants to make a sale. That’s what he is there for.
Weight is usually your friend for a steady hold. In the good old colonial days of African hunting it was found that it is very difficult to hold a rifle steady on game that you have been forced to run after in the infernal African heat if the gun weighed less than 10 pounds. I saw many fine double rifles intentionally made heavier than they otherwise needed to be because of this. While a fine double rifle is known for its exquisite handling and steadiness I have seen other types of rifles that were heavy but not especially steady. As far as weight goes, the Army once determined that 16½ pounds was the best weight for steadiness. As this was a bit much for a soldier to carry they halved it to 8 ¾ pounds for the M1903 Springfield.
Leverage can be used to give the effect of more weigh without being heavier to carry. This was one reason that the Kentucky rifles had such long barrels. The long barreled rifles of the 19th and early 20th centuries carried on this tradition and they were exceptionally steady to hold on target. You just can’t beat a long 30-inch barrel or longer when you have to do precision shooting at long range. The only time that I have ever been able to shoot 1-inch groups at 100 yards off hand with iron sights has been with these old unaltered military rifles.
Guns that are too light toward the muzzle tend to be extremely hard to shoot accurately off hand. I remember an instance many decades ago when I was shooting with friends. I had been keeping all my shots in the X-ring of the target using a Stoeger .22 Luger pistol when I was handed an AR7 survival rifle. These had a stock in which you could store the barreled action and no forearm for the barrel. To say that they were muzzle light was an understatement.
I barely kept my shots on the paper with this gun and quickly handed it back to its owner and went back to chewing up the X-ring with my .22 pistol. Later I learned to rest the barrel in the crook of my folded left arm when shooting the AR7 but I still could hit much better with my .22 pistol than I ever could with this beast.
The extra weight of an octagonal barrel often lends extra steadiness and this is one of the reasons for their popularity. Beauty is as beauty does and octagonal barrels are an example of a beauty that delivers the goods.
Some military rifles in their original configuration are remarkably steady such as the M1941 Johnson rifle whose handling was so superb that birds were killed on the wing with it.
German military rifles can be depended on to be fast on the target and steady once they get there. The Germans put great emphasis on this and an unaltered German military rifle of any type can always be depended on to rank first rate at these for they understood that the lives of their soldiers were too valuable not to give them every edge and advantage in combat. Obviously that makes them equally good as hunting rifles where the same need for fast and accurate shooting prevails.
I recall one shooter’s first reaction when firing an unaltered 98K WWII Mauser. He said the rifle seemed to want to hit the target all by itself! That’s the kind of gun you want to have when it is an important shot whether it is your life on the line or the trophy of a lifetime; you want to give yourself every advantage. It often is the difference between a hit and a miss.
“Sporterizing” (another word for butchering) throws all these advantages out the window. Sometimes even adding a scope will adversely affect the handling qualities more than any perceived advantages the scope might offer.
I once had to remove a scope from a rifle to restore its liveliness in the hands. All that really matters is hitting what you aim at. Having a gun just like everyone else is for those more interested in socializing and being one of the boys instead of focusing on hitting what you are shooting at. A true shooter should be only interested in what works, not what the latest style and fashion is. Try different guns and see what works best for you.
It doesn’t matter if it is a trapdoor Springfield or a semi-auto G3 with a 20-shot magazine you should hunt with what you can accurately shoot and forget what your buddies think or use. Shooting is all about hitting the target, and making a humane kill.
