The Mental Game – Patience
I was out duck hunting at first light the other day, and like any other obsessive reloader, I am going over my last range results in my head. Obviously I should be paying attention to the sky, but alas I cannot. So to set the stage, I am in R&D mode (load development). I am working on my .224 Valkyrie loads with a 75 grain Hornady bullet. I have gone through a couple of sessions at the range and am starting to get some decent results by my standards.
Specificity, what I am thinking about is two consecutive 5 shoot groups that I made with the exact same load. This is a load that I have been getting consistent results from. If anyone cares, it is 25.0 grains of Hodgden Varget with a 75 grain Hornady Match BTHP. I forget what my actual OAL is but it is .02” from the lands. My 100 yard groups have been constantly in the 1.0 something inch, so around 1 MOA. Which is acceptable.
The groups I shot that day where 0.66” immediately followed by a 1.33” group. You can imagine the colorful metaphors that where thrown around after that. I mean come on, a great group followed by a not so great group (at least by my standards).
I now start reflecting on where my head was while I was shooting, and come to a realization. This brings me back to another waterfowl hunting story, (wonder if I spend too much time doing that?). Anyway I digress. My wife and I where out on the last day of late season goose last year. She had agreed to come as an observer of the hunt. Thirty minutes after shooting time starts we hear the unmistakable honking of geese coming up river. We hunker down and wait. As the two geese approach the decoys, they set their wings. This is going to be a good morning I think to myself.
Now that the geese are relatively close, I stand up and fire… and miss completely and miserably. I hear the “loving” laughter of my wife as she almost falls down, unable to stand from the comedy that has ensued. She said, “They where close enough to catch with a net.” What happened? I rushed the shot. I had all the time in the world, and I did not wait.
That brings me back to my range trip. When I shot my first group that was .66”, my head was completely in the game. I was dialed in, made sure my breathing was right, sight picture, trigger pull, all the required pieces. Then I looked at my watch, I had to get back to the rest of my day, but I still wanted to get my second group in. I set up to fire again. So I thought I did everything exactly the same as I did on the first group, which very well may have been the case, but I rushed the shots.
The morale of the story is don’t look at your watch while you are at the range. No, wait, that is not correct. The real moral is that you can do all the fundamentals correct, but of you don’t take time, have the patience, your results might not be as good. Now I have to re-verify my results just to make sure that my .66” group was not a fluke. If I had the patience when shooting my second group, I might be done with load development for that bullet. There might be more of a life moral in here, but that is for you to decide. I am going to leave it apply to shooting for now.
Until next time, have fun outside.
Here at The Big Man’s Outdoors, my family and I enjoy all kinds of outdoor activities.. Hunting, Fishing, Shooting, Camping, Hiking, Fire Sitting, and pretty much anything that gets us out. Many of these things I was brought up doing and have really never quit doing. I started reloading as a young teenager, got out of it for a bit, but now I am back… And I forgot how much I really loved it. You can find more information about The Big Man’s Outdoors as well as a list of all my TRN Posts at my Authors Page: https://thereloadersnetwork.com/channel/the-big-man/
