Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Competitive Shooting w Is it possble to shoot a 4" group at 500 meters with open sights?

That would be impressive. I could do it all day long though. One shot groups.

In the rain, of course.

And without a bipod, rest or sandbag.

That's what those "Helen Keller" targets are.

Heads at 300 offhand wouldn't be so bad. Chests at 1000 could be a bit rough though.

Umm... cough cough... mousegun .... cough cough

can't believe I said that.

mousegun = Easy at 300.... but 1000 requires 90 jlks, at least for me anyway...

Get some robitussin... Grins

I used to shoot high power with an ex special forces army retired that will remain nameless because I don't have his permission. He told me that any High Power competitor ranked expert or above could outshoot 95% of the military snipers. I thought that was interesting, and please don't set fire to me, as I'm just repeating what he said.

John M

If target dimensions have an especially good fit with ones sights, it's quite possible to shoot much better than one can see. Never thought I could do less than one moa with irons until I picked up a Sharps with high end sights. It probably helps that the sight plain is about 37 inches from front to rear.

I used to know a HP shooter who almost made Master back in the M14 days with coke bottle glasses. He told me--"you don't have to see the target well, you just have to see it the same way every time".

Thats almost right RE seeing it the same every time.... but it is pretty important to see the front sight as clearly as you can, the target can be very blurry though.

Something tells me that most of you are not Marines , all marines shoot 500 meters prone when we were in boot camp! With a M-14 of course ! semper fi Ozzie

Musta been a while ago, according to the two jarheads I work with they qualified with M-16A2's & neither fired a 4" group ....

No, I'm not Sheri Gallagher.

I think he was yanking ya chain there... grins.

What are you doing in Israel? I just noticed that.

yep the 14 has been out of circ for boot camp for a long time now...

Marines shot the 14 at 500 yards on the Baker 5V target. Even shooting all Vee's, you're not holding 4 inches.

Vs... isn't that the enlarged braille target they used to shoot on? Grins.

I think it's possible to shoot a 4 inch group at 500 meters with iron sights, just like it's possible to bench press 1000 pounds, but very very few people have the physical skills to learn to do either, and fewer have the combination of physical ability and drive to learn to do it.
As a small aside from the gist of this thread, I'd like to see a side by side study with say 10 top marksmen shooting several groups at 1000 yards with iron sights, and then shooting several more groups with the identical rifle with a high powered scope, as high as they desired, and then compare group size between the iron sight groups and the scope sighted groups. Wonder how much difference there would be? I suspect less difference than most people would think.

Royce

Royce, in the BPTR Creedmoor game, we have guys doing exactly what you describe, albeit with blackpowder cartridge rifles, but scope scores are generally lucky to be as good as irons, and very rarely better. Even then, just by a few points. And these are old creeky guys that have trouble seeing their shoelaces and the like.

Irons are much underrated - but generally by guys that don't shoot them.

Brent
Thanks for the input. Wonder if parallax in the scopes has something to do with them not fairing better than they do.