Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Accuracy during repetitive shooting

I’m curious how much shooting you folks do with your hunting rifles and if you are able to maintain accuracy during repetitive shooting sessions? My accuracy really seems to fall off after 20 to 25rds or so with my larger hunting calibers like 30/06. Is this the case with other folks? I reach a point that I literally know I have to put it down and get up from the shooting bench and walk away ... because all I’m doing is wasting ammo after that point. Is this normal? I even try to slow things down and kill a little more time between shots but it never seems to fail that my accuracy starts fading. Always interested in what others are doing and experiencing.

It very well might be the rifle, some go to hell when they get hot

I suspect that it is a couple of things

#1 - recoil is starting to wear on you after that many repetitive shots. We all like to think that we can tolerate XX ft-lbs of recoil but recoil does add up, especially when bench shooting.

#2 - mental discipline. It is difficult to keep the frame of mind that each shot needs to be "the best shot". I shot competition for many years and the hardest part of any shooting discipline is the mental part. It is difficult to learn to not think about the last shot and what went wrong, it requires a great deal of focus to give total attention to the shot you are preparing to make. There is a reason that shooting competitions are known as disciplines.

drover

I’m similar, good for 20 or so rounds at a sitting! At 40 or greater ft/lbs recoil......20 to 25 rounds is generally my accuracy limit. Though, I need to wait 2 to 3 days before another extended shooting session. The shoulder is tender, and the groups are about double that of the day one shooting session! With the smaller cartridges, extended shooting sessions seems to be a non-issue! memtb

I think you're spot-on.

Many rifles used in tactical competition or sniper challenges go 500-800 rounds before accuracy suffers due to fouling.

A 30-06 for “bench shooting” and a 30-06 for “hunting” are two different animals.

The only time I do repetitive shooting is in wringing out a rifle or load. Done and done.

In a good year with a rife that has previously been rung out, with known accuracy and POI, sometimes I get by with as little as 3 rounds. Does 3 count as repetitive? Assuming I even get to #2....

Take it out of storage, check things out, run a patch or two thru the barrel.

If the first round goes where it is supposed to, we go hunting. 2nd round drops an animal. 3rd round is the insurance round. In a good year. It doesn't always work like that.....

Clean and put away.

If I'm wringing out a rifle and /or load, I generally limit myself to no more than 15 rounds per day. Less if I can get away with it. Skipping a day doesn't hurt either. I don't want to get into the "causes flinching" arena, especially with one that has significant recoil, and as said above, concentration starts going south.

las, remarkably similar to my story. I think that I fired 6 rounds a couple of weeks ago, the most I’ve shot to verify zero in quite a few years! Quite a while back, I developed a load that I was satisfied with, a few shots during the year, and several just prior to hunting! memtb

I'll shoot fifty rounds in an afternoon for recreation.

I talked to a guy one time that said his 300 win mag was "dead on" and he could shoot 2 boxes of "shells" and not have a sore shoulder.... cool.

IMHO this is normal. there is a certain amount of fatigue in shooting, even if you are not particularly recoil sensitive. 20-25 rounds with a hunting rifle will take its toll. There is also the mental aspect of staying concentrated on task. Also part of fatigue IMHO.
There are also issues with barrel heat and fouling etc that can also affect accuracy when so many shots are fired close together.

This repeated firing is unnecessary. All your shots on any game are always done with a cold barrel. Think about it. I like to sight my guns in as normal at a range, and then just prior to hunting I fire one shot to see if my point of aim stays true. If it is on point, I'm done sighting in for the trip. My next shot will be on an animal, and it will be from the same cold barrel.
Taking up varmint hunting has honed my hunting skills like no other thing I do. These are small targets, and breathing and trigger control as well as learning how to hold a rifle steady are the same skills used with large game. But without the recoil and associated problems. Great practice.

After a couple of hours my eyes begin to 'fatigue' for lack of a better word.

I'll shoot 300 sometimes with my AR's. 50 with the 06 is doable. The other day I shot 30 out of my 300WBY while working up a load. If a guys accuracy is degrading after a box of ammo, I'd say stop there and maybe pick up something with less recoil to shoot and practice with. I'd say it sounds like the OP is experiencing fatigue, due to age or physical restraints of some sorts. Also, if a guys rifle is shooting like chidt after 20 or 30 rounds down the tube, something may be wrong with said rifle. Especially when most here are talking about shooting 3 shot groups. If you can't consistently put 3 shots into less than an inch, something is drastically wrong with rifle, load, skill...

Could be the rifle heats up and shifts POI. Could be the loose nut behind the trigger needs adjustment. Pretty hard to troubleshoot over the internet.

Shoot a group, put it away for a bit, shoot other guns, clean one, etc. then shoot another group. Try shooting low recoil in between. You might try some rim fire bench groups right after the larger hunting gun to evaluate yourself. You may find you're still good but the gun is shifting. Just as possible is you've become the X factor.

Are you hammering away at a bench trying to shoot tiny groups, or are you shooting from field positions practicing for hunting?

Depends on the day.

Bench is good for rifle accuracy, field positions tells the shooter how tight the nut behind the trigger is.

(Take that either way..... . )

Field can and should be practiced without firing a live round, then "proof tested" with live fire. I do it that way.

Sometimes.....

Point being, a gun or shooter opening up from 3/4” to 1 1/4” on the bench is noticeable. Opening up from 3 1/2” to 4” when shooting from a field position is less noticeable.

Same here. I did quite a bit of shooting with 4 different rimfires a few days ago. The longer I went, the harder it was to get a good sight picture.

It's called age.

I know this..........My eyes will begin to "unfocus" after a while. Over the course of a morning I can tell I begin to struggle more with my 2-7 scopes than with scopes of higher magnification.