What You Learned

An essential skill needed to be a successful hunter is good marksmanship, which is accurately and consistently hitting the target where planned. Ethical hunters know their personal accuracy and limit their shots accordingly.

The three fundamentals of good marksmanship are proper sight adjustment or patterning, proper shooting technique, and practice. These fundamentals apply to rifles, shotguns, and handguns.

Rifles

Sight alignment is the process of lining up rear and front sights on a rifle. The sight picture is the image you see when the sights are aligned correctly with the target. To ensure that the bullet will travel to the target in your sight, it’s necessary to sight-in your rifle using your dominant or “master” eye. All rifles should be sighted-in before every hunt using the ammunition you plan to use.

Using correct rifle-firing techniques will help improve your accuracy. The four basic fundamentals you should master are shooting from a rest, controlling your breathing, squeezing the trigger slowly, and following through with the shot.

The four standard rifle-firing positions are prone, standing, sitting, and kneeling. Prone is the steadiest position, and standing is the most difficult.