A tip to help you save time, money - and stop flinching.

[Buck Conner1]

Here's a tip to help you save time, money - and stop flinching when shooting a flinter or a percussion cap firearm.

For the last 50 years I have used what the 10X folks do for practice when shooting a muzzleloader, no different than the cartridge guys using the practice non-firing rounds.

The percussion guns are easy, use a spent cap or one of the plastic caps sold at the store. Saves beating up a good nipple and cushions the hammer fall.

Same for a flinter, use a wood wedge (chip) in the jaws on the hammer. Saves beating up your frizzen and like the percussion hammer saves that jarring on your flinter.

This is pretty straight forward and you probably know this, but here's where you get better at what your shooting. 

When practicing shooting your firearm stand in front of a full length mirror and watch what your doing. Look yourself over from head to toe, your looking for poor stance, foot placement, how your upper body is positioned, arms and hand hold, head position. You'll be amazed at what you find your doing and didn't even think about it.

Start working on correcting your mistakes to a the new stance and get comfortable so it becomes natural. Use as many positions as possible so it works for target shooting to hunting positions (that maybe real off the wall for that one shot chance).

Now that seems like a lot, but needs to be practiced. When standing at the mirror in position, watch the end of the muzzle (its going to be going in a small circle). After making your body position corrections now your at the area of targeting in on better shots. We want to learn to control that muzzle to a smaller circle and finally a solid point of aim for that 10X whether on paper or making that heart shot.   :Red tup:

 

[rowdyjoe]

Good idea.  You can't fix mistakes if you don't know you're making them. 

Another way to "watch yourself" is to record yourself (or have someone else record you) on video.  Everyone has a phone and/or other digital video recording device these days so, it should be easy to do.   If you do it while actually shooting, you may catch yourself flinching or jerking the trigger or otherwise fighting the recoil or find ways to improve your stability with a better shooting position. 

Long before digital video recorders, I had my wife record me on super 8 tape while shooting a SASS match.  Upon watching it later, I was able to pick out a number of errors I needed to correct.  As a result, I was able to improve my times and scores considerably.  It's also a good idea to have someone else critique your video to ID things you may have missed.  However, I found that I was my own worse critic and that my friends were too easy on me.    Some of our posse members did the same thing and saw marked improvement.  It works.

 

[Marty1]

You're right conner.  Good tip for us to think about.  Critiquing yourself is an excellent way to improve whatever you are doing...provided you know what to look for.    

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p.s.   I improved my billiards game tremendously using a mirror.  Come to discover my stroke naturally pivoted to one side and therefore not properly aligned.  

 

[Buck Conner1]

"watch the end of the muzzle (its going to be going in a small circle)"​

 

[rowdyjoe]

"watch the end of the muzzle (its going to be going in a small circle)"​

Excellent point and a source of misses. 
A common mistake is to fire as the rifle weaves through the middle of the target.  That leads to jerking the trigger and flinching because the shooter is expecting/anticipating the shot.  Notice that the best hits occur when the rifle (or handgun) fires when it was not expected at that instant. 

From a standing (no artificial support) position, the movement (weave) will appear much greater than it is.  As distance to the target increases, so does the optical illusion the firearm is weaving off, or almost off, the target.  Convince your brain that it's not.  As long as the sights are aligned, you will not weave off the target.  Minimizing the "weave" through a good shooting position (natural point of aim, not steering the muzzle with the supporting hand, physical conditioning, practice, etc.) will help minimize the weave.

Maintaining sight alignment is the key to shooting accurately.  Trigger jerk, flinch, etc. will cause the sights to be momentarily misaligned as the rifle fires.  Since the front sight is attached to the front of the barrel, the "hit" (or miss) will be wherever the front sight was when the bullet left the barrel.  Since our muzzle loaders have longer "lock time" than modern firearms, we must be extra careful to ensure the sights do not move out of alignment before the bullet is gone.

Though we have none in our ML's, "BRASS" still applies ....

B reath control
R elax - use as few muscles as possible
A im - sight alignment
S lack - take up trigger slack, if any
S queeze - the trigger


   :2 cents:
Soapbox OFF.

 

[Sharpsman]

You can jerk the trigger as fast and hard as you want to......as long as you don't move the rifle!! ale: