We cannot say enough good things about the AR rifle. It’s reliable, customizable, and a great rifle to have in your collection. But there has been some serious conversation around its ability to fire accurately. You will find around the internet snippets of gun enthusiasts claiming that if you don’t handle your AR correctly, it can affect the accuracy of your shooting. In part, we agree. The accuracy of your rifle is only partially reliant on the gun itself functioning properly — and how well you’ve built it. The majority of the equation is with how you handle the gun and your skill at shooting.
At Bootleg, we want you to shoot your very best. Long range shooting can be a tough skill to master. To help, we want to offer you the best AR accessories for your rifle that you can shop online, as well as the five tips in this article.
Five Tips To Shoot Long Range More Accurately
The primary goal of these tips are to give you and idea of what to check on your rifle, in yourself, and around your environment to improve your long range shooting accuracy. Here are five tips:
1. A Softer Touch
For most, squeezing a trigger is a “strong” event. Shooters think they need to really “hold on” to the rifle at the handle, even more so when they squeeze the trigger. Contrary to popular belief, you want a softer touch when firing your rifle. Once your rifle is stable, steady, and ready, you want to be able to gently “touch” the trigger to firing. The more effort you put into squeezing the trigger, the bigger the chance you shoot inaccurately. This means that you want to keep the pressure from your hands and cheek to a minimum.
2. Bring A Bipod
To shoot long range, you typically use a bipod. For most, you want to put a few pounds of pressure forward on the bipod to stabilize it, taking the play out of the legs. A reference is it imagine you’re holding a book off the ground between your shoulder and buttstock. Any more pressure than this, and you’ll be shooting inaccurately.
3. Hand Position
As one of the most ergonomic rifles on the market, the AR encourages you to wrap your entire hand around the handle. The easy-to-grasp pistol grips make it so that gripping the handle is super easy and comfortable. However, when shooting long range, this hand position may be a mistake. As mentioned in tip one, you want a soft touch on your rifle while shooting. This means you want to change your hand position to improve accuracy. Place your trigger hand alongside the grip and trigger, using only your index to fire. You don’t want to grip the handle.
4. Your Mind
You’ve probably heard that you should clear your mind and focus on the shooting. This advice sounds contradictory at times, but it’s the basis of a bigger concept. As a shooter, you want to fire your AR as if it’s a single shot. You have a magazine full of ammunition, but you’re spending more time in between shots to dial in on your target. This means that the “I can fire again” mentality ruins your ability to truly fine tune your shot. For some, firing one bullet at a time can mentally give you an edge that each and every shot matters.
5. Load Minimum Capacity
In some cases, a full magazine is going to affect your shot. A long range shot is a practice in focusing on accuracy with a single shot. Don’t weigh your gun down or take away from concentration by having more than a few bullets in your magazine ready to go. Some shooters only partially load their magazine, keeping count in their head on what they have left to shoot. When the shot counts, you need the first one to hit, not the sixth or seventh.
Bootleg: Your Best AR Accessories
Our mission is to provide you with high quality products from the best materials available. The best AR accessories should be used at all times with your rifle. That’s why we’re here to serve you. Now that you have some ideas on how to better improve your long range accuracy, consider shopping our selection of products for your AR online now.