Can you shoot like a 6-year old?

This looks like a fun challenge:

I’m going to see if I can find a place on my property where I can shoot at a water filled milk jug from 1000 yards away. The challenge website is here.

I have my doubts about being able to shoot as well as the 6-year old boy. I’ll be happy if I can shoot like a 15-year old girl:

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5 thoughts on “Can you shoot like a 6-year old?

  1. My kids each started shooting at about 10. Both were started with single shot .22LR rifles, with a scope. Both drilled the x-rings on their first shots, before they fell into bad habits like flinching or jerking the trigger.

    I wonder if this successful first-shot experience is more universal, and might make a useful argument against those who say gun owners must be highly trained to own self defense guns. I say, let the shooting speak for itself.

    • Considering the motives of those people, this sort of thing won’t help. Their motivation for asking for training is not that they want training, but that they want road blocks. This is a very common scenario with licensing schemes across society, actually.
      Oleg Volk often posts photos of very accomplished young shooters.

  2. Those smiling kids are very nice to see! However, I think this “challenge” is a bit deceptive, particularly to those who haven’t actually done long range shooting.

    My partners and I have brought absolute rank beginners to Boomershoot, and had them whacking steel, and even Boomers, at long ranges and relatively quickly. But that relies on a number of factors: a very sturdy rest, with the gun well-sandbagged, a solid zero, excellent coaching, spotting, and wind calls, and a rifle and optics ideally suited for the job. Basically, the ONLY task that the shooter had to do was center the crosshairs exactly where told, and press the (very light) trigger. Really, that’s the easy part – all the calculation, setup, tool selection, etc., was removed from the equation.

    Another nice thing about shooting long range in modern times is the wealth of equipment and ammo available off the shelf. Thirty years ago, 3-4 MOA was considered just fine for a hunting rifle, and was standard faire for a new stick from Remington, Winchester, etc. Stock triggers were awful (although even then Timney or Canjar provided excellent substitutes). Optics were meh. Now, you can buy an off the shelf rifle and optic (dropping a fair amount of money, nonetheless) with a reasonable expectation that if you feed it Federal GMM or equivalent, you’ll be able to hold 0.5-1 MOA at distance.

    While I enjoy seeing these types of photos, and certainly welcome new shooters to the clan, I think it does minimize the effort required to not just make a long range shot from tightly controlled conditions, but to BE a long range shooter. It’s probably the same order of magnitude from being a proficient Boomershooter to actually being a sniper, with all the fieldcraft skills that entails.

    • Agreed.

      I suspect the point of the challenge is that someone with a low skill level gets a thrilling first experience. With that great first experience they are likely to try and repeat it. That is, they are more likely to get “hooked” into the sport and culture.

      I’m okay with that.

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