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Some great advice given here, lots to learn from. The following is what has worked for me. Your mileage may vary, as they say. 1) get your natural point of aim as perfect as possible. I have been working on this lately with good results. 2) During the entire relay take long deep breaths and at the top of each breath, hold it for two or three seconds. 3) Once you have established your natural point of aim, settle into your position and raise the rifle, keeping your body as relaxed as possible. With a good offhand position you should be able to hold the rifle almost indefinitely without fatigue. Muscle strength is NOT required here, but a certain amount of conditioning is important, which you will acquire with practice. 4) Keeping my body relaxed, with the rifle shouldered, I take three long deep breaths, and as the sights settle I adjust my torso position so that the sights tend to bottom out more or less centered on the target. On the last breath I let about half out the breath and focus on minimizing my wobble area. If my wobble pattern consists of wild swings back and forth, I concentrate on eliminating the swing and getting the sights to more or less settle down in the area of the bullseye. Until that happens I try a few holds but avoid squeezing off a shot. Doing so during a swing results in a very poor score about 99 times out of 100. Hopefully, after a few holds, the wobble area will settle down. At this point, as the wobble area slowly enters the bullseye (22 or better), IF the sights are moving very slowly, I will tighten up my grip on the rifle and the palm rest and squeeze off the shot with a light touch of the set trigger. Trigger technique is key here, of course. I will NOT hold the rifle tight enough to get white knuckles, that only increases the wobble area, but I need to hold it tight enough to control the muzzle jump. Rimfire practice is great for a lot of things, but if I dont practice with my centerfire often enough, recoil will ruin a lot of shots, and by the time I adjust to it, the match is over. If I cant get the shot off within 7-10 seconds I exhale and start over. Years ago, the sights would settle on the bullseye and wait for me to pull the trigger. Those days are over now, so I have to try to get off a shot during the brief period of time when the sights settle down . To be continued... Joe S
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