Range drills that are worth the ammunition
A range session without a plan is expensive noise. Each drill below states what it measures, how to score it, and the number that says you have passed — so you can log it and watch the trend instead of remembering it fondly.
All eight drills work with a notebook and a stopwatch. They work better with the app's training journal, because a group measured once is an anecdote and a group measured twenty times is a capability. Every drill lists the fields worth recording so the session is comparable to the last one.
Build your data
Cold bore
Measure whether your first round of the day has an offset — and stop guessing about the only shot that counts on a hunt.
Read → 6 min readVelocity session
Two range trips that produce a trustworthy velocity, an honest SD and your load's temperature coefficient.
Read → 7 min readDOPE ladder
Walk the rifle out in steps, comparing prediction against impact, until you know where your solution stops being trustworthy.
Read →Read the conditions
Wind calling
Write the call before the shot, score it after. The only method that turns wind guessing into wind reading.
Read → 6 min readUnknown distance
Mil the target, work the distance, shoot, score. Practice for the day the laser reads nothing.
Read →Under pressure
Positional drill
Prone is the easy position and nobody competes from it. Build, settle and break the shot against the clock.
Read → 6 min readHit factor drill
Points over time. Find the pace where your score peaks, instead of assuming faster is better.
Read → 6 min readDry fire
Trigger and position, trained without ammunition. With the safety procedure that makes it survivable.
Read →Put it in your range bag
Ballistic Calculator is free, works offline and runs the same point-mass solver on every screen you have just read about.