.204 Ruger as a starter?

kay 9

As mentioned in another thread relevant to gun dealers welcome etc, my brother is interested in taking up shooting and seems to be interested in the .204 Ruger. I know they're a nice caliber for red lads and pretty flat shooting for plinkin and the likes too, but for a first calibre is it too much?
Any thoughts or would ye say its not a huge leap in one go? I had a .22 and then a .22wmr before upgrading to a .223 and have no regrets and valued the experience of the smaller and renowned .22s. Anyway, any replies appreciated;)

foxshooter243

kay 9 wrote: »

As mentioned in another thread relevant to gun dealers welcome etc, my brother is interested in taking up shooting and seems to be interested in the .204 Ruger. I know they're a nice caliber for red lads and pretty flat shooting for plinkin and the likes too, but for a first calibre is it too much?
Any thoughts or would ye say its not a huge leap in one go? I had a .22 and then a .22wmr before upgrading to a .223 and have no regrets and valued the experience of the smaller and renowned .22s. Anyway, any replies appreciated;)

My thoughts are that theres a lot to be said for starting off with something thats easy to run to give you plenty of trigger time to hone your skills with , I started off with a webley mk3 underlever air rifle which i put thousands upon thousands of pellets through as a lad and It was an excellent way to start shooting...however it wasnt too easy to get your mitts on calibres like 223 and 204 rugers and even if you could there was no cash to buy ammo back then:D-my suggestion would be that trigger time is what he should be looking for at this stage along with a bit of tuition , it will stand him in better stead in the long run:)

bunny shooter

+1 to Foxys comments

rrpc

+2

Starting with a centre fire will likely give too many bad habits that won't be ironed out easily. Flinching is a very difficult thing to cure once it's got a hold.

A good .22 rifle would be the best to start with and won't cost the earth to buy or to run.

sfakiaman

Like Foxy, I started with an air rifle and put hundreds of shots a week through it, also my father was a target shooter and taught me. If it wasn't for the fact that I wouldn't pay €80 for an airgun licence I would still like one.

As the lads suggest above, practice makes perfect and the difference in ammo prices is huge. If you take for example, 2,000 rounds to get good, then in .22lr that can be done for under €200, in .204 it would be about €2,600. You could buy a .22lr, become proficient, buy a .204 with the change and have two rifles.

It would also be much easier to find a suitable place to use a .22lr without upsetting the neighbours.

cavan shooter

Like everyone said go for a 22 lr, a box of 204 ammo retails at around €28 for 25. A box of subsonics 22 lr with 50 in a box €7.00 approx.

kay 9

Thanks for all the replies lads, I had the same thoughts myself. Cheers fellas:)

Hibrion

I started with a 223, it didn't do me any harm but I have since bought a 22 semi and I've already put ten times more rounds through it and have great fun with it. I actually much prefer shooting a few bunnies to foxing for some reason. I'd go for the 22.

cavan shooter

Hibrion wrote: »

I started with a 223, it didn't do me any harm but I have since bought a 22 semi and I've already put ten times more rounds through it and have great fun with it. I actually much prefer shooting a few bunnies to foxing for some reason. I'd go for the 22.

have to agree I got rid of my old 22lr to get a magnum then moved on to a hornet but really missed the 22 lr so have a remington 597 now and to be honest spend more time with the remmy than the hornet. .

johngalway

.204 for plinking? I hope he has real deep pockets.

For foxes and long range vermin I see no problem as long as he get's an accurate set up.

Rimfires are a lot of fun, but can be as much use as tits on a bull if the land isn't right for them or they're under powered for the job.

Depends on the fella in question, if he's got the right reasons for getting one.

elius

A 22wmr would also be a fine choice, You can easily hit 150 plus yards, Rounds are cheap 13-14 euro for 50 and for the accutips 20euro. Foxes at 80-100yrds.. though can be a little to distructive for bunnys...

kay 9

johngalway wrote: »

.204 for plinking? I hope he has real deep pockets.

For foxes and long range vermin I see no problem as long as he get's an accurate set up.

Rimfires are a lot of fun, but can be as much use as tits on a bull if the land isn't right for them or they're under powered for the job.

Depends on the fella in question, if he's got the right reasons for getting one.

Yeah, ha I know plinking with a .204 I know does seem a bit mad but the lad thinks he's going to be able afford it. But after lashin in 50-100 rnds on a Saturday...for sure he'll feel it on the pockets. Oh and now he's changed his mind and is thinkin of a .223:rolleyes: He'll learn I suppose, he reckons he only wants to purchase once so decided that way that he was going to get something bigger from the start. Anyway, if flinch kicks in he better not come back to me that I didn't advise or warn him;)

yog1

ok lad's, i've a few rookie questions, and i was hoping you would take the time and answer some of them for me,

what exactly is flinch?

i know its best to start at the bottom and work your way up, but does a .22lr not shoot different from a center fire, (trajectory and all that), how does a air rifle shoot in comparison?

i'm not questioning your experance but what are the valuabe lessons that can be moved over when moving up the ranks to bigger calibers

thanks in the mean time,
Yogi

It wasn't me!

yog1 wrote: »

ok lad's, i've a few rookie questions, and i was hoping you would take the time and answer some of them for me,

what exactly is flinch?

i know its best to start at the bottom and work your way up, but does a .22lr not shoot different from a center fire, (trajectory and all that), how does a air rifle shoot in comparison?

i'm not questioning your experance but what are the valuabe lessons that can be moved over when moving up the ranks to bigger calibers

thanks in the mean time,
Yogi

Flinch is an involuntary response to the anticipation of recoil or muzzle blast. Something like a .223 or a .204 is never going to be uncomfortable in recoil terms, and they're not as loud as bigger centrefires, but for a novice, they're plenty loud enough to induce the "fook me that's loud!" twitch in anticipation of the next shot. Flinch is cured (or avoided in the first place) by focussing on the fine details of shooting technique. This is easier to learn with the miniscule recoil and noise of a .22 than with the greater recoil and boom of a centrefire. I have a .22 and a .25-06, and while the .25 isn't exactly a big kicker, you could still develop a flinch if you were putting a good few rounds down and not paying enough attention to it. If you start with a bigger centrefire, what'll happen is that you'll develop the flinch, but won't recognise the symptoms because you're not used to shooting something smaller where it won't develop, and it'll get progressively worse and you'll wonder why you're putting one shot in every group of three wildly out. Trigger time makes a good shooter, and that's just unavoidable, but solid technique honed cheaply on a .22 is the best way to get trigger time in, along with lots of dry-firing.

yog1

It wasn't me! wrote: »

Trigger time makes a good shooter, and that's just unavoidable, but solid technique honed cheaply on a .22 is the best way to get trigger time in, along with lots of dry-firing.

dry-firing, is this where you practise the trigger pull with the gun un-loaded, does this do the gun any harm, i know you get snap caps for a shotgun do you get somthing similar for rifles, would ear protection help for flinching at the start

It wasn't me!

yog1 wrote: »

dry-firing, is this where you practise the trigger pull with the gun un-loaded, does this do the gun any harm, i know you get snap caps for a shotgun do you get somthing similar for rifles, would ear protection help for flinching at the start

Ear protection is essential alright, but it's still a component of flinching, so you should try elminate everything. I use spent brass as a snap cap in the chamber for a rifle, either rimfire or centrefire. You can get dedicated snap caps, but brass works too. Dry-firing is great. It's especially beneficial for working on position shooting. Pick a spot, say a thumbtack in the wall, and determine to dry-fire at it from a variety of positions.Drop to one knee, acquire it with a hasty sling setup and dry-fire on it, focusing on keeping the cross-hairs on it through the trigger release. If you can do that from ten or fifteen feet consistently, you can step the distance out further, and keep it dry-fire until you're very competent. When you're comfortable dry-firing on a saucer out to about a hundred yards, try some live firing. The results probably won't be quite as good, but they'll tighten up in time. When you can land every shot into a saucer from a variety of positions at whatever range you're happy to shoot game at, you'll be a perfectly competent marksman for deer. For foxes, scale it down, draw a circle about four inches in diameter and shoot at that. Hunting's not about really tight groups - it's about being able to put every round into a killing spot, so that's a far more useful exercise than squeezing out half inch groups off the bench at the range. Make a note of the distance you can hit your target ten times out of ten from each position. For deer, maybe you're not comfortable taking standing shots beyond thirty or forty yards for now, but you can stretch that out with practice, and maybe your kneeling gets unreliable out at about eighty, but these are practical limits, and the practice will teach you them. Get out and practise in various light levels as well, shoot uphill and downhill to know how to correct for the angles and to know what they look like, shoot off fence-posts and branches, prone off a bipod, off shooting sticks and with the use of your rifle sling. You should be able to find yourself in any situation, immediately assess your capabilities in relation to the shot that presents itself and decide how to take the shot or whether to leave it or to attempt to get closer. If you do this, you won't miss or lose much. Like I say, half inch groups at the range are just about what the rifle can do; hitting and killing an animal consistently in all circumstances is about how you use the rifle.

sfakiaman

yog1 wrote: »

dry-firing, is this where you practise the trigger pull with the gun un-loaded, does this do the gun any harm, i know you get snap caps for a shotgun do you get somthing similar for rifles, would ear protection help for flinching at the start

The use of snap caps would be recommended, or with a .22lr use a spent case and rotate it in the chamber between shots to prevent firing pin damage. Dry fire practice will show up faults in trigger control and hold. Hearing protection would be a good idea for any centrefire rifle, it's easier to prevent flinch than cure it.

yog1

It wasn't me! wrote: »

Hunting's not about really tight groups - it's about being able to put every round into a killing spot,

probably the best advice i've heard yet,

i found these on e-bay, are they any good http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/A-Zoom-Snap-Caps-22-250-Remington-Twin-Pack_W0QQitemZ120206426176QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_SportingGoods_Hunting_ShootingSports_ET?hash=item1bfcdc8040

must get out and talkin to men on the ground and get a bit of experance,
when you say about shooting at angle's, what do you mean, how does the lie of the land affect the shot, eg if shooting down hill what way would you be aiming before you pull the trigger

It wasn't me!

yog1 wrote: »

probably the best advice i've heard yet,

i found these on e-bay, are they any good http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/A-Zoom-Snap-Caps-22-250-Remington-Twin-Pack_W0QQitemZ120206426176QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_SportingGoods_Hunting_ShootingSports_ET?hash=item1bfcdc8040

must get out and talkin to men on the ground and get a bit of experance,
when you say about shooting at angle's, what do you mean, how does the lie of the land affect the shot, eg if shooting down hill what way would you be aiming before you pull the trigger

They're meant to be quite good; will be ordering a few myself whenever I'm ordering anything worthwhile, will get them thrown in the basket.

Shooting at angles will displace the shot vertically. There was a good article on it in sporting rifle some months back explaining the relative displacements at distances and angles and how to calculate them on the fly. Good information. I'll see whether I can find it when I get home. Scanner's shagged at the moment, so won't be able to upload it, but I can locate the copy and get the material text from it. The bottom line is that if you shoot steeply uphill or downhill, the shot will go high, with the extent determined by distance and angle to target, and the phenomenon explained in the article. I wouldn't worry too much about talking to many people. Find the best practical shot you know (not the one squeezing out quarter inch groups from the bench, but the one who kills everything he points at, in all conditions and circumstances) and get the information direct from them, and trust to one opinion when it's proven itself. Same as anything; you won't find a competitive shooter with half a dozen coaches with conflicting schools of thought, because in all the confusion and debate, they'd never discern any clear information.

dCorbus

What they all said ^^^^^^^^:D

Good advice from itwasntme and the lads.

My tuppence:

would ear protection help for flinching at the start

I wouldn't say so, "flinching" is more a mental or subconscientious reaction (or rather in this case, action) to when you "think" the rifle will fire and thus your mind and muscles try to anticipate this and you tense up during the trigger pulling process, thus the "flinch".

AFAIK wearing ear protection (which BTW you should be wearing anyway regardless of calibre you're firing or watching being fired - Sorry for any pomposity.:D), won't make a difference to your perception of the felt recoil.

The flinching thing is primarily (if not entirely) a head-thing!:D

It wasn't me!

dCorbus wrote: »

What they all said ^^^^^^^^:D

Good advice from itwasntme and the lads.

My tuppence:



I wouldn't say so, "flinching" is more a mental or subconscientious reaction (or rather in this case, action) to when you "think" the rifle will fire and thus your mind and muscles try to anticipate this and you tense up during the trigger pulling process, thus the "flinch".

AFAIK wearing ear protection (which BTW you should be wearing anyway regardless of calibre you're firing or watching being fired - Sorry for any pomposity.:D), won't make a difference to your perception of the felt recoil.

The flinching thing is primarily (if not entirely) a head-thing!:D

Nah, ear protection will definitely help. The flinching is a learned response, and in my opinion, a lot more people find the noise uncomfortable than find the actual kick uncomfortable. Ear protection adds abstraction from the process. That little bubble of quiet you go into where you can practically hear the click of the sear tripping you're so focussed is a lot harder without the hearing protection. If you focus hard enough, you never even notice the noise or recoil, but that's a lot easier with hearing protection when at the range. I've never heard or felt a shot on live game; there's just too much focus on the shot to process the sensory information from it.

dCorbus

iwm, i agree, but for different reasons.
The wearing of ear protections helps "zone-out" the distractions and helps the shooter get into their own "zone". That's why it helps IMHO.

One example, the first time I pulled a trigger, I had no idea of what recoil, bang, or anything to expect - I still involuntarily flinched as I pulled the trigger.

I'm not 100% that flinching is actually a learned reaction - I think it comes naturally - we expect the bang and the boom, so we tense up accordingly.

The ear defenders will help the concentration of the shooter and that's why it should help them to get over the flinch-response. It's all in the mind - otherwise we'd have no flinching issues when firing a .22 simply because the bang and the recoil aren't enough to scare such big burly gentlemen such as ourselves!:D:rolleyes:

It wasn't me!

Yeah, but you expect it because you've learned, through observation, that this is what happens when you pull a trigger. If you took someone from some hitherto undiscovered tribe in the depths of the rainforest, sat him down behind your TRG without any exposure to gunfire and told him to squeeze off a round, he wouldn't flinch on the first shot, because he has no reason to expect what's going to happen. Rifle shooting is about abstracting yourself from what's going to happen and focussing on the immediate and the controllable. Accept recoil and noise as an inevitability, and then forget about them. You can't stop them, so you can only control how well the shot is taken. If you take any centrefire rifle and lie down and put sixty rounds through it on a summer's evening under a tin-roofed firing point in a tshirt and with no ear defenders and you're going to struggle to keep your focus, because it's just so intrusive on your little bubble of calm. It's easier with a thick coat, easier again outdoors under open sky, and easier again with ear protection.

It wasn't me!

dCorbus wrote: »

The ear defenders will help the concentration of the shooter and that's why it should help them to get over the flinch-response. It's all in the mind - otherwise we'd have no flinching issues when firing a .22 simply because the bang and the recoil aren't enough to scare such big burly gentlemen such as ourselves!:D:rolleyes:

That's the thing though, you gradually develop a tolerance to it. I never flinch with a .22, or even a small centrefire, because as you say the noise and kick aren't enough to distract me or intrude on my concentration. My Sako, however, is going to take a wee while to get properly used to, because it kicks a lot more and is very, very loud. I just need to extend my tolerances to recoil and muzzle blast. When I can do that without issue, I'll step up to a .300 win mag, and have to relearn new tolerances all over again.

dCorbus

you make some interesting points.....:D

Now, do you think Sting could lend us an amerindian or two so we could test your hypothesis?:rolleyes:

Rifle shooting is about abstracting yourself from what's going to happen and focussing on the immediate and the controllable

How very Zen of you.....But true.

Accept recoil and noise as an inevitability, and then forget about them. You can't stop them, so you can only control how well the shot is taken.

Good advice.

It's easier with a thick coat

I'm the opposite on that one - I usually take my coat off, I like to feel the kick TBH.

Any psychologists out there who could answer this one? Me and IMW are going to go round in circles agreeing with each other but for different reasons.;)

It wasn't me!

You can like the kick all you want, but take a little six pound featherweight .308 and fire sixty rounds prone in quick succession and your shooting will go tits up, however much you enjoy being battered around.

foxshooter243

Just to add something here, I was reading a book concerned with millitary sniping recently and one of the snipers reckoned that when they used a 50 calibre rifle, they would begin to suffer from flinching after not too many shots and for that reason they much preffered the standard 7.62 rifle too which they were accustomed..

poulo6.5

i agree with ye lads , i did my time with a magnum and i think it stands to me now.
i'd even go one step further and say maybe it should be mandatory to own a rimfire for a year before being allowed to buy a center fire and doing a simple test before a licence is granted.

It wasn't me!

poulo6.5 wrote: »

i agree with ye lads , i did my time with a magnum and i think it stands to me now.
i'd even go one step further and say maybe it should be mandatory to own a rimfire for a year before being allowed to buy a center fire and doing a simple test before a licence is granted.

I wouldn't agree with that either. If I need a rifle for fox control, because I'm suffering from predation by them, a rimfire is not the tool for the job. Dry-firing is as good practice in all fairness; better in some ways as there's no difference between the rifles involved. An academic test on safety and handling would be a superb idea, of course, but it would almost certainly end up something of a farce.

yog1

dCorbus wrote: »

What they all said ^^^^^^^^:D

Good advice from itwasntme and the lads.

i know, this is going to come across wrong but i'll say it anyway,, i feel i've learned so much from reading the post's you guys put up, it feel's like i have discovered a wealth of experance without even having fired a shot,
thank's,;)

all i have to do now is get my gun and put into practice all the things i've been told,
might change the .22 (if i can afford to, after i kit out the new 1) and use it to start with,
thanks again lads

poulo6.5

It wasn't me! wrote: »

I wouldn't agree with that either. If I need a rifle for fox control, because I'm suffering from predation by them, a rimfire is not the tool for the job. Dry-firing is as good practice in all fairness; better in some ways as there's no difference between the rifles involved. An

thanks i'm just putting that out there as a thought,


academic test on safety and handling would be a superb idea, of course, but it would almost certainly end up something of a farce.

have to agree with you there, it's hard to get anything done right in this country.

its a pitty but there are a loot of people out there looking for some place to go to get some pointers or lessons. its like giving an un experienced driver the keys to a high powered car and sent on their way,