Improve your shooting skills

For this lesson, lets skip the basics and assume that you know how to hold the rifle, trigger operation and have mastered the fundamentals of aiming and shooting. You are a pretty good shot and ready to move upward into the elite group.
CALLING YOUR SHOTS:

As you look at the crosshairs through the scope you will note that the space covered by the cross is roughly bullet size. Let us assume that the bullet will impact pricisely on the spot where the crosshairs intersect.

Select a rimfire rifle that is a tackdriver with a good crisp light trigger to train with. Use a bullseye type target about three inches in size located between twentyfive and fifty yards distance.

Use a dime to draw ten circles and number them 1 throught 10.

Now, take up a steady position ready to fire and concentrate how the crosshairs move about within the bullseye and note the pattern that it takes. Focus of the crosshairs and their position within the bullseye at the exact time of ignition. With careful observation over time you will discover a pattern of your individual wobble area. My own crosses through the center of the bullseye moving from seven toward two O:clock. This tells me to increase pressure beginning at the seven O:clock position. Yours may be totally different. Not the position of the crosshairs at the instant of ignition and with a sharp pencil make a dot in the dime sized circle that you last seen the crosshairs. Now look through your scope and determine the exact point of bullet impact. Make a dot and a small circle at this point in or out of the dime size circle.
The single shot indicates your call and the circled dot the POI. When you develop to the point where the two are together within reason you are on your way to learning to shoot well. It may take ten, fifty, 100 or even a thousand shots with this small bore for you to get your calls and hits to be together but it is worth knowing for life.
When you get yourself trained to the point of knowing that your call and bullet impact are together you are on the road to shooting well.
When switching to rifles that recoil hard it is necessary to concentrate more intensly but it is still seeing that last sight picture before ignition. If a person can't call their shots accurately then there is much room for improvement.
Over the years after mastering this technique of shooting I have taken several animals during hunts. It is a great feeling to shoot and know within an inch or so where the bullet impacted on the animal. It removes all questions about whether the shot is fatal or a wounded animal.
I was coaching a shooter once who shot and looked at me and said: "Dead Center, I hope but I think it may be out at 5:OO O:Clock. It was out at five. At the risk of offendind some who thinks they can shoot I will make a firm stand here. If you can't call your shots you either have a poor shooting rifle or you are not a high quality shooter. Learn to call and you will become a much better marksman. Ozark