How do you dry fire?

[TaperPin]

No, this isn’t a vasectomy joke. Lol

I‘m a lifelong plinker, and in high school a teacher would lend me his competitive shooting books - I tried and just never took to sling shooting, and much of what was written was on basic techniques and shooting drills. Dry firing was a new concept and every competitive shooting author reinforced how important it is - and it was - and still is. Nobody ever mentions it - so other than range time, plinking time, and whatnot, does anyone dry fire regularly?

I recently read an old article by Lones Wigger how he dry fired with a higher power scope than what he used in competition - interesting. I’d really like a laser trainer to come along with good accuracy - other than the $3k versions aimed at 10m olympic style position shooting, nothing seems to suggest either the target or laser provides good accuracy for precision shooting.

 

[hereinaz]

When I was shooting matches, I was building positions, dry firing, then breaking position and doing it over and over again. That helped more than shooting, because I repeated it and worked out how to best support myself. I would dry fire 3-5 times each position, and watch my reticle movement.

I am getting back into it, and actually just been working on building a little spot in the corner of my yard replicating a little bit of AZ canyon land to practice and shoot videos.

 

[JohnJohnson]

How you dry fire depends on the amount of space available to you at home. For guys who live out east and can't easily get the space to dry fire outdoors, systems like the DFAT or IOTA are invaluable. They let your scope focus down to about 12 feet and you can dry-fire at targets at 12 feet away that are sized to be as if you're shooting at 300-1000 yards. I think DST Precision makes the DFAT but a lot of places sell them + target packs of targets sized to mimic ones at hundreds of yards.

Edit: You may not even need the target packs. The 6.5 Guys made a powerpoint that auto-plays and goes through a bunch of different target sequences that you just play on your laptop with your brightness turned all the way up (I have to actually try that one, I just found the file lying around my computer).

 

[EdP]

I dry fire practice off hand with my flintlock rifle almost every day and have for many years. For me with the flintlock, that dry fire practice is at times more valuable than live fire at honing skill.

When prepping for an elk hunt I dry fire practiced off hand at 100 yds every day with my elk rifle for a couple of months ahead of the hunt.

 

[hereinaz]

How you dry fire depends on the amount of space available to you at home. For guys who live out east and can't easily get the space to dry fire outdoors, systems like the DFAT or IOTA are invaluable. They let your scope focus down to about 12 feet and you can dry-fire at targets at 12 feet away that are sized to be as if you're shooting at 300-1000 yards. I think DST Precision makes the DFAT but a lot of places sell them + target packs of targets sized to mimic ones at hundreds of yards.

Edit: You may not even need the target packs. The 6.5 Guys made a powerpoint that auto-plays and goes through a bunch of different target sequences that you just play on your laptop with your brightness turned all the way up (I have to actually try that one, I just found the file lying around my computer).

That sounds like a great idea with the computer. I think I will try something like that, I wonder if that would work on a phone or tablet too?

I found the link to the powerpoint file.

 

[JohnJohnson]

That sounds like a great idea with the computer. I think I will try something like that, I wonder if that would work on a phone or tablet too?

I found the link to the powerpoint file.

Unsure how the targets scale on other devices, the main thing is brightness. Because you're limiting the objective so much not nearly as much light gets in so whatever you're aiming at has to be illuminated a lot. That's the one downside but that sort of close-focus system for dryfiring is what a lot of guys who are a hell of a lot better at shooting than I am use.

 

[hereinaz]

Unsure how the targets scale on other devices, the main thing is brightness. Because you're limiting the objective so much not nearly as much light gets in so whatever you're aiming at has to be illuminated a lot. That's the one downside but that sort of close-focus system for dryfiring is what a lot of guys who are a hell of a lot better at shooting than I am use.

Yeah, I think you are right, a phone should be more helpful than a piece of paper because of the light. It wouldn't be big enough for moving targets and such. Maybe just a picture of a black dot on a white piece of paper on the phone, if that was all you had that was backlit.

I have played with something like the dfat, and you are right, I had best success with a black dot on a white wall that was lit up brightly. When the aperture on the front of the scope is small, it limits the light transmission.