TargetTalk

IMHO the rifle will only come into play at the highest level of competitions. It has been my observation that a stable position is vital to good scores. That being said, I recognize the importance of an accurate barrel, however if the shooter has such an unstable position that they cannot yet produce consistent groups then the accuracy of the rifle is merely academic. Truth be told I'm using an Anschütz 1411 factory original, my teammate is using an Anschütz 2013 also factory original yet I'm consistently out shooting him due to having a better position.
Although I agree that an accurate rifle is very necessary, I find that until you are consistently shooting at an international level your rifle is just fine.

Guy
I agree, without an accurate rifle, especially at the top levels, you will not be competitive. For the other 98% of prone and position shooters, a factory rifle, or even one that was rebarrelled will never be shot to its full potential and meets the equipment needs.

The issue at hand is that the BR game pushes the equipment race ahead of the shooter - and there is no better promoter of that philosophy than Bill Calfee, who makes a living as a gunsmith.

Furthermore, he has an extensive track record of if you don't agree with him or his theories, even in polite discourse, then you are essentially ostracized by his minions.

Hopefully, if he keeps his word, he will not post on TT again. He, by proxy through his drones, has ruined the polite discussions on several BR sites already....

There is certainly things to be learned about accuracy, but it needs to be in context.

Best Regards and have a Happy New Year!
Ken

I would agree with all of you that the shooter is a large part of the equation. That said, at our local regional prone matches, the top two positions are usually shooting clean and X count decides the winner.

Certainly a rifle that demonstrates extraordinary accuracy would/could be the deciding factor.

For hackers such as myself, that level of precision won't be noticed. The saying applies "a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse". I am the horse.

Bob

Bill Calfee's greatest talent is his ability to lap a barrel, everything else he promotes is pure "fluff". His rude and crude attempts at self promotion are in reality signs of a very insecure person. I can almost guarantee that Bill Calfee would not build a gun for anyone on this forum. I don't think Calfee's venom would last on this site, as the gene pool is a little stronger here.[/b]

As an example of BC's pronouncements, a friend of mine just PM'd me these gems of Bill's in a thread about position shooting on the WWA site:

A new shooter, RFBR or Position, needs the most accurate gun available, if they’re to learn how to be competitive.

and

If a "new' shooter can't afford an accurate gun, then they need to get some other hobby that they can afford.

Is anyone else appalled by this?

Besides, who's going to build these accurate rifles? BC?
Apparently he doesn't put his work in the hands of anyone but the top flight of benchrest shooters - one way to maintain his apparent superiority.
Wouldn't it be just terrible if he DID produce a position rifle and whoever was blessed to receive it didn't actually win anything? I can't see him laying himself open to THAT possibility!

So I expect we'll have to make do with our second rate Bleiker's, Anschutz's, Walther's, Feinwerkbau's etc...

I wonder if he'll be at Camp Perry in 2013 to help us improve our poor inaccurate rifles...?



I will not post here on the subject of Bill Calfee again - I promise.

Ken (not Mr Benyo)

Of the many shooting disciplines there are two that have a remarkable similarity yet are miles apart philosophically. I speak of smallbore bench rest and smallbore prone shooting. This tidbit was brought to mind by a passage I read recently in a book about Ernest Hemingway by Terry Mort entitled The Hemingway Patrols. Mort tells of ‘Papa” using his beloved 38 foot wooden fishing boat, Pilar, to search for German submarines that were transiting the Straits of Florida to hunt and destroy vulnerable Allied merchant vessels sailing the Gulf of Mexico.

Based in Havana, and authorized by the US Navy in the same way the US Army Air Force endorsed the Civil Air Patrol, Hemingway dreamed of running up along side a surfaced Unterseeboot while hosing the deck with Thompson submachine gun fire and tossing fragmentation hand grenades down a providentially open hatch. The explosions and shards of metal would damage, he hoped, the hatch fittings, and perhaps kill the crew seeking shelter in the conning tower, thereby preventing the submarine from submerging until land based aircraft could arrive to sink it.

Hemingway never so much laid eyes on a U-boat during the 18 months he cruised the waters between Cuba and the United States. The greatest benefit of his patriotic adventure is probably the fact that these cruises, some 40 days in length, were the fertile grounds from which sprung Hemingway’s greatest work, The Old Man and the Sea. In the Pulitzer Prize winning novella, which also led to his Nobel laureateship, Hemingway became Santiago the fisherman, the tramp steamers in the Gulf the marlin Santiago catches, and the U-boats the sharks that devour the marlin before Santiago can return to port.

What this has to do with bench rest and prone was sparked by a comparison made between fly fishing and the deep-sea big-game fishing that Hemingway so loved. Sports that have a remarkable similarity yet are miles apart philosophically.

Both fly and deep water fishing require similar tools, a pole, hook, and bait but there they differ. In a similar fashion rimfire bench rest and smallbore share the same ammunition, 22 caliber Long Rifle, where practitioners invest an inordinate amount of time and treasure in a near obsessive search for the smallest grouping product. They shoot, more or less, from similar distances, 50 yards in bench rest and 50 yard, meters or 100 yards for prone shooting. Wind reading skills are critical to both but bench rest allows a veritable carnival of whirly gigs, wind flags, and anemometers to a few wind flags for the smallbore crowd. But there is similarity ends.

More so than smallbore shooting bench rest is a technologically driven game. Because the rifle is supported by a rest on a solid bench the only weight limits are those imposed by arbitrary rules. Some rests are just a few simple sandbags; some are a combination of tripods and sandbags, and others a metal frames fully adjustable for traverse and elevation so constructed as to insure the rifles always returned to battery.

Bench rest rifles are generally custom built from the ground up. A factory action may be used but there are many that are one of a kind or a limited run of hand built actions. This part of the game insures that many benchrest competitors are skilled metal artisans. Most benchrest guns will mount a tuner, a barrel mounted device that is said to help the rifle group better. Sighting is done with telescopic sights, many of unusually high power. Most striking of all the only part of a benchrest shooter to touch the rifle is the pad of the trigger finger. When a benchrest match is complete the most common question is, “Who built the gun?” not who shot the match.

Smallbore shooting, which carefully looks at benchrest for technological innovation, is usually done with off the shelf rifles which may be bedded and have after market sights or triggers added. A smallbore rifle’s acceptable weight is a function of the shooter’s strength as the only support a shooter has is his arms and a sling. Tuners are to be seen but in limited numbers, the additional weight and change in balance is not welcome as a rule. Smallbore shooters also must deal with metallic sights as well as ‘scopes. In smallbore shooting the rifle is attached to the shooter so much so that they become as one. When a smallbore match is complete the most common question is “Who won?” not who built the rifle.

In deep sea fishing the skipper of the boat plays an overwhelming role in the successful catch as he maneuvers the boat to take advantage of current and tide to assist in weakening the fish and helping the angler best the piscatorial prey. The boat captain’s role, appropriately enough in bullfighting terms-another of Hemingway’s passions, is of an aquatic picador or banderilleo while the angler is the matadore. In shooting terms skipper is the gunsmith and the angler the shooter.

On the other hand, just as a prone shooter lying on the grass at Camp Perry, the fly fisherman is on his own, deftly casting a Greenwell’s Glory or Black Pennell into quiet rill or dropping it in upstream of a feeding trout.

In the end, when the successful fisherman is photographed with his catch the fly fisherman and the smallbore shooter stand alone, unlike the deep sea fisherman or bench rest shooter who must share the moment with the skipper or gunsmith, and that makes all of the difference.

Amen Brother!

tenring

I tried to register at his sight to find out what all the fuss was about and registration is closed down!

Obviously a lot of people have strong opinions about Mr. Calfee and he apparently does some nice benchers in 22 LR, but why did he post here looking for new readers and then close his forum down to new registrations?

Hmmmmm........... reserving comment but will try again to register at his forum. It is very confusing to me!

Regards,
Cranky

My TargetTalk friends:

I owe you an apology up front.

I said I would not post again on this fine web site, after my initial posting about rimfire accuracy, and applying it to smallbore position shooting.

But there has been an unintended consequence of my posting here.

Over the past few days I've had a half dozen, or more, requests to build position rifles.

It's going to be some time before I can answer all of these requests, by letter.

So, let me apologize first, for posting again here at TargetTalk, but, I'd like to advise folks that I do not build smallbore position rifles.

My TargetTalk friends, if I were a younger man, and wasn't so completely covered up with RFBR work, I'd love to build some smallbore position rifles and incorporate all the things I do in my benchrest work, into them.

But that isn't going to happen.

I love smallbore position shooting ever since my High School days.

But, one can only do so much.

Again, I apologize for posting again, but, I want folks to know that I simply do not have time to work with position shooters, [b]as much as I'd love to.[/b]

Thank you, again I apolozize.


Your friend, Bill Calfee

How special.