TargetTalk

Does anyone have any tips that could help me. I am 6'3" and my scores reached 575-577 before dropping and leveling off at around 560. I have tried everything I can think of and nothing seems to help. Am I too tall?

Hi. I am 6'3" and have also had some problems with standing because of it. Don't worry though, there are plenty of shooters out there that are tall.

One of the major problems I find with shooting standing at this height is that you are always pointing downwards at the target and this means that the rifle always feels like it is front heavy and pulling out of your shoulder. A way to combat this is to work on the balance of the rifle. Put weights on the back of the rifle until you feel you have better control over it.

Also it is very tempting as a tall shooter to put a lot of extension on the butt plate, but this also can cause you to push the rifle too far away from you. So if you do have a lot of butt plate extension just have a reassess of whether you feel like that could be pushing the rifle too far away from you. The rifle needs to feel like it is part of your chest and shoulders but if it is pushing too far forward it will feel distant.

Other things that you may or may not have looked at are height of the sights. Most people out heights have long necks and need a lot of sight raisers to make the sights high enough to allow us to have our heads upright, which in turn helps with balance.

Have you experimented much with leg width and other positional matters? A lot of tall shooters shoot with a fairly upright position in order to keep their hip down and hence get the rifle lower.

Check out some videos on the issf website of Henri Hakkinen. He is ranked 3rd in the world in air rifle and is 6'2.5". So you might get a few ideas off him.

I feel ya'! I'm 6'6, and have a miserable time trying to get that barrel down for a 1.4m high target.
A couple tips I've picked up are to place the butt where it's most secure, and then modify my forward hand position to lower the rifle. It's tempting to bring the butt up high to decrease the barrel height, but that makes the rifle really unstable for me.
I shoot on an open palm with my fingers pointing towards the left. Seems to help with the height.
I've also worked to bring the rifle in really close to my chest. This helps reduce the amount of leaning backwards I have to do. This helps my back a lot, and tends to keep the barrel lower. I think it's because when I'm more erect, my shoulder is higher in relation to my ribcage where my forward elbow rests.
Of course there's a fair bit of cant along with the maximum amount of spacers allowed. The sights are still a bit short, and my neck cranes down, but it's tolerable.

I shot sporter in high school 10 years ago, and have since picked the rifle back up this past December. With these developments and a new shooting coat, I'm up to the mid-570s.

Hope this helps!

Cole

And while we're at it. . . Why do you feel the issue has to do with your height? Do you shoot consistently higher scores on targets placed higher than the regulation height? It's certainly something to consider. It's easy to assume we just don't "fit the mold", when in fact we're simply finding an easy way out.
If your shooting is better when shooting at higher targets, consider the possibility of the mental element. If you *assume* you shoot better, you probably will. Think about how little actual movement is required of your barrel to drop your POA by a couple inches at the target.
If your shooting isn't consistently better on higher targets, I might suggest focus on your training.
It's amazing how much some dry firing and position-building can help raise or refresh scores. I'm pretty new to this precision game, but several exercises have really helped me immensely. Primarily, focusing on position over and over and over has really boosted my performance. In particular, ensuring that my cheek placement on the stock is identical each time so that my sight picture and alignment are correct. This helps me more than any other one thing.
In addition, dry firing has brought me a long way. I like focusing on one aspect of my shooting at a time when dry firing. Pre-shot trigger control, post-shot trigger control, sight picture, breathing, follow-through, and the mental elements. There're so many steps to releasing a shot, it's impossible to focus on them all. I figure focusing on each one individually until it becomes ingrained as second nature will be far more helpful.

It must be late.

YMMV

Cole

You are not too tall. Remember that all international 3-position smallbore shooters have to "shoot downhill" when shooting offhand.

Natural point of aim is very important. You need to find one that points "downhill" at the target. Here are a couple of ideas. If you are shooting an aluminum air rifle, remove the palm rest. This will allow the gun to point lower. Try adjusting your butt plate down as far as the rules will allow. If your butt plate will not adjust down far enough, adapters can be made that will provide additional adjustment. The point is to find a position and gun adjustments that will allow you to have a comfortable, stable position that naturally points at the target height.

im 5'10. charle, i think its the fact you are shooting with a new gun and are not so used to the old one you were using. thats my 2 cents. i think honestly a good shot is in your head. talk to keith hein about it. when im shooting i try to take the best shot i can make, not a perfect shot. your head is telling you you can not shoot that well or oh, i have to shoot a certain score. i personally put my self in a hole because of that. man you can nail the ten, but i think you have to metally overcome yourself first.