Flinching

How to cure yourself of flinching


Lots of things cause shooters to flinch and most us will suffer it at some point. You can cure it.

Flinching is a bad habit that has ruined many hunting trips, but the pity of it is that many hunters do not realise they are guilty of flinching.

How to cure a flinch
It’s important to mount your scope as far forward as possible, especially on a hard-kicking rifle like this Mauser .375 H&H

I’ve got into some nasty arguments for suggesting that it has caused someone to miss. 

When I was guiding, I tried to have my hunters do some shooting before we actually went out in the field. This often paid off, not only in checking that the rifle was sighted in properly, but it gave me an opportunity to see if the hunter flinched — and if he did, to convince him it was happening.

I used a little trick to show up the habit quickly and convincingly. Taking the rifle, I hand-fed the cartridges into the chamber, shot by shot, with my back to the shooter. I let him fire a number of shots, and then handed him the rifle cocked but not loaded. If he closed his eyes and jerked the trigger, the rifle moved and showed clearly that he’d flinched when he pulled the trigger.

The look of surprise and disgust on his face was really something to see!

Flinching
Stock design has a huge effect on the recoil you feel. The Remington 700 SPS’s classic stock and good recoil pad, for example, make the .300 Win Mag much easier to handle

Flinching is something that has sneaked up on most of us at some time or another. In its worst form, the shooter is unable to keep their shots consistently on the target at 100m. There are several causes of this condition.

One is lack of training. Another is unfamiliarity with a rifle. The average hunter doesn’t get much practice afield, and often goes off on that dream hunt lacking the shooting experience that would give intimate knowledge of the rifle. 

However, it is surprising what a little practice and coaching will do.

If you have access to a range, quite often a couple of boxes of cartridges fired at targets, under supervision, will spell the difference between success and failure on a subsequent hunt.

Practice makes perfect: the more your shoot, the less you’ll flinch, if all else is done well

Possibly the commonest cause of flinching is sensitivity to recoil or muzzle blast. A hunter who has used rifles in the .270/.30-06 class for many years buys a powerful magnum for a paid hunt and finds they can’t handle the extra kick. Here again, practice and more practice will correct the fault.

Plenty of shooting tends to toughen a shooter, and if they keep it up they soon find they can soak up still more recoil without harming their accuracy.

When I was young, the mere thought of shooting a .303 was enough to scare me clean off a good-size target. I used a .303-25, for its recoil and muzzle blast were mild and I could shoot well with it. Afterwards, I began to do more shooting and became familiar with a wide variety of rifles.

Once I fired a string from my .375 Weatherby Magnum from the bench and landed five shots in 1½ inches at 200 yards. The .375 Weatherby is no child’s toy, especially when you shoot it off sandbags or lie down behind it. If not held properly it can kick a man clean from under his hat. My rifle not only had a good straight stock, but a decent recoil pad. It was just like a .22-250 to shoot off the bench.

Muzzle brakes increase the blast your ears suffer, which can cause a flinch. Hearing protection, on the other hand, will reduce your tendency to flinch

A good recoil pad is a great help, especially for the shooter who is sensitive to recoil. 

Some will recommend a muzzle brake, too, and this may help the person with a tender shoulder. But if your ears are as sensitive as mine, the muzzle attachments are pure poison, for they are very hard on the ears. 

In my twenties I shot a BSA Featherweight .243 fitted with a brake and credit it with the beginning of my poor hearing. I prefer the full recoil.

A poorly designed stock, which makes the rifle jump and bruise the shooter’s face, can cause a bad flinch. A friend of mine arrived with a brand-new, custom-built .300 Win Mag, which he proudly uncased for my inspection. It was a handsome gun, stocked in highly polished and well-figured walnut. However, something about it struck me as being off-key. I couldn’t put my finger on it until we sighted it in on the range.

The stock was as crooked as a plough handle, and at every shot the comb slammed painfully into my cheekbone. 

The rifle was really nasty to shoot, and later it cost my friend a miss on a fine Dall ram on an Alaskan hunt — the only chance he got on the trip. He just couldn’t shoot that gun without trying to duck away from its bucking comb.

Cut your eye by hitting it with the scope, even once, and you’ll probably find yourself fighting a flinch

Another problem arises when scopes have too short eye-relief for a powerful rifle or have been mounted too far back. I’ve seen people badly cut over the eye by being slammed by the scope-lens ring. If anything will cause a person to shut both eyes and crawl under their gun when they yank the trigger, this is it.

A mate bought a new rifle to go on a deer hunt with me. He had the scope mounted by a guy in the gunshop. When he looked through the scope he couldn’t get the right eye relief for a full field of view. 

As soon as I laid eyes on it, I dismantled the outfit and moved the scope forward in its mounts, providing plenty of eye relief. He had no more trouble and the next week shot a fine stag at around 250m.

The modern scope has long eye relief and should be mounted well forward if trouble is to be avoided. If the rifle is a magnum, this is doubly important.

My prescription for a bad case of flinching is this: Buy a gun that fits you and then shoot it — shoot it a lot. 

If you live among the concrete canyons of a big city, dry-fire it on an empty chamber until you develop a clean, smooth trigger release.

A hundred dry shots a day for 30 days at an animal picture pinned to your lounge-room wall will do wonders for that big hunt. 

But be sure the chamber is always empty, for the neighbours will complain bitterly if a rifle bullet tears through their living-room walls.

 

 

 


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Nick Harvey

The late Nick Harvey (1931-2024) was one of the world's most experienced and knowledgeable gun writers, a true legend of the business. He wrote about firearms and hunting for about 70 years, published many books and uncounted articles, and travelled the world to hunt and shoot. His reloading manuals are highly sought after, and his knowledge of the subject was unmatched. He was Sporting Shooter's Technical Editor for almost 50 years. His work lives on here as part of his legacy to us all.

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