The Artillery Hold

[senorgrand]

I'd like to practice my sling work and marksmanship with an pellet rifle in the garage. However, I am new to air rifles (only shot air pistols so far) and I have a question about the artillery hold.

Supposedly, this is the only way to shoot an air rifle accurately because of the length of barrel, slow speed of the pellet and the recoil of the spring.

My question is, if I used a shorter barreled PCP rifle shooting the faster alloy .177 pellets, could I hasty sling an air rifle and expect any kind of accuracy? The recoil of the PCP should be minimal and the pellet would be in the barrel for a short time with the high velocity and short barrel length.

Thanks in advance.

[newbutold]

The artillery hold means holding your air rifle so lightly that it can recoil in any direction it wants to.

If you prefer a sling, use one.

[Jeff213]

artillery hold is only useful for spring piston air guns, it offers no benefits with a pcp, co2, or multi stroke pneumatic airgun.

The recoil on a spring piston airgun is a wonky double recoil, they are actually harsher on scopes than a .30-06 because most scopes aren't designed to recoil in both directions.

[W.R.Buchanan]

The "Artillery Hold" is done by sitting the "Spring Powered Gun" on a surface like a 6x6 with a towel on it. When the trigger is pulled the gun will Slide backwards freely some amount, and this is the method that disturbs the shot the least amount and is used primarily when Sighting the gun in. This is usually done at 10 yards. Then the gun will be dead on at 10, 1" high at 20, 1" high again at 30 and dead on again at 40 yards. (.177 Spring Powered Gun)

After that you have a Known Zero for shooting from field positions.

You can't really do a valid "Artillery Hold" from a field position as the gun will slide back a different way with every shot because you can't hold the gun the exact same way in an unsupported position.

The whole idea of using a Sling is so that the gun is held into your shoulder so it can't move without moving your body too. With High Powered Rifles this is the difference between your body moving with the gun under recoil and getting the snot slapped out of you when the gun recoils when it is not firmly held into the Shoulder Pocket. This allows the gun to build momentum before contacting your shoulder, which hurts more. When shooting from a Bench your body can't really move very well so Heavy Recoiling gun will hurt you a lot. This is usually why you shoot these guns in a Lead Sled or from the Standing Position, which makes it easier for your body to absorb the recoil.

PCP guns don't have any Significant Recoil at all. Neither do Spring Powered Guns, but they do move backwards as Piston moves forward and then snaps back when the piston hits the front of the Air Cylinder. This two way movement is what kills optics.

Hope this helps with understanding.

Randy

[mooner760HD]

Can you use any optic with PCP airguns?

[W.R.Buchanan]

YES. They don't recoil. Springers do and that is why you need an optic that is made for airguns, and can take the two way recoil.

Premium Optics like Leupold's are safe on Airguns as well.

I have a Beeman R1/ HW 80 which is the all time beast of Spring Powered Air guns. I mounted a 1-4X Leupold Shotgun Scope on it. I called Leupold before I bought it and they assured me that the scope could take anything I could dish out, no matter what !!!. It hasn't shifted Zero in 13 years.



Randy.