Hitting cans at 100 yards is one thing. Enough people can do that with a handgun, even though it’s hard. Long range rifle shooting, at 500, 1000, even 2000 yards, now that is quite a different story.

And, as one once pointed out, any miss with a rifle is as wide as a mile. Precision matters at long ranges.

So, gleaned from experience, here are 5 suggestions on what not to do so that you don’t miss as wide as a mile when your target is a bit further off than you might be comfortable with.

1.   Don’t flinch

Admittedly, this is a very basic suggestion, and if you are an experienced long-range shooter, you probably don’t need to hear this. But it is true, and if you are flinching (and worse, if you are flinching and unaware of it) it will throw a serious curveball into accuracy. Your fliers might actually be because you’re flinching, not because of small aberrations in load data or barrel performance.

Dry fire training can help you put the lid on flinching forever. Train until you no longer flinch before the trigger breaks.

2.   Don’t put a death grip on the rifle

In an ideal world, you wouldn’t contact the rifle at all, not even through the trigger. You’d just think when it should fire and it would. Unfortunately, rifles are inanimate objects that must be intentionally pointed at what you hit, held in position (unless completely supported by a tripod), and then fired.

But the truth is that the grip you have on the rifle with your shooting hand can put small torque forces on it that can potentially adversely impact accuracy. The problem is worse with smaller, lighter rifles, but you should be cognizant of it nonetheless.

3.   Don’t actually hold your breath

There are some long-range shooting acolytes that say to hold your breath because your breathing cycle can make the reticle dance around. True, but so does your heartbeat and so do involuntary muscle tremors, and you can’t pause those.

So don’t waste your time holding your breath. Just be judicious about your breathing cycle and don’t fire when you are actively inhaling or exhaling. Shoot on the natural pause.

4.   Don’t get too close to the scope

Eye relief is critical when it comes to accuracy in extreme long-range rifle shooting. Too close (or too far) can distort the image, making it harder to connect. Make sure the sight picture fully fills the scope’s bell; you don’t want any black at the margins and you don’t want it to look like the image is overly magnified or distorted.

5.   Don’t make the mistake of looking through the scope off-angle

You need to be directly, keyword, directly, behind your scope and in line with the bore if you expect accuracy. There is no room for error here at long ranges.

Looking through the scope at an off-angle, even an impossibly miniscule one, can result in parallax distortion. You don’t need to know what that is specifically, but what it means is that the reticle will cover a piece of that target that is not in line with where the bore is actually pointing, or in line with true bullet trajectory.

In other words, parallax will make you think you’re aiming at a part of the target that you are not. Be very confident this is not occurring before you shoot.

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