feel like talking about snipers?

cause i do...
i'm gonna sound like a tool cause i know nothing about this other than what i see in the movies and the few books i have....

anyway, i watched a movie a few nights ago called 'shooter' with mark wahlberg..pretty good.
so, this dude shot a silver dollar at 1,000 yards....is that possible in real life?

also in that movie, a guy made a shot at over 2,000 yards....is that possible?

either way, 100 yards, 500 yards, thats crazy that you can pop someone from that far away...

how much do the movies fictionalize this stuff. in the movie, he is saying that at that long of a distance, everything comes into play like humidity and if the angles change then it becomes a trig problem and the shooter would have to work that out in his head...

insanity...

just figured there had to be someone here that is into this too.
anyone have any spots where i can read about long shots, crazy shots, etc...?

With an old M14, I can hit metal targets 1" wide and 3" tall at 300 meters. I can do it maybe 19 times out of 20, in groups of 5 with about 3 seconds per target after the first one.

And that's farting around. With a good spotter, I can hit a 4" metal target out at 700 yards plus with it, if I've got good ammo and haven't had any coffee. And I'm only a middlin' good shot.

With a Barrett, either the M95 or M82, I can still toss one through the hole in a boat tire at a bit over 1200 yards. Really good Barrett shooters can take your head off at 2000 yards. I jitter too much.

Most guys like the .30-338 or the .338 Lapua in the Remington 700 action though. If you've got a good tuner you can set up a mean rifle in those calibers.

Well, the longest confirmed kill was by a Canadian sniper and it was 2,430 meters. Don't know if it was CoM or head.

Did you see the FutureWeapons show about the auto sniping rifle that can put about a dozen shots downrange in a matter of seconds using .50 cal ammo?

i just read the wiki article on snipers and it talked about the guy that has the longest kill.
he just got it recently too. a marine(already forgot his name) had the record since 69 in nam...

confirmed kill of course...

that is insane....i wish i could shoot accurately at 2,000 yards.

i'm good at about 50 feet with my 9mm

I might be able to hit you at 2000 yards with a Barrett but it would be pot luck, I'd try for CoM and probably burn your leg.

The guy you are trying to remember is the legend, Carlos Hathcock. I have his signature on his book around here somewhere. He was inhuman.

Some of the best snipers were females in the Russian military.

L. Pavlichenko had over 300 confirmed kills.

One cool stat is the number of Sniper vs Sniper kills, called 'counter-sniping'. I -believe- that a Russian holds the record on that (WWII).

Keep an eye on the Hist. Chan. They run a sniper series of shows all day a couple times a year.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
I might be able to hit you at 2000 yards with a Barrett but it would be pot luck, I'd try for CoM and probably burn your leg.

The guy you are trying to remember is the legend, Carlos Hathcock. I have his signature on his book around here somewhere. He was inhuman.

thats the dude....i tried to shoot when i was younger, but i have a 'problem' looking down the scope...
i am right handed so, when i shoot a rifle, it is proper to close my left eye and look down the scope with the right eye, correct?

i physically can not do that....i can close both eyes at a time, and i can wink by closing my right eye only. i can not close my left eye only and i have friggin tried man...can't do it....

reply to post by Boondock78


Actually, you don't close either eye.

You sort of "switch off" the left eye. That's about as good as I can describe it. If you squint or close one eye the instructor will cuss you out, make fun of you, hit you, or worst of all, document it.

I can hear that voice in my sleep, bring the rifle to your head not your head to the rifle, squeeze your left fist for elevation, don't hold your breath, see the shot going downfield, don't cant the rifle, let your hand fire the rifle by itself bla bla bla.

It is sort of creepy to watch tapes of yourself - you can see "the thinking part" getting the rifle on the sight picture wobble wobble wobble wiggle scootch squint and me getting squared to the target, then the wobble suddenly stops, my face goes blank, you hear me sigh and BANG - I always get this goofy surprised look because I "zen fire" for distance.

edit: disclaimer - we got additional long distance rifle training but I was not a sniper. I do like to shoot distance competition but I've got too much muscle jitter to compete with the big boys. It takes genetics as well as practice, alas.


[edit on 24-9-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

Just tossing my $0.02 in to agree with Tom.

I'm not a sniper, I don't play one on television, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. My father, however, was qualified "Expert" in just about everything the U.S. Army gave him a chance to qualify with, and I can vouch for his ability to hit 6" targets with disgusting regularity at ranges in excess of 1,500 yards in his late 60's...so a silver-dollar sized target at several hundred yards, or a man-sized target at 2,000 yards, doesn't strike me as beyond the pale, particularly with some of the artillery pieces available to snipers today (the Barret .50 series comes to mind, but there are plenty of others).

Tom's also right about the "Zen shooting" thing. It's spooky to see it happen to someone else...and downright creepy to see yourself on film when it happens to you...but it does happen, and it's how you make the really good long-distance shots.

Originally posted by Boondock78

thats the dude....i tried to shoot when i was younger, but i have a 'problem' looking down the scope...
i am right handed so, when i shoot a rifle, it is proper to close my left eye and look down the scope with the right eye, correct?

i physically can not do that....i can close both eyes at a time, and i can wink by closing my right eye only. i can not close my left eye only and i have friggin tried man...can't do it....

There's other issues you might look at - are you right eyed or left eyed for starters. I know several shooters that use their non-dominant hand, because they have reverse eye dominance.

I don't have an issue with this shooting rifles, but I have "ambiguous dominance". I'm right-eyed most of the time. However, shooting shotgun or pistol changes things.

When I throw the shotgun to my shoulder, my eye dominance may switch to the left side if my head interprets the shotgun as being a visual obstruction. This causes me to miss shots on sporting clay competition. I wear a pair of shooting glasses with a paper dot stuck over the pupil of my left eye to prevent the switch.

With pistol, if I'm shooting point-shoot, I don't have an issue. But if I use aimed fire, I have to wear the dotted glasses for the same reason.

at this point in my life, i suppose it don't matter too much.
i am just about to be 30 and i NEED to get to the eye doc...i am having trouble seeing certain things, at certain distances....

i can only read the time on my cable box if it is certain time.

for example, if it is 8:17, i can't tell if it says 8:11 or 8:17....other things too.

this whole time i thought you were supposed to close one when shooting through a scope.

that dude we're talking about was a stud though man...i read about this one deal in nam where he had to crawl 1,000 yards through a field...took him 3 nights, 4 days...inch by inch...

almost got bit by a friggin viper but didn't move....

bad mo right there.

i often wonder though, what kind of shots have been made that are not confirmed....distance, conditions.....

i have to admit, my only knowledge of that comes from my few books and movies....i love it though

these bad sniper dudes and sharpshoters and such, do they really do stuff like cut their own bullets on the lathe and things like that?

By the way, the best sniper ever wasSimo Häyhä, whom i had the pleasure of meeting in the early nineties.

No sniper i know makes their own bullets as the top factory bullets these day are extremely good, but many do hand load their cartridges to get the maximum accuracy out of their rifles (as each rifle is an individual)..

The ability to shoot with high precision is a skill that can be replicated from soldier to soldier (Marine to Marine). However, at Scout Sniper school, your main objective is camo and recon.

Originally posted by Boondock78
these bad sniper dudes and sharpshoters and such, do they really do stuff like cut their own bullets on the lathe and things like that?

I cheat - a retired CSM from the 10th does my rifle loads. I do the shotgun loads - it's tough to screw that up.

He also sets up my rifles.

But he doesn't cut bullets on a lathe. He does mike the cases, and gets match grade bullets, and weighs them individually to get them all within a certain weight range. Usually you don't have to pitch many if they're match grade, though. Then he loads them from a particular bottle of powder which we've calibrated to that bullet weight. If he changes powder, then we have to run a box to see if it's off much. He's also really anal about the amount of powder loaded.

Some guys are nuts and go overboard from there. If you do that much, it's as good as I can shoot. I have seen some powders that will vary visibly in performance if you let the cartridges get finger-burning hot in the car. But some guys actually have little coolers and stuff to keep the cartridges the same temp all day. That is the sort of thing that doesn't matter much to me, I'm sad to say, because I'm not good enough that it would matter, if it does anyway.

By the way, the best sniper ever wasSimo Häyhä, whom i had the pleasure of meeting in the early nineties.

705 kills in 3 months of service, how is that possible?

That’s just about 8 kills per day!

How can any one sniper average 8 kills per day with out being mortared?

I do not doubt the record, I just for the life of me can’t figure out how a single sniper can stalk up to 8 targets per day, engage, relocate, evade, and repeat EVERY day for 3 months!

What kind of a front was it, a shooting gallery?

A number of German / Russian snipers have similar scores, but that’s over the period of the entire war, not 3 months.

reply to post by iskander


542 sniper kills, still quite a feat, 700 figure adds up 200 odd kills with a Suomi SMG against Russian "human wave" attacks. But majority of the sniper kills were in trench warfare situation and lots of those were enemy snipers armed with scoped Mosin-nagants and Tokarevs.

Battle of Kollaa Where Häyhä served.
And the wiki article on Winter War, just for those curious about the larger picture.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
But he doesn't cut bullets on a lathe. He does mike the cases, and gets match grade bullets, and weighs them individually to get them all within a certain weight range. Usually you don't have to pitch many if they're match grade, though. Then he loads them from a particular bottle of powder which we've calibrated to that bullet weight. If he changes powder, then we have to run a box to see if it's off much. He's also really anal about the amount of powder loaded.

Boondock 78,

Tom Bedlam is correct here. Some folks are really anal about the dicipline they put into thier reloading. Also the variation on match grade bullets is very good now days. This field of precision shooting has become popular now days with both equipment and bullet development being driven my civilian market demand and not just by military requirements. Lots of people now days are discovering the field of varmit shooting and also reloading for such in addition to the larger bore long range shooting. One look in certain catalogs will show all types of long range scopes in various price ranges. Check out Midway USA suppliers for various ammunition and reloading supplys. Check out the amount of varioius powders and match grade bullets/primers for reloaders. Also the various reloading tools from precision dies to micrometers.

The variation of bullet weights is noticable in match grade bullets when you weigh them out of a box. Then take standard grade bullets and you see more variation in weight than the tighter tolerances of match grade. I found this out weighing them on my powder scale. At a hundred yards the difference would not be that noticable for a given weight..but out at 500 to 1000 yards ..definitely ..it would show up.

YOu can tell the difference in consistency with just plain olde .22 ammunition. I checked this out recently with target grade ammo and just bulk lots. The target grade .22 long rifle ammo was clearly more consistant than the bulk Wal Mart ammo. The target grade ammo here was also noticably more expensive...for this consistency. SAme with match grade centerfire target grade precision ammo...noticably more expensive. But this is what one does to get this type of performance..pay for it or do it ones self..requiring time and dicipline either way.

Also...Northwolf is correct about about Simo Hayha. There are some intresting articles on both sniping and Simo Hayha in the special issue of Guns and Ammo combat special just recently out on the magazine stands.
Also in this issue are some intresting articles on the Finnish Army as well as their Rk62 and Rk 95 rifles.
According to one of the other articles in this magazine issue...earlier this summer Finland hosted a sniper competition sponsored by Sako and Lapua...along with some other sponsors. Sniper teams and precision shootersfrom across Europe as well as the West were invited. Both Military and civilians could participate. Intresting in the magazine article was the wide selection of rifles by the participants
Up to the reading of this article I did not know that Finland sponsored such a competition. My hat is off to them for this endevour. Precision shooting and shooting in general is a respected dicipline in Finland. Thank goodness they dont seem to have our sorry caliber of politicians or seem wont to follow the model of the rest of Europe in this type of nonsense. Once again I salute them for this.

My thanks to all posting on this thread,
Orangetom

funny someone mentions a takarev.

i have one...

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
reply to post by Boondock78

 

Actually, you don't close either eye.

You sort of "switch off" the left eye. That's about as good as I can describe it. If you squint or close one eye the instructor will cuss you out, make fun of you, hit you, or worst of all, document it.

your talking about making one eye dominant. I had to switch dominant eyes(not for guns), so now I can switch back and forth. but a piece of cardboard from your nose outward with two different shapes on the side at the end of cardboard. Look at end of cardboard so you dont get funky cross eyed thing going on, then learn to see one image more then the other.

You can do the same thing when looking through a chain link fence. you see two fences because your focal point is way out on something on other side. focus on shifting back and forth between the two chain link fences back and forth between eyes. While maintaining focus on far point and seeing with perphial vision, this helps looking at things without moving eyes also.

[edit on 25-9-2007 by Redge777]