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MiniSniping
By: Peter Capstick
Reprinted from Guns & Ammo Magazine, October 1984 issue
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The five dead snipers lay half hidden in pale autumn grass, their
bullet-torn bodies shadowy in the late African sunshine. Behind
and above them the gray rocks gleamed with fresh bullet scars as I
tried to find the last enemy marksman through the big scope. The
rippling river of mirage had settled now, and I caught the outline
of the man quickly, trying to steady the crosshairs over the thump
of twitch of my heart. Letting out my shooting breath I held on
his right ear, allowing for the slight wind drift. The corrugation
of the trigger surface felt like a wood rasp under my fingertip as
I began to squeeze. Both eyes open to catch the sneakiest shift
of breeze, I sensed the delicate trigger break an the almost
silent weapon fired.
The flash of the bullet was actually visible through the brassy
shafts of sunlight, the recoilless, precision weapon sounding its
dull death-snap. With an echoed thump the slug passed completely
across the front of the sniper to inlay a silver splash of lead
just to his right and slightly low. Less than a second later I saw
the gust of wind that had blown my round off-line. Too late. If
you can't see it, you can't hold off for it.
"Hoo, Hah!" delicately intoned the Chief of the Air Force.
"Another tie," deadpanned the former Secretary for Defense,
rubbing his hands in unalloyed glee.
"I thought Capstick told us he'd trained on Apaches or something,"
Observed the head of the Army Advanced Marksmanship unit.
MiniSniping Logo
Placing my sniping rifle back in the rack, I said "All in the name
of international relations, gentlemen. My heart belongs to the
State Department. Anyway, sometimes I just can't stand the idea of
taking human life." Putting on my now badly gravity-damaged Look
of Eagles, I wandered off downrange to administer first aid under
the Geneva Convention and setup the enemy snipers for the next
shooter.
You aren't behind the barricades in Beiruit, and it's not
Afghanistan or even the Great War. It's South Africa and the name
of the game is "MiniSniping". I put it to you that if you will
take the time, money and very small trouble to try it, you will
find your shooting life enriched possibly several hundredfold. I'm
not being cute and that's not idle talk if you love precision
shooting - but let's start at the beginning.
I never really realized the international stature of G&A until I
moved to South Africa in November of 1982. I was hardly out of
jet-lag before I discovered that the place was stiff with
professional small boys just like me, some of whom had read
various travesties of literature I have portrayed in these pages
over the years. Hardly had I eaten a half-kilo of biltong and
caused not inconsiderable amount of that beautiful Cape wine to
disappear by merely waving my tongue over it, than I was asked out
to "our little club" by a senior serving officer who was an old
family friend of my wife.
Well, what would you expect of an African rifleman's club? I
figured on double .600 Nitros, some .577s, certainly some
triple-digit Gibbs in classic style and a slather of .375 H&H
fare. Probably there would be some .404s integrating with a bunch
of night breeding metric stuff out of Bwana Mauser. Nope. The rack
was stacked with those weird Olympic-style airguns that we've all
seen advertised but never believed that anybody actually bought. I
never had any personal interest in getting rigged up in a shooting
jacket with enough padding to get you through a head-on with a
Greyhound bus all the while toting a Star Wars BB gun to shoot
little holes in a piece of paper at 10 meters, all that indoors,
too. Still, just as has been the case with bonded bourbon and
other items that are acquired tastes, I have learned a lot
recently. MiniSniping Logo
Hey, if you like to shoot and appreciate a rifle that will perform
better than you do, give me a couple minutes and I'll tell you why
an ex-professional African hunter who never even kissed his horse
spends two afternoons - eight hours - a week MiniSniping when I
could be in the actual bushveld in far less than an hour from
home. MiniSniping is the field sport of using ultra-precision .177
caliber airguns outdoors in a scaled-down version of metallic
silhouette of falling plate shooting with centerfires. If that
makes it sound like a sissy sport, let me point out a few aspects
of it that might give a better insight.
The targets we shot are generally 9mm empty cartridge cases
steadied by a base of modeling clay, or, as it's called here,
plasticene. You will recall the stuff as the gummy crud your
mother was always picking out of your hair when you got bored with
molding turkeys and pilgrims in fourth grade, and discovered that
a pellet of it worked very nicely in cool weather in both your
slingshot and peashooter. In any case, 9mm cases are unbelievably
small, precise targets at 35 yards, but to find just how
relatively small they were I had to actually get a mathematician
to do the calculations.
Lorian Coughlan of South Africa, who would have surely come up
with the Theory of Relativity had she not been edge out by sheer
chronology, advises me and thee that the visual relationship
between a target 3/4 inch in height would be the same as the 29
inch average between a sniper's scalp and belt buckle at 1336.6
yards! So, if you got 35 yards in your backyard you can shoot at
the equivalent of an enemy sniper at better than a relative 1,000
yards plus. I don't know about you, but that does pure wonders for
my backyard.
Once you have tried it, the pleasures of MiniSniping will be so
obvious that I strongly doubt you'll ever quit. I know at least
ten people who, in the past few months, have purchased
Olympic-style airguns based just on a couple of hours shooting at
our club as guests. Ten shots will show you-especially if there is
a bit of wind-that it is the exact microcosm of long-range
centerfire competition. If it still sounds like another BB-gun
game let me point out that the membership of our coven consists of
probably the finest collection of marksmanship perfectionists -
bar me, I still trying - on the continent of Africa. Although
rank hardly indicates expertise under normal circumstances, we
nonetheless have three lieutenant generals, including the past and
current Chiefs of the Air Force, the Chief of the
Counter-Insurgency Unit of the Police, the former Secretary for
Defense, (who is also Africa's best-known shooting writer), the
former Consul General to Angola and now the head of the Army
Advanced Marksmanship Unit plus being the top individual rifleman
in the South African Defense Force. With the same pioneer
heritage that Americans share, I promise you that these boys are
real shooters. Two, in fact, are "Springbucks" which is roughly
the rating you would receive if you made the U.S. Olympic team,
relative to South Africa. Of course, in the name of warm
international relations and the mutual understanding of all
peoples, South Africa is not permitted to Olympics although the
entire communist block is. Ah, well, back to MiniSniping...
Before going on to the miraculous properties of these rifles when
fired by anybody but me, the short and very happy history of
MiniSniping is worth a word. During the guerilla war in the old
Portuguese overseas province of Angola in West Africa, two men
with the same screwball shooting interests we all share fell under
each others' influence. They were the two Mikes, Slightham and
Malone. The first was a British businessman then living in the
embattled capital of Luanda and the second, my good friend, a
Dublin-born pistol shooter who had in his trophy caase more
hard-earned gold than a dental supply house. Malone was, at that
time, the ranking South African diplomat in the country. Bored by
the restrictions of the war, the two started shooting airguns
under a set of regulations dreamed up by the Briton, now enshrined
here as the Slightham Rules. The Marquis of Queensberry was never
more revered. I've always particularly loved this one, Number
Three, related from the Chronicles of early Days: "In the instance
of a competitor having a mortar bomb explode within 60 meters of
his shooting position whilst he is in the act of firing, the shot
may be repeated."
The original MiniSniping was done very differently from the sport
as it has developed today. Break-barrel airguns typified by the
Feinwerkbau 124, Weihrauch HW55, Webley Vulcan, and the later
Beeman R1 were used to "countersnipe" at 5 1/4 inch clay men at
about 30 meters (33 yards) from an elbow supported position on a
table. Naturally, from that point, the arms race was on and the
first tape at the finish line broken the day Denis Earp walked in
with a FWB 300S Universal. To call a rifle of the quality of the
FWB 300S series a "pellet gun" is rather like saying that Beluga
Malossol caviar is just fish eggs and that Bo Derek is
female. Both assertions are correct, but there's something
irretrievably lost in the translation...
That was about three years ago and Denis shot the competitions'
collective ears off, even using iron diopter sights against
scopes. Today, the shooter can hardly even see the targets with
the naked eye, but even then Denis must have had a well-dressed
eye. Things have developed as you would have expected, so let me
now describe the current state of the art. Of our members, all use
either the FWB 300S Universal (the latter designation indicating
that the model is adapted for metallic as well as scope sights,
also featuring a metal track on the lower side of the forearm for
a palm rest), the FWB Running Boar or Moving Target model or the
Anschutz LG Match 380 rifle, which has proved no a bit more or
less accurate than the FWBs.
Mike Malone may have caught it perfectly when he observed that
shooting any of the really precision airguns was rather like using
a fine microscope. Every time you pick it up, the "zero" seems to
completely change, so delicate are the guns. True, but then, so is
the quality of their performance. I have shot most of the real
precision rifleman's games and have yet to find one less forgiving
that MiniSniping.
Essentially, given ordinary ambient and sometimes violent wind,
the trick is to hit a target almost exactly twice the width of
your pellet at considerably better than the relative equivalent of
1,000 yards. Because the rifles are so fine, there is absolutely
no room for error. The shooter must interpret wind and mirage
with not the slightest less care than used at a full 1,000 yards,
plus. If you reckon this is easy, give it a try.
I can't resist mentioning that we had a guest at our shoot
yesterday who scared everybody to death by shooting an initial
five of six with a borrowed rifle. Of course, the wind was in the
rare state of being completely "dead". He was, naturally, a really
fine shot but over his next five rounds he took a total of only
five men out of a possible 30. Learning hold-off and wind with
MiniSniping is a separate act.
The MiniSniping rifles described are all scoped, the current high
magnification being a couple of 10Xs, one of which is my Weaver
KT-10 with a very small fraction of a minute dot at the
center. Mike Malone, otherwise considered a gentleman, uses a
Leupold 3.5-10x with crosshairs, which brings him to a depressing
number of winds.
The pellet velocities of the MiniSniping rifles run, from our
chronograph tests, at an average of slightly below 600 feet per
second (fps). Their consistency is, however, exemplary. Their
center-to-center capability of grouping runs to an advertised
one-tenth of an inch at ten meters in most cases, and frankly, I
think the rifles are understated at what they are capable of at 35
meters or yards. Beyond that, the lack of weight and sectional
density of the pellets render them impotent for any course beyond
perhaps 50 yards.
Should you decide to join the MiniSniping ranks, there is a very
important aspect to your choice of a rifle /scope
combinations. This has to do with loading and should rule out your
selection of an FWB Universal Model, as fine a gun as it is. The
experience of the members has shown that the "Universal," having a
central top-loading breech, in fact tends to occlude the breech
with a standard scope over 7x so there just isn't room for a
pellet and your fingers, too. Both the FWB Running Boar and the
Anschutz have canted or tight handed loading positions that permit
a scope of extreme length. Were I to do it again, and I surely
will, I'd go for a scope of 16x or even 20x - provided it had a
focus and parallax adjustment to 35 yards, given the absolute
precision of the sport.
Since you wouldn't stand a chance shooting against scoped rifles
with mere iron sights in a game of this delicacy, there's another
factor in the choice of a rifle that actually works for you
wallet. The "Running Boar" model of the FWB 300S is - or at least
was in July of 1983 - a cool $127 cheaper than the Universal, $698
against $825. The reason is that you're not paying for the diopter
sights and their underpinnings, nor for the track under the
forestock. The cheekpiece on the Running Boar is spring loaded
with a tension knurl while the Universal comes with two separate
cheekpieces. I personally prefer the adjustable feature; it's
apparently cheaper, too. True, the Running Boar model won't take
the accessories the more expensive models will, but if you're
going in for MiniSniping you won't need them anyway. Why pay for
them?
Let's face it, guns of all types cost much more today than they
used to, but when the actual cost of shooting is compared between
firearms and even the most expensive airguns you will realize in
one big hurry that pellets haven't escalated in cost anywhere
relative to the price today for centerfire or even .22 rimfire. I
can shoot all afternoon - about 100 rounds of the most expensive
.177 pellets I can find - for slightly over the cost of a single
.30-06 cartridge and much less than the price of one .458
Winchester Magnum round. Since last July, I reckon I have put at
least 20,000 pellets through my FWB. Despite having been a
professional hunter and shooter, I have never had that kind of use
from any arm I owned, nor has any other rifle given me more days
and hours of pleasure. Once your initial investment is covered,
there's no better value for you shooting money, especially
considering the unbelievable quality of performance these rifles
are capable of.
MiniSniping can be set-up virtually anyway you want to try it, and
with any size target. I mentioned that good field - grade accuracy
guns were originally used on modeling clay "men" over 5 inches
high. Today, they would seem gargantuan but then the equipment we
use is so precise in comparison with that of the early sport. So,
let me describe the range and the sport by the rules we play.
We shoot at a measured 35 yards (despite the fact that South
Africa is metric) against a plywood or other pellet-stopping board
about 4x4 feet. This board is covered with a sheet of large
dimension poster paper on which targets are drawn for zeroing and
also to gauge the wind-drift of misses when shooting at the actual
"snipers." There are six targets, and although we use 9mm empty
cases, you may choose something larger such as half a kitchen
cabinet hinge or maybe the little plastic centrifuge containers
that dentist buy their cavity filling compound in. If you're a
good customer, maybe you can talk your dentist into saving them
for you. On a quiet day with a little wind, you can actually shoot
at the tiny inside cap liners rather than at the containers
themselves. Bottle caps held on edge by the modeling clay are also
good targets and offer good visibility. We've had a lot of fun
with the scaled down metallic silhouettes offered by Beeman and
others, especially if we decided to vary the game by firing
offhand. They are realistic and with their different sizes may be
varied in range out to 50 yards, as per the instructions.
All MiniSniping targets are placed on rocks or stones of a size
about double that of your fist; sometimes bricks or half-bricks
are used. Lead pellets normally smear or rebound only a few feet,
but for Heaven's sake, don't try this with steel BBs as they will
almost certainly rebound and ricochet dangerously.
Given the extraordinary grouping abilities of these rifles, the
real challenge of MiniSniping is the same of that of any long
range shooting: judge the wind. Normally, two wind indicators are
used on our ranges. The first is about 8 yards ahead of the bench
and the other about the same distance ahead of the backboard. We
have found that strips of toilet tissue are ideal, being light
enough to show each twitch of breeze. One important hint, though,
the closer flag is a better indicator than the farther,
And don't ask me why. Unless you're shooting on the Bonneville
Salt Flat, wind will be swirled and eddied by buildings, trees and
shrubs to such an extent that it's rarely reliable where a
lightweight pellet is concerned. Often the two flags show opposite
drifts, at 180 degrees to each other although they're less than 20
yards apart! Thus, MiniSniping is a game of pure hold-off
shooting, the best test of a rifleman, unless the wind is
absolutely dead. This need for "reading" wind and individual
judgment are what make it the grand sport it is. It'll take you
some time to "learn" the flags, but they are absolutely vital. I'd
sooner try to compete without my rifle than without those strips
of tissue.
We normally shoot from a proper bench rest, a heavy wooden table,
and use either foam rubber patio furniture covers as rests or a
formal sand-filled leather sandbag. Since the real challenge is to
judge air currents accurately and hold-off accordingly for a 7
grain pellet over such distances, shooters may use any rest or
position they wish. We haven't seen any real difference in scores
despite the greater firmness of the sandbags over the foam
rubber. If you don't happen to have a proper bench rest, any firm
table will do, even one that folds.
On first arriving at the range - and be sure that it is legal to
discharge an airgun at your proposed location - every shooter is
permitted to zero with as many rounds as is necessary. As most
guns will have been cleaned since the last session either with a
rod and patches or a series of felt cleaning pellets, they usually
take a bit of "settling down" with a series of shots to get back
into rough zero. When everybody is zeroed on the tiny target
drawn on the background paper, the competitors flip coins to
determine their order of shooting.
From this point on, each person fires in rotation beginning with
two additional zeroing shots to gauge wind at the beginning of
each round. A great piece of advice is to always take those two
"zeroers" as to start directly firing at the "snipers" for some
reason seems to usually produce poor scores. Perhaps it's a matter
of the barrel temperature and subsequent constriction or expansion
after a period of non-use, but it's also an indication of the
sensitivity of these guns. It is customary, but not required, to
begin shooting at the first or left hand target. Some targets may
be more exposed than others. Six shots are permitted, one at each
"man", although there are circumstances in which a shooter may
choose to fire more than once at the same target even though his
limit is six shots. To score a "kill" the target must be knocked
free of his clay moorings. A crease that tilts or otherwise moves
him without actually blowing him over is a miss - no walking
wounded in this savage game! As a leftover from the original
Slightham Rules, though, a man bumped off his perch by the flying
body of one of his fellows or caught by a ricochet counts as
dead. The idea is that snipers are as subject to the risk of a
stray bullet as anybody else on the battlefield and, after all,
war is war. Should a perfect score of size be shot with only five
pellets or less because of this freak happening, there is no extra
score. However, each shooter has the right to his full six shots,
perhaps firing twice at a man he has missed if he has had the luck
to have collected two men with a single pellet. Shots may not be
carried over as extras to a subsequent round.
So, despite my efforts to make it sound tricky, MiniSniping is
absolutely simple. Two practice shots at the paper targets and six
at the men. Each "kill" counts on point. The most points win.
After firing a round, it is the immediate duty of each previous
shooter to walk downrange and set the "snipers" back up. Of
course, the following shooter may not load until the previous is
back behind the bench. We keep a running tally in a notebook to
see who is high gun each session.
Essentially, MiniSniping incorporates every aspect of big-bore,
long-range shooting. Wind drift and hold-off are proportionate and
every technique of Bisley-style competition is present. So
exacting is the game that there is not a single nuance of breath
and trigger control, let-off and follow-though that is not equally
essential for good scores. Even the use of custom ammo is a big
part of the sport today.
Since any rifle - or handgun, for that matter - is only as good as
the ammo it fires, the selection of pellets for MiniSniping takes
a lot of consideration and actual time at the shooting bench. It
may be true that they're all the same caliber, but precision match
airgun barrels are as different in their taste for pellets as
women are about perfume. Just remember that every barrel is an
individual with its own characteristics that clearly shows a
preference for one brand or type of pellet over another. My
Running Boar thinks that H&N Match Kugeln wadcutters, individually
hand-selected and packed in sheets of oil and foam, are
gumdrops. These are the same pellets, the top 20 percent of
factory lots after testing, that are imported by Beeman to the
U.S.A. under the "Super Match." Well, that's my rifle. Mike
Malone and Vladimir Steyn have both found that H&N semi-wadcutter
Hollow Point Diabolo suit their Universal and Anschutz better,
giving definitely finer groups. These are packed in tins and,
despite the fact that they are more subject to deformation as they
are not insulated one pellet from the next, certainly are the
right fodder for their rifles. Denis Earp shoots a pointed German
pellet that doesn't do at all well in any of the other club
rifles, but seems perfect for his Universal. This isn't an ad for
any particular brand, the important thing being to experiment
carefully under calm wind conditions and see by experimentation
which pellet brand and type your rifle likes best. Considering
the potential performance of your fine rifle, I would also suggest
that you use only match quality ammo. After all, you wouldn't try
to run a Maserati or Ferrari on kerosene.
A very handy gadget to accumulate is the Beeman Pellet sizer
which, if you want to part with the price of a couple of good
steak dinner, can be bought with a series of dies that size or
constrict the skirt of a pellet to a particular diameter,
depending on which internal collar you have in the tool. If
ultimate accuracy is your aim, then it's a must. I'm still
experimenting and have found that my rifle seems to like the Match
ammo right out of the box, although I have seen a noticeable
difference when I was using other brands sized to different
diameters.
Obviously, the most important consideration with all pellets, soft
lead that they are, is that they be consistent and undamaged. Each
one should be carefully inspected by eye for dents and
deformations before loading, and discarded if they don't look
mint-issue. And, don't expect a sizing die to reform bent or
damaged pellets. It simply won't.
This being Darkest Africa, there are more ways of obtaining peak
performance from one's rifle/pellet combination than using a
sizing die. One of our members was recently censured and heavily
fined by the Ethics Committee, having been caught sewing a tin of
pellets into the breast of a newly-killed chicken at the full
moon. Two other have reputedly rented full-time Sangomas, or witch
doctors.
In today's world of increasing population, more cramped shooting
conditions often requiring miles of driving to a range, and the
spooky cost of not only rifles but ammo, MiniSniping seems to be
Guns & Ammp Magazine the answer to the serious urban rifleman,
especially one who might want to pass on his own heritage by
teaching a son or daughter the art of fine marksmanship. Granted,
you can't very well MiniSnipe in Time Square, but at least you
won't need a whole morning to driver to a suitable spot. So, the
advantages of the sport are that it's almost silent (the pellet
hitting the board makes almost more noise than the shot itself),
once past the initial investment it's the cheapest real shooting
you can do; it relates exactly to all aspects of big-bore range
work such as silhouette or falling plate. It's convenient, quiet,
immensely challenging and as typified by the FWB300S and the
Anschutz, it's completely recoilless so young and new shooters
don't have to fight the flinch barrier to really good shooting.
I've told you about all that space permits of the noble art of
MiniSniping. Regretfully, I can't be more help in the matter of
customizing pellets but to say that personally, I prefer to leave
these matters to a properly qualified witch-doctor. Probably your
best bet would be the Yellow pages?
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Note To Reader: This article was published back in 1984. As such,
some of the data is outdated.
