A .22 LR at 50 yards is more honest than most people give it credit for. It doesn’t give you much room to hide mistakes an that’s what made me start taking it seriously as a training tool. I started running my rimfire rifle weekly, not as a casual range day gun but as deliberate fundamentals work.
The quieter report and lower recoil make it easier to stay locked in on what the shot actually did instead of what it felt like and over time, something interesting happened. My centerfire groups tightened up. Not because I changed anything dramatic with those rifles but because I had cleaned up the fundamentals on a platform that was less forgiving.
It turns out the easy rifle wasn’t really easy at all. It was just more honest and now I don’t think of the .22 as a side option. I think of it as a baseline check. If I can’t shoot it well, I’m not going to magically shoot everything else well either
The quieter report and lower recoil make it easier to stay locked in on what the shot actually did instead of what it felt like and over time, something interesting happened. My centerfire groups tightened up. Not because I changed anything dramatic with those rifles but because I had cleaned up the fundamentals on a platform that was less forgiving.
It turns out the easy rifle wasn’t really easy at all. It was just more honest and now I don’t think of the .22 as a side option. I think of it as a baseline check. If I can’t shoot it well, I’m not going to magically shoot everything else well either
