5 Dry Fire Drills for Hunters to Improve Accuracy

The off-season is an excellent time to incorporate dry fire drills into your hunting season prep. Whether you just came off of turkey season (or it's just about to end) or you're already thinking about deer firearm season, now is as good a time as any to improve your accuracy, recoil management, trigger control, and other aspects of being an excellent shooter and hunter.

Keep reading to learn about dry firing and how it helps you have a better gun season! We'll cover drills for:

1. Trigger Control

2. Breath Control and Follow-Through

3. Shooting Positions

4. Target Transitions

5. Recoil Management

What is Dry Firing?

Dry firing is a cheap and extremely effective way to increase trigger control, accuracy, and comfort in shooting a hunting rifle or handgun. This is done by improving muscle memory throughout the entire process of aligning your shooting position, the way your face contacts the stock, and having full control over the trigger pull.

All of this can be done without expending ammunition, which we all know is getting much more expensive and sometimes harder to find consistently.

Note: Dry firing centerfire rifles is completely safe and does not harm the gun at all. However, repeatedly dry-firing a rimfire rifle can cause damage over time.

Put Safety First

The absolute, number one, most important factor with dry firing is gun safety!

Before dry firing your rifle, double and triple-check that the gun is not loaded, that any magazine for the gun is empty, and that there are no live rounds near you when dry firing practice. Doing this eliminates the possibility of a live round somehow getting put in the gun.

5 Dry Fire Drills to Practice Year-Round

So, what dry fire drills should you incorporate into your hunting prep? Try these five dry fire exercises you can do during the off-season or any time between hunts.

1. Trigger Control

The first drill I've got for you to try is a trigger control drill to fix any issues with "punching" the trigger and instead have a nice smooth trigger pull without flinching.

So, you'll want to find a small "target" on the wall. This could be a dot you draw on a piece of paper, a small picture, or even an outlet cover or light switch. After you have your target picked out, find a quarter or something similar that is small and flat and set it on top of the rifle barrel.

With the quarter balanced on your barrel, you can now go ahead and focus on the target through the rifle scope and begin to put slow, consistent pressure on the trigger until it breaks. The purpose of the quarter on the barrel is that you have an indicator of whether you are flinching right before or after the shot breaks.

If the quarter falls off as you pull the trigger, you're moving too much.

Repeat this exercise until you consistently get a smooth, controlled trigger pull without the quarter falling off the barrel.

2. Breath Control and Follow-Through

The next drill is for breath control and shot follow-through. This will help you to time your shots with your breathing cycle.

What you want to do is aim at your target and take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and then take another deep breath. While exhaling the second time, apply pressure to the trigger until it breaks.

After the shot breaks, keep the sight aligned with the target to reinforce follow-through on the shot as if you were shooting at a real animal. The purpose of the deep breaths is to calm you down and slow your heart rate so that you are completely settled and still.

This drill will increase accuracy under real hunting conditions by aligning steady breathing with shooting. It will also help your recoil management because it trains you to be vigilant with your follow-through, making follow-up shots much easier.

3. Shooting Positions

A secondary drill to incorporate while you are doing the first two is to do these dry fire drills from different positions: standing, sitting, kneeling, and prone.

This will help you build skills and confidence in executing a shot in any situation you may find yourself in while on a hunt. To accomplish this, set up targets at different angles to simulate uphill and downhill shots. Dry fire at each target, and practice shooting off bipods, your pack, shooting sticks, or even a door frame to simulate shooting off a tree.

4. Target Transitions

After becoming proficient in those first three drills, begin to practice target transitions. Set up multiple targets in your practice area and aim at the first one, execute a controlled trigger pull, rack the slide if the rifle is bolt-action, and then move the reticle to the next target as quickly and smoothly as possible.

Settle onto the secondary target and start your shot process over, then complete a second shot sequence. You can continue this for as many targets as you want to set up. The purpose of this drill is to get comfortable transitioning from target to target and quickly focusing on it. This is a critical skill when hunting quick-moving game.

5. Recoil Management

Overcoming recoil is a challenge in the field when you need to make multiple shots to hit your target. If you can't minimize the impact of your rifle's recoil and quickly refocus on your target (or you determine that you're anticipating the recoil as part of your natural response to firing), you'll miss the buck that crossed your sights as it runs away.

For this drill, aim at your target and dry fire. Then, immediately realign your sights as though you're recovering from the rifle's recoil. In other words, create "recoil" and quickly refocus your sights on the target.

Fire again and change up the "recoil," then refocus quickly again. Visualize tracking the animal you're targeting to simulate follow-up shots in the field.

Bonus Tips for Effective Dry Fire Practice

Learning how to dry fire practice may seem silly, but experienced hunters incorporate these drills (and others) into their hunting prep to become more accurate when in the field.

To make these drills more effective (and more realistic):
 

• Use tools like snap caps to protect the firing pin on centerfire rifles.
• You can also use a laser (or a bore sight will work) to aim at the walls in your house. When you execute your shot, you'll be able to see how much the laser moves because of the trigger pull.
• Incorporate a stopwatch or timer to test yourself when practicing target transition and for added pressure.

Now, I want to reiterate that the most important component of dry fire practice is gun safety! Take extreme caution to make sure your gun is unloaded and that there is no chance a live round finds its way into the chamber.

Dry fire away from people just to be safe.

Try Dry Fire Drills and HuntWise for More Successful Hunts

The dry fire exercises I described today are super important for building your shooting fundamentals. They also help when you get an actual animal in front of you in the field!

What else do you need for a successful hunt? You should also download HuntWise! It is an invaluable tool that can improve your hunting success in more ways than one, with animal movement forecasts, up-to-date maps with several different layer options, and informational articles (like this one) to improve your knowledge and skills.

While you're practicing dry firing, take time also to download and explore HuntWise! We'll give you your first week free.