Today we’re going to talk about building a position. When you build a position you need to accomplish two things. You need to get the best stability for the gun, but you also have to get your body signature out of the whole system as much as possible.

Now there’s a trick to all of that. Dave’s going to demonstrate and I’m going to tell you the how and the why of it. Let's take a look at basic prone because that’s where we are going to start.

This is your most stable position. Let's take a look at where Dave’s legs are and where his body is in relationship to the weapon. He’s squared up to the weapon.  He’s got his legs spread apart.

What does that do for you? The recoil impulse is traveling straight through your body giving you a faster site recovery.

Take a look at where his head is positioned on the stock. Aggressively. Got a tight check well. Got the rifle loaded into the bi-pod slightly.

Take a look at what he’s doing with the rear bag, how he’s grabbing the rear bag with his weak hand and he’s squeezing that bag, and that gives him the ability to fine tune the attitude of the rifle to the target.

Fine-tune his aiming point while still getting a three point bearing on the gun. Stabilize the rifle into the ground.  And yet his body, his body signature is really synced out by the Earth itself.

Now this is your most stable position, and it’s nice if you can use it but quite honestly it’s not too often that you can because in the real world, in the practical long range competition world this is not he position that you’re typically going to be able to use.

In case you don’t have the luxury of shooting prone, and you won't! - then you need to have a compromised position. Let's call this the mini Kama Sutra of shooting positions.

This is one of the foundation blocks and I call this the reverse kneel. Let's take a look at how he’s got this position built.

He’s got his rifle kind of up towards the center of gravity against the prop. Whatever that may be. A car, a barricade, a rock, whatever.  Look at where he’s got his right elbow braced on his knee.

That syncs out the movement of the rifle in his body signature through his bone structure into the ground giving maximum stability in this position while getting high up off the ground to make a precision shot.

In the real world, in the natural terrain, many times you’re not going to have a line of sight on that low target from a low position, and guess what? There’s not going to be anything around to use as a prop.

Well you need to build a position. Keep building height into a position while maintaining stability. Here’s your basic sitting position.

Note how he’s got he’s elbows on his two knees. Note how he’s hunched into the rifle.  Note where he’s got his hand on the forearm. This is giving him his maximum stability without having an actual prop to brace the rifle on.

What if you need a little bit more height? Let's show them Jimmy Clark sitting.

Our friend Jimmy Clark came up with this one years ago and I’ve used it at many matches. Look to see what he’s done with the bi-pod. He’s got the bi-pod actually braced on the toes of his feet.

That’s going to give him a little bit more height. He’s going to pull that rifle against, the bi-pod, against his feet, and it’s really an amazingly stable position. Hit one Dave! 

Well that one works. And now we will be going down into the valley of death for one more position. 

At many team events you’re going to be forced shoot something that’s called buddy support. Now there are infinite possibilities and you need to improvise, but we are going to show you just one possibility. The important thing here is communication between the shooter and the support man.

Now when Dave has composed his sight picture and he’s just about ready to pull he’s going to tell me to hold, and at that point I’m going hold my breath and do everything I can to get rid of as much body signature as I can.

The second thing I’m going to do is cover my face. All right Dave hit one!