Primal Rights by Greg Dykstra Jul 21, 2017
I consider myself extremely fortunateto be presented with people from all walks of life and experience levels during our Precision Rifle Fundamentals classes. We literally have had people from all over the globe come to our training. I consider this aspect of my experience with such a vast array of people to be the cause of some of the most valuable lessons I've learned regarding my advancement as a trainer. You simply can not perfect the art of teaching if you are doing it in a vacuum. Physicists, plumbers, doctors, mechanics, farmers, and countless other professions are present in these classes. All of them arrive with varying levels of competency behind a rifle, and all of them leave with a newfound understanding of themselves. Not just as it pertains to shooting, but the power they carry within. Today we are going to discuss the boundless power of the human mind and how it can help you become a better rifleman.
Do you know what kind of power you're carrying around in your head? It is astonishing to me the number of people that are walking around each day feeling entirely powerless against their circumstances. The kind of hopelessness and despair people feel when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles would seem to be a natural reaction built into the human condition. The truth is difficult to grasp for some, but as with most truth, the lack of understanding of it does not determine its presence. The simple fact of the matter is that our mind controls our entire existence. How we perceive our surroundings, our emotions, our health, and in fact our very perception of time are all a function of the mind. There are countless methods which have been developed to reveal the secrets of how our minds work. There are simple tests which will confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that we often do not see things which are right in front of our face. There are other tests that will prove we see things which are not there. If you study the mind, you will find literally millions of examples in which people have done the most remarkable and unbelievable things simply because they believed they could. During high stress situations, people forget what they are incapable of and instead are driven by instinct. A lifetime of programming is washed away in seconds of adrenaline fueled power, during which time they become nothing if not superhuman. In that state, people can lift hundreds of pounds more than they have ever before. Their reaction times are reduced to the point where time seems to stand still. Their physical bodies go beyond the limits of their conscious mind and become purest form of human being. If only for a matter of seconds until their conscious minds take over again, they are truly the most powerful people on the planet. The fact that simple decisions of the mind can alter your reality and capabilities would seem beyond reproach.
At this point some of you are likely looking for proof. Not proof of what someone else can do, but proof of what
you can do. Proof that this power exists within you at all.
You shall have the proof you seek. Do you recall the first time you tried to carry a cup full of liquid as a child? The hotter the liquid, the more full the cup, the more you tried to concentrate. The more you tried to concentrate, the slower you would go and the more you would spill, remember? You'd stare at the cup, watching the liquid slosh about and the more it would slosh, the more panicked you would get, the more you would spill. I remember the first time I encountered this vividly as I fetched a cup of coffee for my father. Whether he knew it or not, he is responsible for the very first revelation of the infinite power of my subconscious mind and its ability to control my body. He told me, "Pick your head up and walk, don't look at the cup." It took some faith, but I did it, and before long I could have jogged across the house with the full coffee cup in my hand and not spilled a drop, never once having looked at it.
Think about that sloshing liquid in the cup.
Now think about your reticle as it bobs around on your target. Before we get into that too deep, first I'll provide some more proof of the power you are carrying around in your melon. This is an exercise I have every Precision Rifle Fundamentals class perform. Look around the room you are in. Find a tiny object somewhere across the room off to your right or left. Then turn away from it, and close your eyes. Now, with your eyes closed, point at the object you identified with your finger. Keeping your arm up and finger pointing at the object, open your eyes and look at how closely you're pointing at the object. Thus far, every single member of our training classes has been able to do this without fail. They would be pointing almost exactly at the object they chose... without being able to see it. The proof is there folks. If you are reading this, then you have the power. Believing it is there is step one. Step two is deciding you're going to bring its power to bear on something specific.
Further proof still can be seen among elite shotgunners. The conscious mind can not "think" through the problem of busting a clay or shooting a pheasant, while the subconscious mind can do it effortlessly. Some ten years ago I competed in a local sporting clays league with my father, brother, and some friends. After we dominated a stage we would often be asked "what was your lead on that target there?" Our response would be "I'm not sure." Some competitors thought this was just our team being snobby and not wanting to help out, but in truth it was that we sincerely did not know. You see, many shooters viewed shotgunning as a game of some kind of conscious mathematical calculation. Our team on the other hand viewed it as a purely instinctive sport. Meaning, we practiced and formed technique that would make the shotgun a part of our body. After that, we turned the entire affair over to our subconscious. Our team was a powerhouse. Some weeks... unbeatable.
When I was a young boy getting started in shooting a rifle, I learned everything about it from my father... just as many young boys did at that time. The internet didn't exist in its current form, so if you didn't learn from your dad, grandfather, or family friend, you probably didn't learn. Virtually every rifle given to me had a fixed 4x optic with a duplex reticle. From 22lr to .243 winchester. In my early teens it was completely unsurprising when I would shoot a rabbit over 100yds away at the end of our driveway. Kentucky windage was the name of the game, and it was purely instinct. You held for elevation and wind until you "got tone." That's what my father called it. Something he picked up from the Top Gun movie I think. Quite a truism if there was one. It was that feeling I received, an impulse, telling me that right there right then it was time to press the trigger. By the time I was 17 years old, I was spooky good with a rifle using nothing but 4x optics and instinct. I was able to shoot pheasants out of the air with my bow using this same principle. Pure instinct.
This idea of instinctive shotgunning, archery, and rifle shooting was revealed to me at an early age by my father. When I became more interested in long range shooting the way we know it today, that's where my own development came into the picture. My father wasn't experienced in long range shooting. Kentucky windage works quite well out to practiced distances, but the farther the distance becomes, the more difficult it became. I realized quite quickly that first round hits past 500-600yds was very difficult with a duplex reticle. I won't bore you with the details of the journey, but suffice it to say I wasted tens of thousands of dollars on inferior equipment before I learned what actually worked well. After a few years of pressing the discipline, I reached a plateau. I had become a student of the science and could compute firing solutions at blistering speed. I was a consistent 1/2 to 3/4 moa shooter and I could get a first round hit on a 2moa target well beyond a thousand yards. Though sub-1/2 moa groups at 100yds or at distance eluded me. While my groups were respectable, the location of those groups would shift as much as 1 to 2 tenths of a mil to any side of the target. One day the rifle would shoot 2 tenths of a mil high. The next day it would be left. The day after it would be right... and so on. No matter how flawless my firing position, no matter how flawless my work at the loading bench, no matter how elite my equipment, I just could not seem to get those shots to consistently land where I wanted them inside that window. In my hunger for knowledge of this sport and my fascination with the science of it all, I had left something behind.
Instinct & Our Subconscious MindMore:
https://www.primalrights.com/library/articles/you-shoot-better-unconscious
