7 Odd Accuracy Secrets of a World Champion Shooter

today we're talking to the big guy not Joe Biden in this case this time it's Eric Cortina the real big guy you know you're kind of okay at shooting a little bit of a world champion and so when I watch through some of the things that you've taught me that you've showed on your YouTube channel about accuracy and you're doing some things that are very unconventional it perks my ears a little bit so thanks for sitting down with us yeah man thanks for having me first thing that you do that is very unconventional that I don't usually hear especially from somebody who's a Precision long-range shooter is you don't do any Barrel breaking I don't I mean people have their crazy systems you know shoot two shots clean three shots clean everybody has a little bit of a different recipe but you're doing nothing how could that possibly be obviously I've done Barrel breaking and then I've done no better break in and over time I realized I could not see a difference at all and as you know I I do a lot of shooting so and I know a lot of contacts my you know Barrel manufacturers I shoot for Brooks Barrels and uh one day I just called him up and said hey let me ask you a question you guys recommend Barrel breaking if somebody sends you a barrel back that doesn't shoot how can you tell whether the barrel was broken in or not he says well we can't I said so there is no visible or measurable difference whether I break it in or not I said no I said so am I wasting my time I mean it seems like it and he says yeah we it doesn't matter I said well you guys recommend it and he says well we recommend it because people expect that we give them breaking procedure they kept asking for one so we had to give them something so I said okay so that's when I stopped you know I had already kind of stopped breaking in barrels but it's one of those things that people expect to have a procedure so a lot of times the barrel manufacturers just come up with one just so that the customers been around twice dancing jump all around Barrel was So speaking of being tough on barrels you're cleaning those barrels with CLR like the commercial very very acidic acid um you're putting down barrels and it makes people freak out in uh in your videos when you're showing people how you're cleaning barrels like do not touch a barrel with that but clearly it's working because you're winning championships after doing that so all I have is stainless steel barrels I have never used it on anything else uh so that's that and I don't I literally run three wood patches through there and then I run isopropyl alcohol like 99 just to get that sealer out of there and then I go to town with my conventional cleaning supplies and I found that CLR gets that carbon out really fast and it makes it really soft I bet really easy to get so again don't leave it in there uh overnight don't don't just literally it stays in there for like five minutes but it gets it out quick I like it now speaking of cleaning we're going to talk about not cleaning brass at all later which is one that absolutely fascinates me but first this video is sponsored by Arena breakout Who provided me early access to their awesome new game arena breakout is a brand new Tactical first person shooter and a first of its kind extraction looter shooter this is like tarkov mobile at its best now obviously as gun enthusiasts and this video is about accuracy we're ended for the guns in the gunsmith section you'll find 10 attachment slots and over 700 mods for the guns a longer Barrel is going to give you more accuracy in the game the AKs are really good but in this game I like the M4A1 and I'd pick an lpvo because it allows you to make those long shots accurately but also quick Target acquisition you can change out grips barrel length everything you'd want to know the tip I'd have have for you is if you're getting stuck just think of real life you don't just put on a scope you got to make sure you got a pick rail already Arena breakout is available right now for download on the Google Play and Apple App Store in the United States click on the link in the video description to download the game today and stay tuned for more exciting updates by following Arena breakouts official channels tell me a little bit about bullet pointing so I hear a lot of Shooters in different disciplines as they're trying to decide you know you got a box of bullets which ones are going to shoot the best for when I take this long range shot or this competition tell me a little bit about about bullet pointing and how realistically what kind of improvement Could you actually see well you will get a BC Improvement but how much I don't really know I mean it's at a thousand yards I get about a half to three quarter MOA On Target uh however the reason that we point bullets is for BC consistency not so much for BC gains consistency is key and uh that's the reason we do bullet points so what does the process look like to do that well you uh you uh you get a die a bullet pointing die there's multiple companies that make them and you literally just run your die or you bullet into the die and the the die will put a poignier point on it now you can they sell different inserts uh you can point different levels you can point whatever I mean this is one of those things that you can spend a lot of time on but a very important thing here is you can actually ruin Bullets by pointing them right there's this very fine line in which it's helping you so to point bullet this is one of those things that you need to look at after everything else has been figured out in a way I don't know like for example for me you know I can take about a five to six inch group at a thousand yards down into about three inches by Point pointing okay so we're talking about some of the very fine details as you're pointing out here let's pause for just a second from the title of the you know the six unconventional secrets and let's let's just put into place a few of those just super Keys you know if you take somebody who's just a very much a hobbyist but really wants to shoot accurately they jump out of their truck with their setup and go to shoot with you what are maybe three or four of the things that you're going to want to fix right away from what the average shooter does their form so tell me about form what would be some specific things that you'd want to make sure they're doing well obviously they need to be stable they need to be calm calm is a big one because you can be stable if you're not calm and uh and they just need to have good form uh you know natural point of aim is a big one that that's you know there I see a lot of Shooters try to they kind of get On Target and they're off and instead of moving their whole body to line everything up they just move the rifle and now it's not lined up so the first time it recoils it's gonna they just created a hinge point and it's going to jump all over and they're just going to think it's the rifle so recoil management is a big one and that falls under form uh obviously how to break the trigger when to break the trigger breathing Vision sight picture there's a lot in form and that's why we do a lot of dry firing so when you're shooting in a Precision match like f-class that you shoot so I we've got a bipod up front or some kind of front rest and then we've got a rear bag right under the back of the rifle and often I hear from backfire fans as they're as they're you know saying I've got accuracy problems I'm not shooting well almost every time the first question I ask is what was your rear rest and so often the answer is my hand you know I've got a bipod and I use my hand at the back and um it that rear rest contributes so much to how stable you are it's like that is a huge key and so if you don't have a rearrest sandbag that is absolute key even for just testing your hunting rifle to see how well the ammo shoots you've got to have some kind of rearrest you want to isolate the shooter as much as possible you need the rifle to be as stable as possible every time seems like every time I post a video of how we actually shoot with the front rest in the rear bag people say well the shooter's not doing anything it's it's all supported we're doing a lot but the objective is to actually have the rifle as stable as possible because that's going to tell you how good the rifle shoots not how good you should obviously it's all mixed together right it's one system so isolate as many things as possible and yeah rear bag the front you know you have gonna have a good bipod or a front rest or whatever and recall management all that what's your preference for a front rest uh you sebs Sebastian said uh but you know that's for my f class stuff competition that I do but for uh PRS and hunting I I just use a bipod a good solid bipod okay so the next one has been a subject of controversy it is uh Barrel tuners you were nice enough last time I shot with you to give me one of your tuners uh the awesome EC tuner break it is so well crafted it it feels like a fine piece of Machinery you're doing an awesome job with that so um and in I I call this an unconventional secret of accuracy because there is some degree of of controversy in in the industry about Barrel tuners the idea and correct me if I'm wrong is that you essentially you're you're moving the weight out front to different levels that can affect the way the barrel whips the harmonics of that Barrel as the bullet is going down the barrel now the skeptic would say that it's not it's not enough to improve the accuracy and there have been some tests by Brian litz and uh his uh his book advancements in long range shooting I think version three uh have somewhere around me I have it here yeah where he said he couldn't he wasn't able to find in Big Data that it was shooting that uh that it was showing a difference however world champion [Laughter] um and uh and so it's something that it leaves people wondering uh about it and so I I don't I don't really know this isn't really my game and I have not even got the opportunity to shoot this yet and so I don't have an opinion opinion one way or the other but it is something that when I see something uh unique in accuracy I'm always skeptical until I can actually see it myself so tell me Tell to somebody that who hasn't shot a barrel tuner what they could expect and and and what the theory is behind it so uh Barrel tuner Tunes the harmonics of your Barrel your Barrel shaking it's doing all kinds of things when you shoot and uh it moves that weight back and forth so that you can tune that Barrel on the exit point so imagine a swing right and uh let's say you're playing dodgeball and somebody's on the swing and you're trying to hit that Target the point that's easiest to hit is when it reverses Direction because it's going to stop for a minute second well barrels do a similar thing so you're trying to time the bullet exit to where the barrel switches Direction so that that's going to be the most consistent Point possible now does it work and this is where the controversy comes in right just like just like ammo right you take match ammo and you say this is match ammo it's going to shoot better it doesn't work in every system possible right it's been optimized but it doesn't mean it works on everything and also not every gun is a quarter Moi gun so if you put a tuner on your rifle and it shoots different it's already working now is it working to your ex expectations possibly not but if it changes what it does you know what your Barrel or what your gun does then it's working now typically I mean we sell tons of tuners and we have a lot of feedback from customers and it has helped literally thousands of people finally get to where they're going now we also have a series back to the needs more series and the biggest Improvement that we made on those 600 rifles was putting tuners on them yeah you know that's an that's an interesting point because it seems to me and correct me if I'm wrong but I would think this would be true that although you know a hunting rifle a lot is going to get lost in the noise because there's just not nearly as much accuracy as it as a as a heavy competition rifle however a hunting rifle's Barrel is generally a lot lighter profile and so if anything would benefit from a tuner it honestly seems like that would be the most likely scenario where you would see that difference is that correct now we've all heard about free floating barrels yeah which means that the stock is not touching the barrel there's that reason free floating is beneficial is because the stock is not touching the barrel right it's inducing harmonics or bad harmonics so you want to isolate the barrel so it just does its thing that's number one and then once it's doing its own thing then you can add a tuner to tune those harmonics cool well I'm excited to try it out it's a really Innovative product I like it okay so tell me a little bit about brass cleaning so I can make some pretty precise ammo um you know when I go through my full system for creating ammo that I'm showing in my reloading course you can get down to some tiny tiny Estes and make some really good ammo but it takes two freaking long and there are so many steps in with ammo that we don't know for sure that it's going to make a difference here but there's that potential that it could make a difference so you think about you shoot it you shoot shoot a lot of brass and then you're going to reload well there's a little bit of powder residue left in that case right and you know that's where you would you would clean it and you you can see it in there the theory being if you didn't clean it well that residue is by a minute amount changing the volume the interior volume of that brass and so you'd need to clean it so that you'd get a consistent result but again it's like Eric you just have you just have the best argument for everything because you can just be like scoreboard believe the target so tell me why I can tell me why I can save some time and just not clean brass and is there a point where it could become dangerous that it there's just too much crap in that brass I guess if the breasts lasted long enough for it to become to get that kind of a build up it would become dangerous but breast number one doesn't last that long 10 15 firings I've heard people shoot them a lot more but that build up that we talk about it's not that much I don't it's I guess you could measure it but it's it's very negligible so back to you know I used to clean brass all the time that was one of my things that I always did because I always wanted this I wanted to build the ammo exactly like I had done the previous one right keep everything the same uh but like you just said it takes a long time and one day I just didn't clean the brass and On Target it was identical and I go huh okay well let's see how far I can go well I threw away the brass because the primer Pockets got to lose before it mattered and I thought well that's one less thing I have to do now the other thing is a benefit to not cleaning brass is that that residue uh it's on the next and it actually acts as a lubricant and you I don't know if you ever heard of cold welding but when the brass is clean and the bullet is clean they actually like to stick to each other well when you have that fine layer of carbon that doesn't happen yeah you know I saw somebody do some testing and I I wish I remember who it was to give them credit but they were using the you know the dry lube and just lightly lining that the neck of the case on the interior and it actually made a significant difference on the SD of the ammo and so yeah I I see what you're saying it make this really be the same effect yeah and I've seen a lot more people ruin brass by cleaning it you know they'll put on Tumbler they'll forget about it or they get it too clean this is what I'm talking about get it too clean all of a sudden the bullet stick it's really hard to seat the bullet it's just hard to get consistency so yeah I quickly we're leaving it a tiny bit wet oh that's the worst yeah so yeah I eliminated all those and saved a ton of time well I mean push me over with a feather you're telling me I can just save work I'm in uh honestly that sounds awesome that would save me a few hours every week so when we I talked to earlier about you know you got your a lot of bullets and trying to pick which one uh to shoot is going to be the most accurate I talked about sorting by overall length um and so let's say you just made a giant crop of of ammo are you how are you selecting the winners this one goes in the competition pile and this one doesn't or no they're all good we're going I have sorted bullets in every which way possible and you know people ask well what matters most is the base to Ojai just the weight sorting basic tip you know if we take this water bottle from here to here pretty much where it contacts the rifle exactly or basic tip from the bottom to the tip of the bullet and uh or by weight or whatever you know bearing surface bearing surface diameter there's so many ways you can sort a bullet the main ones are based oil Drive baster tip and for the longest time we were sorting base to ojive because that's what the experts told us however the competition Shooters we said well let's try basic tip okay so for example I go back to Burger bullets weight super consistent you're wasting your time weighing them base to O Drive super consistent you're wasting your time doing that basic tip that's where we get the most variants so we sort by basic tip and because that's where you see the most variants that's going to show up on Target and now when I say On Target we're shooting a thousand yards if you're shooting a hundred I'm going to say if you're shooting 600 and in just load them and go is the reason for that that at distance the BC changes the tiny changes in the in the aerodynamics let's say of the bullet are going to show up a big time down down range at a long distance but at 100 yards that tiny little variation you wouldn't notice is that correct even five six hundred it's not enough to to matter how often do you clean your rifle and what does a lubing policy look like so I clean my rifle every time I use it 20 shots or 80 or 100 shots it gets cleaned typically in f plus we don't ever go past 100 in one day but comes back and goes on the on my table and it gets clean goes on the Cradle gets clean the barrel gets clean down the bare metal every time uh I disassemble the bolt every time uh I make sure there's no dirt no anything and I use uh I use I also I also makes Lube it's a triple action Lube whatever you put it on there you wipe it off it cleans and it lubricates very it just leaves a film behind and uh I grease the bolt lugs for the action and the ramp the caulking ramp on the bolt and that's it very little just enough to function now you said lubing properly I've seen so many that over Lube that creates more problems than anything because grease will actually slow down your bolt it creates drag at some point if you get too much it'll create drag and if it gets in front of the in front of the firing pin where it hits the the bolt it'll actually create a cushion effect there and it's just going to give you ignition problems so um is the idea between cleaning every time you shoot to protect the barrel or is cleaning every time you shoot the idea that you want the gun to be the same the next time you come and pick it I want it both I want it to be identical every time and I always say I can keep it consistently clean I cannot keep it consistently dirty I I have a hunting rifle that I keep consistently dirty um it's sometimes different things that I dirty it with it could be mud today sand tomorrow whatever but it's always dirty um I am kind of interested on that so I I totally understand you know why you're doing that makes total sense I'm just kind of curious so that one's a 6'5 Creedmoor Sig cross I have about 1100 shots on it and I have never cleaned the darn thing and it's still shooting half him away it's it's a very very accurate rifle for a lightweight hunting rifle um and I'm just curious to see when I start to run into into problems with it and I know that's a different situation than what you're talking about but I'm just I think it's fascinating to see where the limit is going to be how far stepped back are you from pressure on a competition rifle you know for example let's say pressures at 65 grains where where or you're seeing pressure signs I should say on your brass at 65 Grand there could be actual pressure earlier but you're seeing signs of it on your brass at 65. how far do you where do you step down depends uh I never want to run up against pressure but it depends because we always looking for the smallest groups possible so if I'm tuning a rifle and the small just the smallest groups is right at pressure I can't shoot there so I have to back it off to the next window where it shoots well and that may be two three grains you know and and if it's too far below then I have to change powders or change something so so I to answer your question I like to run at least a grain below MAX Pressure that's a grain on my you know my Max you know my typical load is around 57 58 now if you're doing a 223 that may be different right so just don't run up against pressure it's uh again if you have carbon buildup or you have a hot day or anything you can if you're pretty close to pressure you're gonna you're gonna have a bad day yeah I've made the mistake before of getting a load all ready to go and then I go out a month later in the middle of the day when it's hot and I'm like oh great we're starting over now because because suddenly that's over pressure well Eric it is an absolute privilege to get to talk to you and call you a friend I've learned a ton of different things from you um and enjoy watching it on your channel so thanks for taking a minute to talk with us yeah man I appreciate it and I hope it helps

Channel: Backfire

Views: 330,885

Keywords: Backfire, Hunting, Outdoors

Id: FIx52oS2Sk4

Length: 24min 34sec (1474 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 15 2023