Standing, either offhand or braced, is the least stable but most frequently used field position.

An almost universal truth is that when most of us set up our rifle and zero it in for the hunt, we do so from the bench. But experienced hunters know the truth: the field rarely gives you the perfect shot. You may plan to settle into a rock‑solid benchrest position, but real hunting situations usually don’t work that way. Terrain, brush, time pressure, and the unpredictable behavior of game animals all conspire to make the “ideal” shooting position a rarity. More often than not, you’re forced to adapt, and do so rapidly!

Over decades of hunting in varied terrain, from high desert washes to thick northern woods, I’ve learned that most of my shots come from a standing or kneeling position. I love the stability of sitting or lying prone, but those positions often require time and space and are often not possible with tall grass or ground cover between you and the target. When it’s time to take the shot, you work with what the land gives you. And the more comfortable you are with each field position, the more confident you’ll be when the crosshairs settle, and the opportunity is in the moment.

If you asked a dozen experienced woodland hunters which position they use most often, the majority would say standing, either offhand or braced. It’s the quickest stance to assume, it clears brush better than anything else, and it allows you to cover a wide area without losing mobility. But it’s also the least stable. Standing offhand is a fleeting position; you can hold it for so long before muscle fatigue starts to wobble your sight picture.

To get the most out of standing, start with your feet placed roughly 90 degrees to the target. This creates a natural, balanced platform. For right-handed shooters, raise the rifle butt firmly into your right shoulder, then settle your cheek onto the stock. This cheek weld is critical as it helps to lock your head in place and keeps your sight alignment consistent.

Breathing matters here more than in any other position. Take a couple of quick breaths, let half of the last one out, and hold. That brief pause is your shooting window. Wrap your trigger hand around the pistol grip, settle your finger gently on the trigger, and make sure your eye isn’t too close to the scope. I was tracking a baboon in S. Africa, using a .50-caliber big-bore PCP to follow him up a hillside. I was shooting offhand, and when he made a brief pause on his upward climb, I quickly pulled the trigger without taking the time to lock in my position. The rifle kicked straight back, hitting me full in the face, and I spent the next several days with a discolored ring around my right eye. Some say that scope bite is a rite of passage but once is enough.

Standing is a quick position to take, lets you move quickly, and allows shots over ground cover.

In open country, especially high desert, finding a natural rest can be nearly impossible. I’ve gotten into the habit of carrying shooting sticks everywhere I hunt. They turn a shaky offhand stance into a workable, controlled shot. Even a single‑leg monopod can make a world of difference when the wind picks up, and your heart is pounding.

If I could choose only one field position for the rest of my hunting life, I’d pick sitting. It’s stable, natural, and surprisingly adaptable. Sitting gives you a solid platform without the sprawl of prone, and it’s far more forgiving than standing. The downside is that dropping into a sitting position can spook game if you’re not careful. Movement is your enemy, and sitting requires more of it than kneeling or standing.

To assume a proper sitting stance, angle your body about 90 degrees to the target. Bring your left foot close to your body and let the knee rise. Curl your right foot toward your left side, raising the right knee just enough to support your posture. This creates a tripod of sorts; your two knees and your backside form a stable base.

Shoulder the rifle as you normally would but rest your left elbow on your left knee. This simple contact point transforms your stability. The elbow‑to‑knee connection creates a rigid triangle that absorbs movement and steadies your sight picture. Hunters often underestimate how much stability comes from this single adjustment.

Sitting also pairs beautifully with shooting sticks. A set of lightweight collapsible sticks can turn a good sitting position into an excellent one. As I have mentioned in other blog posts, I rely on the Primos Polecat shooting sticks as they are stable and compact, yet quick to deploy. In tall grass or low brush, sitting gives you just enough elevation to see clearly while still keeping your profile low. Just watch where you are sitting. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sat on a cactus or sharp rock when quickly dropping to my backside.

Kneeling is a variation on sitting, but it’s faster to assume and better suited for situations where you need a little more height. If you’re trying to shoot over grass, sage, or low brush, kneeling often gives you the perfect compromise between speed and stability.

Drop your right knee to the ground and keep your left knee raised. Place the elbow of your leading arm on your left knee. This creates a stable rest similar to the sitting position but with more elevation. Kneeling also allows you to pivot quickly, which can be a lifesaver when game animals don’t follow your script.

Add shooting sticks to the kneeling position and you’ll be surprised how steady it becomes. The combination of elbow‑to‑knee support and a forward rest can rival the stability of sitting, especially if the terrain is uneven or rocky.

Nothing beats prone for pure accuracy. It’s the steadiest field position by far, and when you can use it, your confidence skyrockets. But prone is also the hardest position to assume without making noise or losing sight of your quarry. In desert country, prone comes with another challenge: you never really know what you’re lying on. Rocks, cactus spines, and fire ants have a way of reminding you that the ground is not always your friend.

When cresting a rise, shooting into a wash, or glassing from a ridge, the prone position is hard to beat. Lie flat with the rifle in front of you and angle your body slightly to the right of the target line. Place your left elbow forward of your torso and tuck your right elbow slightly closer in. Your rifle and upper body should be supported by these two points of contact.

Pull the rifle into your shoulder with your left hand, settle your cheek on the stock, and wrap your right hand around the pistol grip. This position is enhanced by using a rest; your pack, a rolled jacket, or even a flat rock can make a huge difference. Shooting sticks don’t help much here, but a bipod is hard to beat. In fact, a good bipod can turn prone into a near‑benchrest experience. About the only time I mount a bipod to my rifle is for long-range prairie dog shooting in the flat open grasslands.

Prone forces you to think carefully about your surroundings. In desert terrain, you may be lying on sand, gravel, or thorny vegetation. In mountain country, you may be on uneven ground or loose shale. Always take a quick glance before dropping prone; you don’t want to discover a rattlesnake or a patch of cholla the hard way. I know this is a recurring theme, but I speak from a lot of painful experiences.

Field shooting is improvisation. The more comfortable you are with each position, standing, sitting, kneeling, and prone, the more confident you’ll be when the moment of truth arrives. Practice them all. Don’t just shoot from a bench or a controlled environment. Get out into the field, find uneven ground, shoot uphill and downhill, and learn how your body and rifle behave under real conditions.

The terrain won’t ask your preference. It will force you to adapt. And when the crosshairs settle and your breathing steadies, the hours you’ve spent mastering these positions will pay off in the only currency that matters in hunting: clean, ethical, confident shots.

Spend a day in the squirrel woods and you’ll learn quickly that most of your shots won’t be level. In fact, if you hunt the Midwest hardwoods long enough, you’ll go entire mornings without a single ground shot. Every fox squirrel seems to be halfway up a hickory, and every gray squirrel seems to be clinging to the underside of a branch like a feather‑weight acrobat. That means you’re shooting steeply uphill, often at odd angles, and usually while trying to thread a pellet through a maze of twigs.

My first season of serious squirrel hunting taught me this lesson the hard way. I’d spent years plinking on level ground, punching paper at 25 and 30 yards, and getting pretty confident with my zero. But confidence evaporates fast when you’re missing squirrels that seem like chip shots. I’d aim dead‑on at a broadside fox squirrel 30 yards up a maple, squeeze the trigger, and watch the pellet sail over its back. I’d adjust, aim lower, and still miss. It drove me crazy until I finally dug into the physics behind uphill and downhill shooting. What I learned changed the way I hunt, and it might change the way you shoot too.

In the squirrel woods, a high percentage of shoots will be up into the trees or down into valleys and hillsides.

A lot of shooters assume that shooting uphill makes the pellet drop more, and shooting downhill makes it drop less. It feels intuitive. If you’re shooting uphill, the pellet must be fighting gravity more, right? And if you’re shooting downhill, gravity must be helping it along.

But that’s not how gravity works on a projectile. Firearms hunters have studied this problem for decades, especially those who hunt in steep mountain country. Their findings apply perfectly to air rifles and pellets. The truth is simple: At the same slant distance, the pellet’s vertical drop is the same whether you shoot level, uphill, or downhill.

That means: The pellet does not slow down faster when shooting uphill, the pellet does not speed up when shooting downhill, and gravity pulls on the pellet the same way no matter the angle. So why do we miss high on both uphill and downhill shots? Because the pellet’s horizontal distance is shorter than the slant distance you’re ranging.

Garvity only cares about horizontal distance. This is the key concept. Gravity acts straight down, perpendicular to the earth. It doesn’t care about the slope you’re shooting on. It only affects the pellet over the horizontal distance it travels.

When you range a squirrel 30 yards up a tree, that’s the slant range—the straight‑line distance between you and the target. But the pellet doesn’t “feel” that entire 30 yards. It only “feels” the horizontal component of that distance.

This is where trigonometry comes in. Think back to rhe Cosine Rule, in which the horizontal distance is equal to: Horizontal Range = Slant Range × Cosine(Angle). Let’s plug in real numbers. Your rifle is zeroed at 30 yards. You range a squirrel at a 30‑yard slant distance. The squirrel is sitting at a 30‑degree angle above you and the cosine(30°) = 0.87. So, the  Horizontal Range = 30 × 0.87 = 26 yards

Your pellet behaves exactly as if you were shooting 26 yards on level ground, not 30. If you aim using your 30‑yard zero, your pellet will strike high, because you’re over‑holding for the actual horizontal distance. This is why both uphill and downhill shots hit high. The slant range is always longer than the horizontal range, and your pellet drop is based only on the horizontal distance.

For a real-woods example, picture this: You’re walking a ridge and spot a gray squirrel perched on a limb 25 yards away—slant distance. The angle is steep, maybe 35 degrees. You shoulder your rifle, settle the crosshairs, and squeeze. You miss high.

Why? Because the pellet only traveled the horizontal equivalent of about 20 yards. Your 25‑yard zero is too much hold for that shorter horizontal distance. Now imagine the same squirrel downhill on a creek bank. Same slant distance, same angle. You aim dead‑on again. You miss high again. Different direction, same physics.

Squirrel hunting is full of steep angles. In flat farmland you might get more level shots, but in mature hardwoods—especially oaks, hickories, and walnuts—squirrels spend most of their time above eye level. And when mast is heavy, they’re practically glued to the canopy.

That means most of your shots are uphill, many are steep uphill, some are downhill across ravines or creek bottoms, but almost none are perfectly level when hunting in the woods or canyon areas. If you don’t understand angle shooting, you’ll miss more often than you should.

When shooting downhill, the same rules apply.

Here’s the tricky part: In the woods, you rarely know the exact angle or slant distance. You’re not pulling out a rangefinder and protractor while a squirrel is flicking its tail at you. So you need a rule of thumb. My general rule of thumb is that if the shot is uphill or downhill—even slightly—aim lower than your normal point of aim. How much lower depends on: your rigs zero distance, the steepness of the angle, the slant range, and the pellet’s trajectory

But here’s a practical guideline: At 20–35 yards, most uphill or downhill shots require you to hold ½ to 1 full mil‑dot lower. If you’re shooting a scope with aim points or mil-dots, this becomes easy. If you’re shooting open sights, you’ll need to develop a feel for it.

The best way to master angle shooting is to practice it deliberately. A drill I use is to set a target at 25–30 yards. Place it 10–15 feet above ground level (tree, hill, or elevated stand). Shoot from below at a steep angle. Note how much lower you must aim to hit center. You can repeat this same exercise shooting downwards and you’ll quickly see how dramatic the difference can be.

Fieldcraft Tips for Real Hunts:  Don’t Over‑Range the Target, If you’re using a rangefinder, remember it gives you slant distance. Your pellet drop is based on horizontal distance, which is always shorter. If the squirrel looks far away but is high up, assume the horizontal distance is shorter than it appears. If you know your 30‑yard zero well, compare the squirrel’s horizontal distance to familiar ground markers. A 25‑yard zero is often more forgiving for angle shooting than a 35‑yard zero, which might be a consideration if you’ll be hunting the deeper woods. Heavier pellets with slower velocities exaggerate the effect and lighter pellets flatten it slightly.

Whether you’re shooting uphill into a towering oak or downhill into a creek bottom, the pellet will strike higher than it would on level ground at the same slant distance. Gravity acts only on the horizontal component of the shot, not on the full line‑of‑sight distance.

Once you understand that, and once you start aiming lower on every slanted shot—you’ll stop missing squirrels that should have been easy. You’ll make cleaner, more confident shots, and you’ll spend a lot less time muttering under your breath in the woods. Angle shooting isn’t complicated. It’s just misunderstood. Master it, and your squirrel‑hunting success rate will jump overnight.

A chronograph is one of the most valuable and overlooked tools an airgun hunter can own. Airguns operate in a narrow performance band where small changes in velocity can dramatically affect accuracy, trajectory, and terminal performance. A chronograph gives hunters the hard data needed to keep their rifles at peak performance in the field.

Airguns don’t have the luxury of excess energy. A shift of just 30-40 fps can move your point of impact enough to turn a clean kill into a wounded animal. That’s why understanding a rifle’s true velocity, not the number printed on the box, is essential.
What a chronograph does for a hunter is to help ensure velocity consistency, revealing the extreme spread and standard deviation, the two numbers that determine whether your rifle is predictable. It allows evaluation of a regulator’s health by detecting creeping, dropping, or unstable behavior before accuracy degrades.

A chronograph helps you identify the best rifle-and-ammo combination by showing which pellets or slugs your barrel shoots most consistently. Even projectiles with the same shape and weight can perform very differently from one manufacturer to another. If you need a specific setup for a particular hunting application, chronograph data lets you tune the rifle for optimal performance with that projectile.

My portable shooting bench and the gear I use. Calipers, pellet scales, lazer bore sighter, trigger pull gauge, notebook, bipod, on a portable shooting table. Can take this anywhere to test guns.

Measurements from the chronograph are used to map the trajectory of your rifle-and-ammo combination, turning the output of a ballistic application from guesswork into very accurate metrics by feeding it real velocity data. In essence, this confirms whether adjustments to the hammer spring, transfer port, or regulator actually improved performance.

To put this in practical terms for a hunter, if you are zeroed at 30 yards and your rifle normally shoots an 18‑grain pellet at 880 fps, but the regulator has begun to creep so that the actual velocity is now 840 fps, at 50 yards, that drop can shift your impact by an inch or more. This is the difference between a clean squirrel kill and a wounded animal. A chronograph would have caught the issue before you stepped into the woods.

I don’t think you typically need a chronograph in the field, but having a portable chronograph in your range bag is an absolute necessity if you tune your gun or shoot different projectiles. It is also critical to periodically check your gun, especially when performance starts to shift. Units like the Garmin Xero C1 Pro are compact, Bluetooth-enabled, and capable of live velocity tracking while you shoot groups. For hunters who tune their own rifles, this is transformative. In my experience, this model is the best chronograph I’ve ever used, both in terms of ease of use and accuracy.

This is why I believe a chronograph is an exceedingly important tool for tuning a hunting rifle: it shows what the rifle is actually doing, not what you assume or what the owner’s manual specifications suggest.

One application in which I think airguns are the best practical choice is pest control in urban areas. This is the type of shooting that calls for pigeons to be culled from under the roof of an industrial building or clearing rabbits off of a suburban golf course. In both cases these pests can have a negative health and or economic impact, and need to be removed. While the shooting environments can vary widely, there are some common threads: the need for precision, minimal but effective power, reduced noise levels, compact and discreet gun designs, and high shot count are applicable to most situations.

This urban dairy farm has equipment, buildings, livestock, and workers, and you urban shooting rig needs to be up to the task!

The optimal urban hunting gun is one that it is accurate enough to precisely place a pellet in a ½” kill zone at the required range, and is powerful enough to ensure a clean kill. The gun should be capable of surgical precision out to thirty to forty yards. I’ve been shooting a few different guns that fall into the category of urban hunters which I’ll discuss later in this post. All of these guns are capable of shooting ragged one-hole 35-yard groups all day long. With respect to energy output, note that the earlier statement was “powerful enough”; often this type of shooting takes place in close confines, so a magnum power output is not necessarily a beneficial quality. You are often hunting around industrial equipment or buildings, and don’t want a missed shot or over penetration to cause damage to either. For shooting pigeons or English sparrows around an industrial facility, a .177 at 650 fps is more than enough gun. A gun that has an adjustable power setting is an asset for urban hunting.

The reason a compact or take-down design is a positive attribute is that the urban hunter will want to move into their shoot without drawing a great deal of attention to themselves. One of the places I did rabbit control was a nursery located near an industrial park. To get back to the nursery area, I had to park in a lot shared by the nursery and one of the office buildings. Walking along with a full-sized rifle tucked under my arm was not going to work. I have a few rifles that allow me to throw the gun in a backpack, walk onto my shoot, assemble the gun and do my shooting, break it down, and head back out to the car afterwards.

The Ranger is accurate, compact, and quiet

An example of a great urban hunting rig is the ultra-compact Brocock Ranger. The Ranger’s folding stock allows it to collapse to extremely small dimensions, down to roughly 17” depending on configuration, making it easy to transport in a small backpack or even a laptop bag. Weighing in at 5.5 lbs, it is one of the lightest full‑power hunting rifles available, ideal for navigating tight spaces like alleys, garages, attics, and backyards.

The gun is capable of generating up to 20 fpe, but includes a multi‑step power adjustment, allowing shooters to tune the rifle for low‑power shots in residential areas or higher power for tougher pests.  The ability to dial down power allows shooters to avoid over‑penetration while still delivering quick and efficient kills. The removable moderator and regulated action help keep the rifle very quiet, a major advantage when working in noise‑sensitive environments.

Adjustable power allows gun to be tailored to a specific application.

Accuracy is always important, but perhaps more so in a compact urban rig. The Ranger uses a match‑grade barrel paired with a Huma‑regulated floating hammer system, producing consistent velocities and tight groups for precision shot placement around buildings, equipment, and workers.  I find the Ranger an excellent option for pigeons, rats, ground squirrels, and iguanas, and have used it extensively in industrial, agricultural, and suburban settings.

Backpack ready with stock folded, it is quick to deploy when it’s time for action.

The Ranger provides the performance of a full sized gun. in an Ultra-compact package!

So, to summarize, the urban hunting gun should be compact, have the appropriate power level (not too much not too little), and have a low sound signature. With the right gun, the urban hunter/pest controller will have access to pest shooting areas not available to larger, louder, and more powerful gun. This will, in turn, open many shooting opportunities in areas where other options might be scarce.

I was recently asked about my preferences in scopes for hunting with an airgun. While in general, I do adhere to the principle of getting the best glass you can afford, the answer is a bit more nuanced. In this post, I’m going to focus more on key attributes I look for rather than a specific model/brand of scope.

One of my favorite scopes for long range shooting these days is the MTC King Cobra FFP scope.

My preferences are driven by the rifle the scope is being mounted on, the range at which it will be used, the balance between bright and low light conditions I expect to encounter, and the size of my quarry’s kill zone.

For the guns I will use on small or medium game at closer ranges (<60 yards), my preference is for a more compact scope design, with a 1” or 30 mm tube, a 40 mm objective, and low-profile turrets. Variable magnification is preferable to fixed magnification, and I think a 3-9x scope covers the range of potential field uses, from small game at 10 yards to the occasional stretch at 60 or 70 yards. The thing that puts me off high magnification scopes (for this application) is that they tend to be larger, heavier, and require more time to adjust in typical small game hunting scenarios.

I think a 32–40 mm objective lens is good for this application, with 40 mm the best overall choice because it balances brightness, weight, and low mounting height. It typically supports good light transmission for dawn/dusk squirrel or rabbit hunting, and works well at a 3-9 x scope magnification, which I consider the sweet spot for this type of setup. When I am in the Northern woods after squirrels or snowshoe hare, it is not unusual to walk several miles in rough terrain or thick brush, so keeping the hunting rig light and compact is a primary requirement in my estimation. The larger dimension of a higher magnification scope without the actual need for the higher magnification capability is hard for me to justify.

A compact scope like the Hawke AirMax isis the perfect option on a compact hunting rifle.

On the other hand, when I am putting together a longer-range rig for prairie dogs or groundhogs, there is a lot to be said for a higher magnification scope on my hunting rifle. These requirements vary in a couple of important ways from the small game rig already described. I am often shooting between 75 to 150 yards when out after prairie dogs, and the guns I use for this tend to be longer, heavier, and not carried long distances compared to my standard rig. So, a heavier scope is not a hindrance, and in fact can help stabilize a gun typically shot from a bipod. The high magnification is useful in imaging a sub-inch kill zone on a prairie dog 125 yards away, and any reduction in low light capabilities is mitigated by the fact that most of this shooting is done in bright daylight.

With respect to FFP vs SFP, I like both and use both, but again find this depends on the use case. Based on the two use cases discussed above, my preference for a standard small game rigs is an SFP scope. The reticle visibility stays thick at low magnification, making it easier to see in brush, shadows, and early morning light. I find that this provides fast target acquisition—critical for shooting small game that is constantly moving. Also, at the sub-60-yard ranges, a Simple holdover at your chosen zero magnification is fast and easy to use. I find that when using a through-scope camera, the FFP reticles can become too thin at low power, and some of my shooting buddies find this true for woodland hunting in general. FFP scopes tend to be more expensive, which is harder to justify for a gun primarily intended for close-range shooting.

But there are times when FFP is useful. For long-range airgun shooting (60–150 yards) where consistent subtensions at any magnification matter, they allow a more consistent and precise shot placement. This is especially true when coupled with optimized reticles that can provide accurate scaling. As mentioned, my long-range shooting rigs are used in an environment where I don’t mind the extra weight and size of a high-magnification FFP scope. And in these scopes, I am fine with a larger 44 mm or 50 mm objective that requires high-profile mounts.

For most airgun hunting, the best reticles are the ones that help you make fast, accurate shots at varying distances, often in imperfect light and on small targets. Unlike benchrest, hunting demands speed, visibility, and simple, reliable holdover estimation. While reticles are a point of personal preference to some degree, I like an uncluttered system, yet one that still has adequate aimpoints. For scopes on my standard small game guns, I like a BDC or a mil-dot reticle. They are simple to use, quick to deploy, and typically easy to see in low-light conditions. On my long-range rigs, I will often use more exotic configurations such as a Christmas tree reticle, which, when paired to an FFP scope, is extremely precise though a bit more fidgety.

Again, these are broad considerations when selecting the scopes for my rifles. Once you find a scope that has good quality glass with good light transmission characteristics, tactile and stable windage and elevation controls, and an AO that is easily adjusted on the fly, consider the other characteristic we discussed to decide what best fits your needs. There are a lot of quality scopes out there for airgunners these days, and I use a lot of MTC and Hawke scopes myself. They have gained my confidence over the years for their performance, reliability, and build quality, and while not inexpensive, they are reasonably priced and provide good value for money.