Dry firing Practice

Not sure this is the right tread section for this but I have a question regarding dry firing. This is on a 110 model action if it matters any.

Is this bad for the firing pin or riffle? Is this why they sell those caps? are they required.

How do you go about dry fire practice. What type of drills can you do.

I would like to get better at my shooting fundamentals and I am not sure where to start. This may be too much of an open ended question, but i want to hear what ever you have to say regarding dry fire practice.

Thanks in advance.

I believe it's generally considered safe to dry fire centerfire type weapons. Rimfire, however, can/will smash the firing pin on the barrel face and can cause damage.

Centerfire snap caps can be great for verifying action cycling as well as used in failure scenarios. Hide one in the middle of a good magazine and have someone work through the motions of tap and rack (at least for pistols). They can also help with learning to not anticipate and overcompensate for recoil.

I personally never use them in rifles....but I do dryfire to memorize how a certain trigger breaks.

Dry firing won’t hurt your savage. I dry fire the crap out of mine. I use it to familiarize myself with the trigger more than anything. Each time I shoot I dry fire first. Even hunting I sometimes unload the gun and just dry fire to practice scenarios for shooting game in different locations or follow up shots etc. Actually cycling the action and firing can only help improve your skills as a shooter. Live or dry fire. Although live fire does add some things like recoil and noise that dry firing can’t mimic. I usually pick out bark on trees or other very small natural foliage and practice like that. Vs setting up an actual target. The snap caps do come in handy although some cycle better than others. I use them when someone develops a flinch. Start with just snap caps. Then introduce live rounds. Then load the mag with both. Generally you’ll see vast improvement in a short period of time. Given the fact the shooter isn’t scared of the rifle in general. I also set a dime balancing on the end of the barrel when I dry fire. Just to see if I can keep it balanced. Some shooters flinch so much that it’s almost hard to tell if the rifle actually went off or not with the snap cap. I never seen negative effects from dry firing for these scenarios

Agreed with everyone's comments. I don't use snap caps but It wouldn't hurt to use them. Best trigger control, rifle to body, body position etc.... I've ever accomplished was when I decided to make my own targets. I used a thick red permanent marker and made 3 inch red cross hairs using a ruler of course. I placed the paper target out to about 90 yards. I then line up the cross hairs on my scope to the red cross hairs on the paper target. When you put your cross hairs and place them over the red cross hairs you'll see the red cross hairs disappear. If there's any movement the red cross hairs will reappear. If there's no movement during you pulling the trigger then the cross hairs will stay black. Works for me

when teaching my grandsons to shoot long distance I worked on trigger control and follow through using dry firing. . Every time we shot which was often. Even now, years later, they still start every shooting session with dry fire working on trigger control and following through. They are dead shoots at any range.