The Wiry Irishman
Member
I've been mentoring a few new shooters on Purdue's pistol team (I hesitate to call it coaching, as that's someone else's job, and I'm not sure I have the abilities and experience to do a proper job of it) and to aid in that I typed up a brief document on the basics of bullseye shooting and pistol marksmanship in general. I'm kind of intending this to be a living document, constantly updated and improved, so I would really appreciate some feedback from shooters on the forum with more knowledge and experience than myself. Additions, advice, things I got wrong, etc. Thanks in advance!
Introduction
I’m not a state or national champion, nor have I ever actually won a Bullseye match, but I have become a pretty competent shot with a pistol. More importantly, I have had the fairly unique experience of starting in competition from zero pistol shooting experience, which I believe gives me a very good perspective for providing basic advice and training for new pistol shooters.
To this end, I’ve put together a short list of basic advice, techniques, and practice regimens that have helped me rapidly and effectively increase my marksmanship abilities. I will start with shooting technique, ordered from when you step up to your shooting position to when you acquire your sights and eventually pull the trigger. Afterwards is a basic and effective practice regimen, as well as a brief description of the events in which you will be participating.
Stance
While you have surely already become familiar with the basic one-handed bullseye stance from watching other shooters at practice, there is one additional item to keep in mind that is not often discussed, and that is what to do with your non-shooting hand. If you leave your non-shooting hand free at your side, it will act as a pendulum, moving slightly whenever the rest of your body moves, which in turn imparts more motion back to your body, leading to increased error. Your non-shooting hand should be secured in some way to prevent this. How this is done varies from shooter to shooter, some choosing to put a hand in their pocket, tucking a thumb in their belt, or even inserting their first four fingers into the waistband of their pants. I personally found tucking a thumb into my pocket the most effective method, but you should experiment with all of them to see what works best for you.
Natural point of aim
This is possibly one of the most valuable pieces of advice I have ever received, and properly implemented, has the potential to instantly and drastically reduce your group size. In the most basic, mechanical sense, you can think of your body as a system of rods and springs. Your bones are the rods, your muscles the springs. This system, when left to its own devices, will find balance and come to rest in a given position. This is your natural point of aim. By altering your natural point of aim to coincide with your proper site picture, you can eliminate the slight tremors that come with moving or “muscling” your pistol onto target, as well as reducing the physical fatigue associated with this.
To locate your natural point of aim, assume your shooting stance, then with an unloaded gun, raise your pistol onto target. At this point, close your eyes for a few seconds. By depriving your brain of visual input, you remove the subconscious tendency to move the sights onto the target, allowing your body to relax into its natural position. Open your eyes and without moving the pistol, acquire your sites. This is where your natural point of aim is, and more than likely, it is nowhere near the six o’clock point on the bullseye where you want to be aiming. By moving your feet, you can adjust where on the target your natural point of aim is. By moving your strong-side foot (right foot for right-handed people, left foot for left-handed people) right or left you can move your natural point of aim right and left, and by moving your weak-side foot back and forth, you can adjust your natural point of aim up and down.
Each time you move your foot, close your eyes again and allow your body to relax and re-acquire its natural point of aim. Repeat this process over and over until your body naturally places your sites right on the proper six o’clock hold on the bullseye. During this process, do not hesitate to set your firearm down and rest, as you do not want to build up undue fatigue in your arms before you start shooting. It should also be noted that the body has a tendency to “settle” after some time shooting, altering your natural point of aim, most often downwards. To combat this, you should, if possible, adjust your natural point of aim after every five shot string.
Grip
Holding your firearm is a much more complex task with much more impact on your on-target accuracy and requiring much more practice to master than you might expect. The end goal of a proper grip is total isolation of force and motion. Every force applied or motion made with an individual finger can and will affect the rest of your hand, which in turn effects your gun and your shot placement on target.
The actual “power” of your grip, what you actually use for maintaining control of your pistol and holding it on target, should come from your middle and ring finger. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, this is where the majority of your hand’s strength is located, especially since your index finger is otherwise occupied with trigger control. The second, and most important reason, however, is that pressure exerted with your pinky finger will actually lead to a small downward jerk of the pistol’s muzzle when the trigger is pulled, making your shots hit lower than point of aim on target. Your pinky should be as relaxed as possible.
The same basic principle applies for your thumb, as well. While your natural instinct will be to grip together with your thumb and fingers for a stronger grip, this will have a negative effect on your on-target accuracy. Pressure exerted by your thumb will push your pistol sideways when fired, pushing your shots away from the bullseye in the direction opposite your thumb. Just like your pinky, your thumb should be relaxed as possible. This will feel very odd at first, but with practice you will become used to it.
Grip strength is important as well. The recoil process begins as soon as the powder inside the cartridge is ignited, and the gun begins moving in reaction to recoil force before the bullet exits the barrel. Because of this, a strong, consistent grip is a necessity. If your grip is weak, the movement under recoil will be extreme and nearly random, drastically increasing your group size. When you pick up your pistol, grip as hard as you can until your hand starts to shake, then reduce pressure slowly until the shaking stops.
Sight Picture
The basics of sight alignment are very simple and do not need to be restated here, but there is one very important factor that should always be kept in mind. You need to focus on the front sight. The human eye, just like any optical device, has a limited depth of field, or, in simpler terms, a range of distance in which everything is in sharp focus. When shooting with iron sights, this essentially leaves you with a choice as to what you want to be in focus, the rear sight, the front sight, or the target. In making this choice, one must consider where the error and imprecision caused by out-of-focus objects will have the least effect. If only the target is in focus, both your front and rear sight will be blurry, and while this may seem like it will give you a reasonable idea of where the front sight is in relation to the bullseye, it will make it virtually impossible to properly alight the front post inside the rear notch, resulting in massive variability in your bullet’s point of impact. If only the rear sight is in focus, your front post will be blurry, which also makes it difficult to properly align it inside the rear notch, as well as aligning it with the bullseye. By far the best option is to always have the front sight in focus, which both allows for a precise alignment with the bullseye, as well as a precise alignment inside the rear notch, which, although out of focus, will still be relatively crisp.
Trigger Control
Trigger control is by far the most important part of consistent, repeatable accuracy. Anyone with decent muscle tone can hold sights on target, but how you pull the trigger is what defines where the bullet actually impacts where the sights are pointing. As discussed previously, isolation of motion within the hand is critical to consistency in shooting, and nowhere is it more important that in the actual pull of the trigger. When your index finger moves to depress the trigger, there is great potential for the movement to propagate to the rest of your hand and move the pistol. To minimize this possibility, your trigger pull should be as straight rearward as possible, utilizing motion only in the last two knuckles.
Not only is the actual trigger pull itself filled with potential for error, but there are several physical and psychological aspects surrounding it with just as much or more potential to pull you off target. The location of the trigger on your finger is very important. Too little finger on the trigger can pull your shots to your strong side, too much can pull it to your weak side. The pad of the tip of your index finger should be on the trigger, roughly halfway between your last knuckle and the tip of your finger. This can be problem for shooters with small hands, but can be addressed by smaller grips that allow for a greater trigger reach.
The greatest psychological aspect affecting trigger pull is the anticipation of recoil. While this may seem like a moot point given the very mild recoil impulse of .22 pistols, Bullseye’s intense focus on precision and small adjustments can more than make up for this. When a shooter anticipates the recoil of a firearm, they tend to move the gun to preemptively compensate for recoil as they pull the trigger. This most typically manifests itself as shots hitting low and to the shooter’s weak side. Another aspect that can lead to very similar error is jerking the trigger. If the trigger is pulled too quickly and with too much force, it will move the entire gun. Thus the act of depressing the trigger should not be thought of as a “pull” but as a “squeeze.” You should exert slow, increasing pressure on the trigger, and when it breaks and the gun fires, this should be a surprise to you.
This concept will seem very abstract to the novice shooter, but there are a variety of practice routines and methods of concentration that build familiarity. A proper trigger pull should be totally instinctual and divorced completely from conscious thought. You do this by developing muscle memory, the constant repetition of a task until it becomes physical instinct rather than conscious action. One of the easiest ways to do this is to occupy the conscious mind while your gun is on target. Many shooters choose to do this by constantly repeating “front sight, front sight, front sight” to themselves while aiming. This both serves to keep your conscious mind occupied so as to not over-think your trigger pull and to remind you to keep the front sight in focus. Building your index finger’s muscle memory, however, is a much longer process that requires a great deal of practice. The best way to address both this and other possible errors such as anticipating recoil is dry fire practice, a concept discussed later in this document.
Follow-through
The final aspect to proper trigger control is follow-through. When the trigger breaks and the gun fires, you should not do anything else for a few moments. Don’t start to reset the trigger or bring the gun down into a resting or low ready position, just maintain your position. This has two benefits. The first is that it makes it much easier for you to “call your shots,” or identify what went right and wrong with each pull of the trigger, and through this knowing where your shot ended up before looking at the target. The second benefit is related to the concept of muscle memory discussed previously. If you do not have good follow through, as you continue to repeat whatever you do after the shot, be it resetting the trigger or bringing the gun down, you will subconsciously become more comfortable and more efficient at doing this to the point where it will actually encroach on the act of shooting itself and pull your shots off target.
Physical Conditioning
Shooting is fairly unique in that no other sport or daily activity requires you to hold a weight stationary at arm’s length. As such, even people in peak physical condition will have trouble shooting for extended periods of time without significant shaking. There are two ways to address this. The first is to just shoot a lot until your muscles develop and the shaking goes away. If you wish to accelerate the process, however, fill a gallon jug with water, and whenever you aren’t doing something that requires both hands, hold it at arms length until you can’t, set it down and rest, then repeat.
Also beneficial to holding a gun up for an extended period of time, especially while temporarily holding your breath for optimum steadiness, is enhancing you body’s ability to take in and make use of oxygen. And regular cardio workout will do, but I’ve found running a few miles a day can work wonders.
Dry Fire Practice
Dry fire practice, or practicing your trigger pull with an unloaded gun, is possibly the cheapest, most effective way to increase your effective accuracy. There are a few different methods for doing this that will be discussed shortly, but for all of them, the basic concept remains the same. After properly checking and re-checking your gun to make sure it is unloaded, acquire your sights and go through your proper trigger squeeze with the goal of getting the trigger to break without the sights moving. My favored method is to hang a piece of paper with a small dot drawn on it on the wall and sighting on that. Some people balance a dime on their front sight and try to pull the trigger without it falling off. Laser sights (or just a laser pointer and some tape) can be very beneficial for this as well. By keeping your eye on the laser dot as you pull the trigger, all the movements you make will be greatly exaggerated in the movement of the dot, making it very easy to diagnose any problems you may be having. Dedicated dry fire practice for just a few minutes a day can have enormous effects on your live-fire accuracy. Dry fire can also serve as an on-the-spot treatment for problems encountered while shooting. If you find yourself anticipating recoil, stop, unload your gun, and dry fire a few times. Keep a close eye on your front sight, and you should see that it jerks downward as you pull the trigger. Concentrate on dry firing without the sights moving until the jerk disappears. Repeat a few more times after this to solidify the habit, then reload and continue with live fire.
The 100 round practice routine
Being a member of the Purdue Rifle and Pistol Club, especially as an on-campus college student, can greatly limit your time and ability to get good, structured practice. What follows is the practice routine I used for many years that is both friendly to a college student’s budget and to the time allotted for practice in the armory. It requires only two boxes of ammo and fits nicely into the split two hour periods in which the club practices.
For the first half of practice, hang four slow fire targets. For those unfamiliar with the different courses of fire in bullseye competition, a short description of each is included at the end of the document. Fire tend shots at each of the targets, just as you would during the slow fire portion of a competition. Check your target through your scope after every shot. The instant feedback this gives you is incredibly useful for indentifying errors and building your ability to call your shots. It is important to do this without breaking your stance and altering your natural point of aim, so a scope stand is crucial. Your first slow fire target is your warm-up, to get you used to shooting again and ridding yourself of the rustiness you’ve built up over the last week. Save the other three and score them.
During the target change, hang six timed and rapid fire targets. You will be shooting three of each course of fire. It is best to get a coach or friend to time you and call out range commands, as it is closest to a competition environment, but this is not always possible. An .mp3 player with ear buds under your hearing protection and timed and rapid fire command audio files can work almost as well. Be sure to check your target through your scope after every five shot string to indentify errors and enhance your ability to call your shots. Make sure to keep your targets and score them.
After shooting is done, score your targets and analyze errors for patterns indicative of mistakes you have been making. Its best to start this with the help of a coach or someone more knowledgeable than yourself to help you learn, but after a while you’ll be able to do a pretty good job on your own. Also important is setting progressively higher goals for yourself as you progress. This keeps you motivated to always be increasing your overall score. I would highly recommend participating in the NRA junior marksmanship qualification program, as I can point to this as the most significant contributor to my own personal improvement. After you’ve done this routine for a while and become more comfortable with indentifying your problems and the art of marksmanship in general, you can start to focus on individual courses of fire that you are weak in. For example, shooting an entire practice of nothing but rapid fire if your rapid fire scores have been particularly weak or inconsistent.
Introduction
I’m not a state or national champion, nor have I ever actually won a Bullseye match, but I have become a pretty competent shot with a pistol. More importantly, I have had the fairly unique experience of starting in competition from zero pistol shooting experience, which I believe gives me a very good perspective for providing basic advice and training for new pistol shooters.
To this end, I’ve put together a short list of basic advice, techniques, and practice regimens that have helped me rapidly and effectively increase my marksmanship abilities. I will start with shooting technique, ordered from when you step up to your shooting position to when you acquire your sights and eventually pull the trigger. Afterwards is a basic and effective practice regimen, as well as a brief description of the events in which you will be participating.
Stance
While you have surely already become familiar with the basic one-handed bullseye stance from watching other shooters at practice, there is one additional item to keep in mind that is not often discussed, and that is what to do with your non-shooting hand. If you leave your non-shooting hand free at your side, it will act as a pendulum, moving slightly whenever the rest of your body moves, which in turn imparts more motion back to your body, leading to increased error. Your non-shooting hand should be secured in some way to prevent this. How this is done varies from shooter to shooter, some choosing to put a hand in their pocket, tucking a thumb in their belt, or even inserting their first four fingers into the waistband of their pants. I personally found tucking a thumb into my pocket the most effective method, but you should experiment with all of them to see what works best for you.
Natural point of aim
This is possibly one of the most valuable pieces of advice I have ever received, and properly implemented, has the potential to instantly and drastically reduce your group size. In the most basic, mechanical sense, you can think of your body as a system of rods and springs. Your bones are the rods, your muscles the springs. This system, when left to its own devices, will find balance and come to rest in a given position. This is your natural point of aim. By altering your natural point of aim to coincide with your proper site picture, you can eliminate the slight tremors that come with moving or “muscling” your pistol onto target, as well as reducing the physical fatigue associated with this.
To locate your natural point of aim, assume your shooting stance, then with an unloaded gun, raise your pistol onto target. At this point, close your eyes for a few seconds. By depriving your brain of visual input, you remove the subconscious tendency to move the sights onto the target, allowing your body to relax into its natural position. Open your eyes and without moving the pistol, acquire your sites. This is where your natural point of aim is, and more than likely, it is nowhere near the six o’clock point on the bullseye where you want to be aiming. By moving your feet, you can adjust where on the target your natural point of aim is. By moving your strong-side foot (right foot for right-handed people, left foot for left-handed people) right or left you can move your natural point of aim right and left, and by moving your weak-side foot back and forth, you can adjust your natural point of aim up and down.
Each time you move your foot, close your eyes again and allow your body to relax and re-acquire its natural point of aim. Repeat this process over and over until your body naturally places your sites right on the proper six o’clock hold on the bullseye. During this process, do not hesitate to set your firearm down and rest, as you do not want to build up undue fatigue in your arms before you start shooting. It should also be noted that the body has a tendency to “settle” after some time shooting, altering your natural point of aim, most often downwards. To combat this, you should, if possible, adjust your natural point of aim after every five shot string.
Grip
Holding your firearm is a much more complex task with much more impact on your on-target accuracy and requiring much more practice to master than you might expect. The end goal of a proper grip is total isolation of force and motion. Every force applied or motion made with an individual finger can and will affect the rest of your hand, which in turn effects your gun and your shot placement on target.
The actual “power” of your grip, what you actually use for maintaining control of your pistol and holding it on target, should come from your middle and ring finger. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, this is where the majority of your hand’s strength is located, especially since your index finger is otherwise occupied with trigger control. The second, and most important reason, however, is that pressure exerted with your pinky finger will actually lead to a small downward jerk of the pistol’s muzzle when the trigger is pulled, making your shots hit lower than point of aim on target. Your pinky should be as relaxed as possible.
The same basic principle applies for your thumb, as well. While your natural instinct will be to grip together with your thumb and fingers for a stronger grip, this will have a negative effect on your on-target accuracy. Pressure exerted by your thumb will push your pistol sideways when fired, pushing your shots away from the bullseye in the direction opposite your thumb. Just like your pinky, your thumb should be relaxed as possible. This will feel very odd at first, but with practice you will become used to it.
Grip strength is important as well. The recoil process begins as soon as the powder inside the cartridge is ignited, and the gun begins moving in reaction to recoil force before the bullet exits the barrel. Because of this, a strong, consistent grip is a necessity. If your grip is weak, the movement under recoil will be extreme and nearly random, drastically increasing your group size. When you pick up your pistol, grip as hard as you can until your hand starts to shake, then reduce pressure slowly until the shaking stops.
Sight Picture
The basics of sight alignment are very simple and do not need to be restated here, but there is one very important factor that should always be kept in mind. You need to focus on the front sight. The human eye, just like any optical device, has a limited depth of field, or, in simpler terms, a range of distance in which everything is in sharp focus. When shooting with iron sights, this essentially leaves you with a choice as to what you want to be in focus, the rear sight, the front sight, or the target. In making this choice, one must consider where the error and imprecision caused by out-of-focus objects will have the least effect. If only the target is in focus, both your front and rear sight will be blurry, and while this may seem like it will give you a reasonable idea of where the front sight is in relation to the bullseye, it will make it virtually impossible to properly alight the front post inside the rear notch, resulting in massive variability in your bullet’s point of impact. If only the rear sight is in focus, your front post will be blurry, which also makes it difficult to properly align it inside the rear notch, as well as aligning it with the bullseye. By far the best option is to always have the front sight in focus, which both allows for a precise alignment with the bullseye, as well as a precise alignment inside the rear notch, which, although out of focus, will still be relatively crisp.
Trigger Control
Trigger control is by far the most important part of consistent, repeatable accuracy. Anyone with decent muscle tone can hold sights on target, but how you pull the trigger is what defines where the bullet actually impacts where the sights are pointing. As discussed previously, isolation of motion within the hand is critical to consistency in shooting, and nowhere is it more important that in the actual pull of the trigger. When your index finger moves to depress the trigger, there is great potential for the movement to propagate to the rest of your hand and move the pistol. To minimize this possibility, your trigger pull should be as straight rearward as possible, utilizing motion only in the last two knuckles.
Not only is the actual trigger pull itself filled with potential for error, but there are several physical and psychological aspects surrounding it with just as much or more potential to pull you off target. The location of the trigger on your finger is very important. Too little finger on the trigger can pull your shots to your strong side, too much can pull it to your weak side. The pad of the tip of your index finger should be on the trigger, roughly halfway between your last knuckle and the tip of your finger. This can be problem for shooters with small hands, but can be addressed by smaller grips that allow for a greater trigger reach.
The greatest psychological aspect affecting trigger pull is the anticipation of recoil. While this may seem like a moot point given the very mild recoil impulse of .22 pistols, Bullseye’s intense focus on precision and small adjustments can more than make up for this. When a shooter anticipates the recoil of a firearm, they tend to move the gun to preemptively compensate for recoil as they pull the trigger. This most typically manifests itself as shots hitting low and to the shooter’s weak side. Another aspect that can lead to very similar error is jerking the trigger. If the trigger is pulled too quickly and with too much force, it will move the entire gun. Thus the act of depressing the trigger should not be thought of as a “pull” but as a “squeeze.” You should exert slow, increasing pressure on the trigger, and when it breaks and the gun fires, this should be a surprise to you.
This concept will seem very abstract to the novice shooter, but there are a variety of practice routines and methods of concentration that build familiarity. A proper trigger pull should be totally instinctual and divorced completely from conscious thought. You do this by developing muscle memory, the constant repetition of a task until it becomes physical instinct rather than conscious action. One of the easiest ways to do this is to occupy the conscious mind while your gun is on target. Many shooters choose to do this by constantly repeating “front sight, front sight, front sight” to themselves while aiming. This both serves to keep your conscious mind occupied so as to not over-think your trigger pull and to remind you to keep the front sight in focus. Building your index finger’s muscle memory, however, is a much longer process that requires a great deal of practice. The best way to address both this and other possible errors such as anticipating recoil is dry fire practice, a concept discussed later in this document.
Follow-through
The final aspect to proper trigger control is follow-through. When the trigger breaks and the gun fires, you should not do anything else for a few moments. Don’t start to reset the trigger or bring the gun down into a resting or low ready position, just maintain your position. This has two benefits. The first is that it makes it much easier for you to “call your shots,” or identify what went right and wrong with each pull of the trigger, and through this knowing where your shot ended up before looking at the target. The second benefit is related to the concept of muscle memory discussed previously. If you do not have good follow through, as you continue to repeat whatever you do after the shot, be it resetting the trigger or bringing the gun down, you will subconsciously become more comfortable and more efficient at doing this to the point where it will actually encroach on the act of shooting itself and pull your shots off target.
Physical Conditioning
Shooting is fairly unique in that no other sport or daily activity requires you to hold a weight stationary at arm’s length. As such, even people in peak physical condition will have trouble shooting for extended periods of time without significant shaking. There are two ways to address this. The first is to just shoot a lot until your muscles develop and the shaking goes away. If you wish to accelerate the process, however, fill a gallon jug with water, and whenever you aren’t doing something that requires both hands, hold it at arms length until you can’t, set it down and rest, then repeat.
Also beneficial to holding a gun up for an extended period of time, especially while temporarily holding your breath for optimum steadiness, is enhancing you body’s ability to take in and make use of oxygen. And regular cardio workout will do, but I’ve found running a few miles a day can work wonders.
Dry Fire Practice
Dry fire practice, or practicing your trigger pull with an unloaded gun, is possibly the cheapest, most effective way to increase your effective accuracy. There are a few different methods for doing this that will be discussed shortly, but for all of them, the basic concept remains the same. After properly checking and re-checking your gun to make sure it is unloaded, acquire your sights and go through your proper trigger squeeze with the goal of getting the trigger to break without the sights moving. My favored method is to hang a piece of paper with a small dot drawn on it on the wall and sighting on that. Some people balance a dime on their front sight and try to pull the trigger without it falling off. Laser sights (or just a laser pointer and some tape) can be very beneficial for this as well. By keeping your eye on the laser dot as you pull the trigger, all the movements you make will be greatly exaggerated in the movement of the dot, making it very easy to diagnose any problems you may be having. Dedicated dry fire practice for just a few minutes a day can have enormous effects on your live-fire accuracy. Dry fire can also serve as an on-the-spot treatment for problems encountered while shooting. If you find yourself anticipating recoil, stop, unload your gun, and dry fire a few times. Keep a close eye on your front sight, and you should see that it jerks downward as you pull the trigger. Concentrate on dry firing without the sights moving until the jerk disappears. Repeat a few more times after this to solidify the habit, then reload and continue with live fire.
The 100 round practice routine
Being a member of the Purdue Rifle and Pistol Club, especially as an on-campus college student, can greatly limit your time and ability to get good, structured practice. What follows is the practice routine I used for many years that is both friendly to a college student’s budget and to the time allotted for practice in the armory. It requires only two boxes of ammo and fits nicely into the split two hour periods in which the club practices.
For the first half of practice, hang four slow fire targets. For those unfamiliar with the different courses of fire in bullseye competition, a short description of each is included at the end of the document. Fire tend shots at each of the targets, just as you would during the slow fire portion of a competition. Check your target through your scope after every shot. The instant feedback this gives you is incredibly useful for indentifying errors and building your ability to call your shots. It is important to do this without breaking your stance and altering your natural point of aim, so a scope stand is crucial. Your first slow fire target is your warm-up, to get you used to shooting again and ridding yourself of the rustiness you’ve built up over the last week. Save the other three and score them.
During the target change, hang six timed and rapid fire targets. You will be shooting three of each course of fire. It is best to get a coach or friend to time you and call out range commands, as it is closest to a competition environment, but this is not always possible. An .mp3 player with ear buds under your hearing protection and timed and rapid fire command audio files can work almost as well. Be sure to check your target through your scope after every five shot string to indentify errors and enhance your ability to call your shots. Make sure to keep your targets and score them.
After shooting is done, score your targets and analyze errors for patterns indicative of mistakes you have been making. Its best to start this with the help of a coach or someone more knowledgeable than yourself to help you learn, but after a while you’ll be able to do a pretty good job on your own. Also important is setting progressively higher goals for yourself as you progress. This keeps you motivated to always be increasing your overall score. I would highly recommend participating in the NRA junior marksmanship qualification program, as I can point to this as the most significant contributor to my own personal improvement. After you’ve done this routine for a while and become more comfortable with indentifying your problems and the art of marksmanship in general, you can start to focus on individual courses of fire that you are weak in. For example, shooting an entire practice of nothing but rapid fire if your rapid fire scores have been particularly weak or inconsistent.
