Shooting pistols off of sandbags

[Dilettante]

To test my gun and improve my sight acquisition I've been shooting off of sandbags.
I am not sure that I'm doing this right. The bench is low enough that I pretty much have to sit down in order to make the shots, and sighting is a little awkward.
It does improve my left-to-right consistency, quite a bit. I tested this by shooting at graph paper from 7 yds.
With a sandbag, the standard deviation of the x coordinate (horizontal error) goes from about 1" to 1/6". I should probably do better, but I feel like I've got the idea right.

But the standard deviation of the y coordinate (vertical error) is still 1/2". The difference is obvious when you see it: a bunch of shots lined up top to bottom, very little horizontal spread, but a lot of vertical. (There were a few "wild" shots too--without them the x is even more accurate, but the y isn't much different.)

I am thinking that maybe I don't understand how to align the vertical when shooting from a sandbag. With the sandbag, the shots also center almost an inch too low, even though they center pretty well when I shoot regular.

Thanks for any advice about shooting off of a sandbag.

 

[Standing Wolf]

With the sandbag, the shots also center almost an inch too low, even though they center pretty well when I shoot regular.

Your grip on the firearm is different, and I'd guess your eye is closer to or farther from the rear sight, which will produce a slightly different sight picture.

Instead of aiming at the exact center of the bullseye, you might find it helpful to adopt the six o'clock hold: line the sights up with the very bottom of the bullseye. That necessitates raising the rear sight. If you always use the six o'clock hold, your gun will always be sighted correctly for the way you shoot.

 

[Dilettante]

I am interested in this "six o'clock hold". Does it involve adjusting the sights? What is different about the hold?
If there's not already an X in the center, I like to mark my targets so there's a visible point that I'm aiming at. I tend to aim so that I can juuust see that point above the front sight.
Maybe a different way of aiming would work better?

There's another thing about the sandbags that I have trouble getting used to. Normally, when you hold the gun in front of you, you can move the gun up and down in order to aim. I like to think of it as a circle, where my eye is the center, and the gun is always aimed straight out from my eye. I look at the target, and then move the gun so it's lined up.
With the sandbag, I can't change the height of the gun. In order to line my eye up with the target I actually have to move my head a little bit. I haven't yet figured out how to do this right.
Is there a different way of holding the gun on the sandbag to make this easier? Or a different way of achieving vertical alignment?

 

[Standing Wolf]

The intuitive hold is to line up the top of the front sight, the top of the rear sight, and the middle of the bullseye. The six o'clock hold is to line up the top of the front sight, the top of the rear sight, and the very bottom of the bullseye. Using the six o'clock hold means you're going to have to raise the rear sight a few clicks so the gun actually shoots a few inches higher than the point of aim.

The vast majority of people I've seen shooting hand guns from sand bags rest the barrel on a sand bag or two. If you want to use sand bags to check the accuracy of a gun, the better way to do it is to rest your forearm or forearms on the bag as close to your wrist(s) as possible, and hold the gun as you normally would in all other respects. The sand bags are supposed to give you a steadier platform, but if they alter your hold, they're not going to be much use.

I tried shooting from sand bags once last summer. It shrank my groups, but the point of impact shifted to one side: a certain indicator that when I hold a gun in one hand at arm's length—bullseye style—my hold is different from a twin-handed supported hold.

If you really want to check a gun's accuracy, you'll need to invest a considerable quantity of money in a Ransom rest, which eliminates the human factor. The fellow who sold me my very first High Standard Ransom-rested it for me, "so you won't start complainin' about the durn' accuracy." The pistol put ten shots into a group noticeably smaller than a dime at fifty feet. If it need be said, I've yet to shoot such a group myself.

Best of luck, eh?

 

[Preacherman]

A very, VERY important point to observe when shooting from a rest:

DO NOT BREAK YOUR WRISTS DOWNWARD!!!

In other words, ensure that your arms are in a straight line from your shoulders to the gun - no bending the elbows OR the wrists. I've seen many people settle down behind a sandbag rest with their elbows on the table, and their forearms angling up several inches to the gun. To hold the gun in this position, their wrists have to be rolled to level their hands. This is "breaking" the wrist downward. It has a dramatic effect on vertical stringing, and judging from your comments above, that's what you're experiencing.

If you keep your arms in a straight line, elbows and wrists locked straight out behind the gun, you should see a tremendous improvement. Give it a try!

 

[Bill Adair]

Dilettante,

I stack two or three sand bags under the front of the frame, until I can also get one bag under the butt of the handgun. Never rest the barrel directly on the bags, or your POI will vary as the barrel shifts around under recoil.

Next get comfortable and adjust the bags until your sights are aligned slightly above the center of the bullseye. Now shift your seating position as required to line up horizontally with the bullseye, without moving your wrists or elbows to correct the horizontal alignment, because that requires muscle tension, and muscle tension can cause muscle twitching. The idea is to aim with your body, not your hands or arms.

Now, with the front of the frame settled on the bags, slowly squeeze the bag under the butt with your off hand, to bring the sights down on the center of the bull. You want a perfect alignment, with the top of the front post level with the top of the rear notch, and centered on the bull. I never recommend a six o'clock hold, because the POI will vary with the target diameter!

OK, now holding that sight alignment as close as you can, make any slight corrections with your body, not your hands and arms. Once you have it as good as you can get it, slowly squeeze the trigger while holding on target, until the gun fires. If you know when the gun is going to fire, your pulling the trigger, and that's a no no. Squeeze slower in that case, so the gun goes off as a surprise.

Most shooters can't hold a totally steady sight alignment, even from sand bags, but if you hold the oscillations around the center of the bull, so the sights oscillate an equal distance vertically and horizontally, you will do fine.

Don't expect perfect results immediately, but remember to correct horizontal alignment with your body, and vertical alignment by squeezing the sand bag under the butt, then hold the sight alignment while very slowly squeezing the trigger.

Anticipation (or flinch as it's called), will totally destroy your aim, and play hell with your groups. It is caused by your reaction to recoil and noise.

You can spot this problem by having another shooter load your gun for you, with an empty chamber, or dummy round in your magazine, and watching for gun jump when the hammer falls on the empty.

Using low velocity target loads will minimize flinch, but you would be surprised, probably even amazed, at how many shooters don't even realize they are doing it.

Please let me know how you do, or if you need any clarification.

Bill

 

[Lone_Gunman]

Shooting from a rest serves no pratical purpose that I have been able to detect, other than to test the theoretical accuracy of a handgun, which in and of itself has no practical purpose either.

 

[Highland Ranger]

Shooting from a rest serves no pratical purpose that I have been able to detect, other than to test the theoretical accuracy of a handgun, which in and of itself has no practical purpose either.

Dialing in a scope? Checking to make sure that the gun CAN be accurate? (i.e. confirming that it really is me that's the problem)

 

[Lone_Gunman]

Hmm... yea, I will give you to scope thing... but how often do you scope a handgun?

 

[Hutch]

L_G, how else you gonna assess the accuracy of your gun or ammunition? I have shot IHMSA and NRA Hunter Pistol silhouette, and accuracy load development is just as important for those as it for rifles. I concur with the other posters, if you KNOW your handgun will put 'em all in a ragged hole at your target range, it improves your confidence (and results) immeasurably. When you can say with certainty "It ain't the gun, it's me", then it's a lot less likely to be you.

 

[Chris Rhines]

Learning to shoot a handgun from a supported rest is very important if you want to be able to wring maximum freestyle accuracy from your pistol. Shooting from a rest allows you to focus on perfecting your trigger press, without the distractions of a wavering sight picture.

Rest shooting is also handy for sighting in pistols. Also, for getting at least a rough idea of the pistols' accuracy potential.

Note that I said learning to shoot from a rest. It ain't easy. It will require some trial and error to get your technique down.

I usually use a multiple-height pistol rest for the barrel and a small sandbag to rest the gun butt on. Having a shooting bench of the right height is very important; you shouldn't have to scrunch down to get your eyes aligned with the sights. About armpit-level (while you're sitting down) is right for most folks.

I've played around with resting the pistol barrel in a V-shaped cutout, to help it return to the same point after each shot. Might work for you; I'm probably going to add something alongs these lines to the next pistol rest I get.

- Chris

 

[Lone_Gunman]

Rest shooting is also handy for sighting in pistols.

I think this is an arguable point. If you sight in your pistol from a rest, it might or might not still be sighted in correctly when you are shooting off hand.

I sight in from an unrested position, which is the way I shoot about 95% of the time.

Maybe others disagree, and thats fine. The above plan works fine for me, and I ain't changing this late in the game.

Hutch, I am not really concerned with minute differences between handloads. I concur a bench would be helpful in sorting such issues out, though.

 

[larryw]

For a beginning shooter, starting from a bench rest does serve a practical purpose: it allows them to concentrate on sight alignment and trigger pull and see/learn how doing it right vs. poorly affects accuracy. Once they get this down, then they "graduate" to offhand. Couple weeks ago, a member of my club was teaching a first timer to shoot this way: as she's been the ladies Bianchi Cup champion for the past several years, who am I to dispute that? Kind of like teaching someone to operate a car in a parking lot without the distractions of traffic.

For a reloader, shooting from a bench allows one to evaluate loads in a particular gun with less interference from the shooter. Ditto for the person trying to choose the most accurate factory load for their pistol.

For the "seasoned" shooter, the bench will tell you if you've developed a bad habit and have adjusted the sights to compensate. This is one I'm fighting with now. :banghead:

There are as many good reasons to shoot from the bench as there are different shooters, interests and abilities, but you get the idea.

 

[Dilettante]

Well, I went out again today and my groups look a lot better. (I haven't done the calculations yet, but it's pretty obvious.) Furthermore, after shooting off of bags for 20 rounds or so, my freehand accuracy was also better.
For me as a beginning shooter, I think the sandbags help to learn what it "looks like" to have the gun right on target. It's also helpful to know how accurate I can expect the gun to be. If my groups are 2" wide at 7 yards, I should be doing better.

 

[Sean Smith]

I'd say shooting off sandbags can be useful up to a point, though if you want to assess the theoretical accuracy of your gun you probably want to use a real pistol rest to shoot off of.

Sometimes I think people go too far espousing a good thing (training) when they pooh-pooh the importance of how capable your hardware is. Sources of variation (read: sources of inaccuracy) are additive; your wobble adds to the gun's mechanical accuracy to determine your final group size. Bottom line is, it is good to know if your hardware is limiting you or not. Some factory guns ARE bad enough that you don't have to be shooting at 25 or 50 yards for them to widen your groups considerably. Heck, I had a Glock 35 that would shoot huge groups at 15 yards until I replaced the barrel... new hardware instantly cut the group sizes by about 1/2. Sometimes it IS the hardware's fault.

 

[P95Carry]

It's late and I gotta crash .. so forgive that I have not read every post.

IMO sandbags are fine - IF - no part of the gun touches!!

Always ensure that your hands are all that are rested ... that way you will get better results and more like what you could expect from free standing shooting.

Just my two pennies .......

 

[Jim K]

Resting either the barrel or the butt of the pistol on the sandbag will interfere with the way the gun recoils. Resting the butt is especially bad for accuracy because the sand packs a bit more with each shot, and vertical stringing can result. Regardless of performance off sandbags, the gun will not shoot to the same point as it will if held in the hand(s).

Best way is to use a two hand hold (or one hand if sighting for target shooting), resting the forearm(s) or wrist(s) on the sandbag.

Jim

 

[benEzra]

Jim's got it. Makes the results much more transferable to offhand shooting, and is more consistent to boot.

BTW, many handguns are surprisingly accurate off a bag. Resting my wrists on a bag, I've hit a 24" steel plate at 100 yd with my little 3 1/2" barrelled 3913LS 7 out of 8 rounds, and the dropped round was my fault.