Targets

[mikemyers]

Gee.... OK, I won't shoot at 'nothing', as I don't want to freak out the range people, and I'll just tape a plain piece of white paper onto my "backing board", and everyone else at the range will think I'm either confused, or I'm shooting at something so tiny they can't see it.

I'll try it this coming Monday. I guess there might possibly maybe sort of be some sort of grouping, surrounding my "natural point of aim", but who knows. For all I know, the paper might look like a snippet from some new wallpaper design.

 

[BCRider]

....(I do have this overwhelming curiosity to see how well I really did for each shot, even though I am starting to "feel" I know where the shots went. With the 22 it doesn't matter, because I can't see the holes in the black bull anyway, and with the 38 Special it doesn't matter, because the target is so blurry I usually can't see the holes either. ....but I can't get rid of the desire to try to see them.... )

Having "old guy eyes" helps us stay honest

I'm good enough that I need to have my targets at least 10 yards away or most of my bullet holes overlap. And by the time I've got them at 15 yards I can't really see the .38 size holes anymore. So that damps any urge to peek at how I'm doing....

So if you're putting the target close enough to see the holes maybe move it a little further downrange? Out of sight, out of mind?

While I understand the idea behind the big blank target I can't help thinking that without some sort of aiming point that it's going to be hard to hold on the middle and get a proper group. At least not unless it's a small enough sheet of paper that it can be centered on the front blade easily. So I'm still a fan of a dot of some sort which I would perch on the front blade in a classic 6 o'clock style hold. The bullets don't need to actually hit the dot. I just want a point to sight on so I'm getting a consistent hold.

Of course this then means I have to focus on doing two things. Holding the sight picture steady while pulling on the trigger. Is the idea that we need to break it down even more than this? Is that why the blank sheet?

 

[mikemyers]

BCRider, two quick thoughts.

For shooting distance, I pretty much settled on 15 yards, as it's the furthest I can shoot at my indoor range, and outdoors I guess I now have a choice of 15, 25, and 50 yards, but if I always do 15, I figure I'll have targets that I can use for comparison now or many years to come (or in the past).

About the "blank target", if I understand correctly, there is no need to use the sights at all. There is nothing to "aim at". There isn't even a need for the target at all. If I understood it correctly, my concentration is supposed to be ONLY on taking the shot, and not on where the bullet will end up.

(I'll put the blank target up anyway, so people don't think I'm totally nuts - I have no idea what they WILL think, unless it's that they think I'm so bad I just want to see if I can even hit the paper! ....but having said all that, I'm curious what the blank paper looks like when I get to see it up close.)


Another silly thought - suppose our brains have 100 "units" of power regarding shooting. Of those 100 units, how many are devoted to the sights, and how many to the process of shooting? ....and if the sights aren't there, will using 100% of your concentration on taking the shot make anything different? In a strange way, it all makes sense to me. If you don't follow "the fundamentals", nothing else you do or don't do, can make up for it.

 

[mikemyers]

Shooting at a big piece of blank paper is often a drill used to get your mind off the target and back on the execution of the shot.......

I don't know if it's related to what you're saying or not, but I decided to dry-fire at a blank white wall. This was with my Model 28 Highway Patrolman. With a white wall in front of me, the slightest movement of the front sight was more obvious. I could then try different ways of holding the gun, to find the way where the front sight remained perfectly still.

When I used to dry fire before, I was concentrating the most on keeping the sights aimed at the target. I thought that was the whole point of dry firing. Doing what you suggested, left me free to concentrate totally on what the sights were doing, which was directly related to how I held the gun, and how I pressed on the trigger. Interesting. .....and I'm sure, at least for me, very helpful.

 

[murf]

The most important thing here is the alignment of the front sight with the rear sight, not with the target. When you can transfer your New dryfire technique to the range, your groups should shrink (no fair peeking at the blank target).

Don't worry about where to aim on the blank target. Your eyes Will automatically center the aim point.

murf

 

[mikemyers]

The most important thing here is the alignment of the front sight with the rear sight, not with the target......

Murf, something in my mind registered when I was watching (in even slower slow motion) the video posted by g.willikers:

Calling your shots and knowing where they hit without seeing the holes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q1XC8k-tZc
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When I slowed down the (already slow motion) parts of the video to 1/4 playing speed, it was fascinating to see how tiny a misalignment of the sights could cause such a huge error in where the hit landed.

All this was bouncing around in my head, and when you guys suggested shooting at a blank target, and I tried it, for the first time I could "see" what would have happened had it been a live round. I did "know" that I needed the sights lined up properly, but I also "knew" just as strongly that the pair of sights needed to be exactly centered on the target. What I think I understand now, is that aiming at the bullseye is necessary, but it's FAR more necessary to have the sights perfectly aligned.

Or, put into words that seem logical to me, if the sights are aimed a little off the bullseye, the bullet will hit a little off from the bullseye, but if the sights are a little bit out of alignment, the bullet will hit far away from the bullseye. As you put it, "the most important". Until now, I had it backwards. I was paying a bit more attention to whether the front sight was in front of the bullseye, than how perfectly the sights were aligned. The video up above demonstrates this. I need to reverse the importance of those two things.


Edit: added later - if I try to explain this to someone, they're going to look at me like I'm nutso. It "sounds" so wrong! They already think I'm nuts because I suggested they not use Shoot-n-See' targets.

 

[BCRider]

(I do have this overwhelming curiosity to see how well I really did for each shot, even though I am starting to "feel" I know where the shots went. With the 22 it doesn't matter, because I can't see the holes in the black bull anyway, and with the 38 Special it doesn't matter, because the target is so blurry I usually can't see the holes either. ....but I can't get rid of the desire to try to see them.... )

What you learned here is a BIG piece of the puzzle. And one I thought was covered in one of your other threads. But perhaps it just didn't hit home until now.

So yeah, as an extension of this hold and pull drill I can now understand why the blank target. Or even NO target.

 

[mikemyers]

What you learned here is a BIG piece of the puzzle. And one I thought was covered in one of your other threads. But perhaps it just didn't hit home until now.

So yeah, as an extension of this hold and pull drill I can now understand why the blank target. Or even NO target.

I don't know about others, but sometimes I think I'm doing all the right things, as I read here for the most part, only to find out later that I understood them incorrectly. Watching that video was like having a light go on inside my head, pointing out what now seems so obvious. I guess I'm a slow learner or something.


I wish I knew more about programming. I'd love to create an app that showed the front and rear sight, and where the bullet is going to hit. Then provide controls to move either one, or both front and rear sight together. The target distance could be set to 7, 10, 15, 25, or 50 yards.

What I would expect to see, is that if both sights were moved say, 1/8" to the right, moving them together, the hole at the target would barely move. But if the front sight only was moved 1/8", the hole from the bullet might not even hit the target at all. I guess I'd have another selector for "sight radius". Gee, while I was at it, I'd provide a way to make only one thing sharp, the rear sight, the front sight, or the target. That would probably show people very quickly why they can't shoot as well when they focus on the target.


You're right, BCRider. I "knew" that I wouldn't, and don't, shoot well if I focus on the target. But once it dawned on me what was really going on, now I know WHY that is. It all makes perfect sense, so I'm not going to be blindly "following the rules", just because they're "the rules".

 

[mikemyers]

Dull, boring, background information. Feel free to skip to the photo below...

I went back to the indoor range yesterday, thinking everything would go well, but it was just the opposite. One of those days when nothing worked. My M28 wouldn't fire three bullets in a row, but it did put indents in the primers. I tried the M19 I brought along just in case there were issues, and it fired the bullets with no problem. The accuracy (my accuracy with the M19) was pathetic. That's another topic.

I had a local "gunsmith" from Fellsmere (he's not a licensed gunsmith, but he does work on guns) check out the gun a month ago, and I started wondering where he left the strain screw (thanks to you guys who beat all that information into my brain a while back, I knew about strain screws). I tightened the strain screw all the way, and that problem was fixed.

I was real careful to make sure I'm paying attention to the front sight, especially the gap on either side of it, and while some of my bullets made a nice tight grouping, others went way off one way or another. I know it's me, not the gun, and if I had to guess, it was because I was firing too slowly, very aware of keeping the gap equal between the front and rear sight. Next time, the heck with that. In my dry firing, I found if I shoot faster, the gun doesn't "lurch" as much, and I "shoot" better as it's all one smooth motion, not particularly fast or slow, and then holding the trigger in for a moment after the shot for a follow-through, after which I release it smoothly.

I'll work on that next time. The gun looks and feels so good in dry-firing, that it HAS to work better for me eventually. I've been loading only one round at a time, so there's only a one in six chance that the gun will fire - making it easy to tell if I'm as smooth at the range as I am at home dry firing. (The gun must have a GPS, as it KNOWS when I'm at home or the range.... it behaves when it's at home, unloaded!)
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Enough of that - here's what I wanted to post:

I got to wondering about sight picture, and took three photos, my target, my front sight, and my rear sight. I put everything together in "layers" in Photoshop - see photo below. Once I had that, I blurred the target and the rear sight with "Photoshop Lens Blur" so they match what I think I see at the indoor range. (At the outdoor range, the target and rear sight are still blurry, but not as blurry as when i shoot indoors, which makes sense to me.) I made the target too large in my photo - it's a bit out of scale, for a 3" bull at 15 yards... I'll try to fix that later.

Edit: Fixed - see new photo further down in this thread.




I notice from my image, that when the top of the front and rear sight are in-line, when they're out of focus they no longer look in-line.

As you guys suggested, 99 % of my concentration is on the sights, and very little is on the target. I thought I was getting better at keeping the sights lined up well, but I've got a ways to go.

....and to Murf - shooting at "no target", which I also did, didn't look much worse than when there was a target there. All I could see out there was the huge "backing board", no bull, no cross, nothing to aim "at". Interesting. That turned out better than I expected it to.

 

[mikemyers]

Math 101 --- More boring stuff....

• It is 7.5" on a S&W Model 28 from rear sight to front sight.
• It is usually 15 yards to my target - which is 45 feet, or 540 inches.
  
• 540 divided by 7.5 is 72. So, any movement of my front sight will be magnified 72 times, by the time the bullet hits the target.

I'm guessing that I'm fighting to keep the sights aligned, and the amount of wobble I think I see is perhaps 1/32" each way - I looked at a small ruler, and that seems to be about what I see the sights doing, or what I'm rather trying to keep them from doing.

So, 1/32" x 72 = 2.25" at the target, and +/- that amount explains a group size of almost 5 inches.

Unless I'm missing something, in order to get down to around a 2" group, the sights better not "wobble" any more than 1/64".
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Those calculations assume that the gun doesn't move when the trigger is pulled. If jerking the trigger moves the sights just 1/10th of an inch, the bullet will be over 7 inches away from the bullseye. I think that's the reasoning behind why MrBorland emphasized long ago, how important trigger pull is compared to all the other things that have to be done properly.

 

[mikemyers]

I re-did the photo up above. By examining my sights, with the gun held in front of me, in ordinary room light, the rear sight is too blurry in the first photo. This is closer to what it looks like. I made the target smaller, but I need to get back to the range, and see how large the target really appears, as I've been working so hard to NOT pay attention to the target.

 

[MrBorland]

One of those days when nothing worked.

Yep - they happen. The trick here is to just let it roll off you like teflon. Otherwise, we read too much into it, telling ourselves all kinds of bad & untrue things about ourselves and the work we've been doing.

It's important to keep shooting fun, so on days like this, it's good to have a "fun gun" to shoot instead. On my range, I can shoot steel, or even better, pull out my pump shotgun to make those targets pay.

The gun must have a GPS, as it KNOWS when I'm at home or the range.... it behaves when it's at home, unloaded!

This is common, too. Ideally, it wouldn't matter, but it frequently does. I think there are 2 reasons why range performance doesn't equal dry fire performance: First is our performance at the range. We know actual holes will be made in paper, and feel this somehow "counts" more than when we dry fire, so we're not as relaxed. The second is our dry fire performance. The "shot" might look ok, but without the feedback, you don't realize you're not being critical enough.

Again, though, don't sweat it too much. With quality dry fire and quality range time, you'll eventually figure out the nuances.

If jerking the trigger moves the sights just 1/10th of an inch, the bullet will be over 7 inches away from the bullseye. I think that's the reasoning behind why MrBorland emphasized long ago, how important trigger pull is compared to all the other things that have to be done properly.

You got it. As you just proved to yourself, even a small misalignment at 7.5" greatly amplified over the distance to the target.

 

[joem1945]

"I prefer a 1.5 to 2.5 inch neon orange dot on a plain white sheet of paper. I get them by the roll of 1000 off eBay. They are pricing labels."

I do the same thing but I use brown heavy wrapping paper. It comes on a roll 36" wide.

 

[mikemyers]

.......You got it. As you just proved to yourself, even a small misalignment at 7.5" greatly amplified over the distance to the target.

Math 101 applied to my S&W Model 19 with 2 1/2" barrel...

• It is 4.25" on my S&W Model 19 from rear sight to front sight.
• It is usually 15 yards to my target - which is 45 feet, or 540 inches.
  
• 540 divided by 4.25 is 127. So, any movement of my front sight will be magnified 127 times, by the time the bullet hits the target.

Assuming the amount of wobble I think I see is the same 1/32" each way:

1/32" x 127 = 4" at the target, and +/- that amount explains a group size of close to 8 inches, which is about what I got yesterday.
Usually I do better with this gun, but never as well as with the larger M28.

Some of the "wobble" is due to the gun not being as smooth as it could be, but a lot of it is probably due to me, and in particular my right hand. I will buy one of those spring loaded exercise gizmos, that you keep squeezing on, to build up the hand muscles. That, and a lot more dry fire.