6/1/05. Do you dwell on your sight picture? What I mean is, how long do you spend looking at
your sight picture before you pull the trigger?
I went out to practice with Badlands Bud yesterday. As usual, his times per run were anywhere from .5
to 1.5 seconds faster than mine. And, as usual, I tried to figure out where I’m losing time. His draw is
faster, his transitions are faster, his splits are faster. Why is that? Well, for one he can just
operate the action of his gun a lot faster than me. He’s also moves his gun faster to the next target
than I do. For another, he doesn’t spend any time dwelling on sight picture. As soon as it’s there, he
pulls the trigger. Once I realized this, I discovered that I was looking at the sight picture for a time
before breaking the shot. Not long, maybe .05 to .1 of a second per shot. That adds up to somewhere
between .5 and 1 second per run!
As a result of this discovery, I’ve taken to re-evaluating my technique. I’m finding that I don’t
have to transition focus from target to front sight to reliably hit a small target. The front sight is a
little fuzzy, but I can still position it on a target. Dry fire practice for this involves 2 inch dots
on the wall at about 12 yards. Focus on the first target, bring the sights in line and break the shot,
move to the next target and repeat for a string. Not having to change my focus to a clear front sight
will take a fraction off the time to make each shot.
I’m also paying attention to the amount of time that I’m dwelling on the sight picture. I’m
consciously (at the moment) working to break the shot at the instant it’s lined up instead of doing
another check or spending more time verifying it. I expect this to reduce my splits as much as .1 of a
second.
As for getting to the next target quicker, I’m going to have to move outside my comfort zone and push
that movement. I’ll be focusing on twisting in the legs rather than the hips and arms. This will keep
the “triangle” (relationship between your torso and arms) stable minimizing the amount of time that it
takes to line up the sights for each shot. I think I’ll need to be a little aggressive during this
target transition phase in order to speed it up.
I’ll go back to the range on Friday and work on improving my confidence using these new techniques.
It’ll take several range sessions (and a LOT of dry fire time) for this to settle in, but I expect that
my times will decrease as a result.
By the way, this applies to all the guns, rifle, pistol, and shotgun! |
