Wednesday, July 04, 2007

My Shooting Today = teh suck.

I started out fairly strong, making fast moderately quick A-zone hits from the leather... er, borrowed kydex. Our instructor pointed out that I was "bowling" the gun. Aarrgghh! A bazillion presentations (to the point of annoying friends and coworkers) trying to practice a smooth draw and presentation and it all goes out the window under pressure. I should've quit while I was ahead, but I got flustered and started gorilla-gripping the pistol and trying to force the trigger, tossing rounds low & left. Not badly, but plenty embarrassing. Ah, well, time for more practice.

(The problem in a nutshell was that once I have one miss a little bit, I start ignoring the single best piece of shooting advice I'd ever heard: I once heard a nationally-ranked bullseye shooter I worked with say to someone "Don't try and make the gun go off. All you're doing is pulling a trigger." When I get flustered, and the sights are lined up just like I want them, I try to make it go off right now! Quick! While the sights are lined up! This leads to squeezing the gun, jerking the trigger, poking the gun towards the target, et cetera, as I try to spastically will the gun to fire. Rather than just driving the sights and letting the trigger finger mind its own business, surprising me when the gun goes bang and puts the hole where I wanted it.)

4 comments:

Oleg Volk said...

Two inches left of the mark is still close enough for effect.

Anonymous said...

I was pulling low left, too, the trademark of squeezing with the whole hand. More like crushing, actually. Stress R US and all that.

Go back to a smooth DA revolver for a little while for some remedial trigger finger work. I did and it re-taught me (eventually - took about 3 IPSC matches) that the trigger is controlled by the last two joints on the index finger, not the whole finger. Not to mention substituting an 8.5 lb DA pull for a 3 lb 1911 pull strengthened the finger.

Welcome back to the 'net, BTW.

Trevor said...

You will get better if you can afford ammo these days.

Anonymous said...

This is why man, by devine intervention, created the .22 pistol... and the 550 round economy box of ammo.