by Chris Cerino
With this year’s training classes in full swing I find myself often questioning what I am trying to impart to students. Much more than just sharing with shooters what it takes to hit, I find more valuable training in why we miss. If you can’t answer why you missed a specific shot, how do you go about making the shot when you try again?
Over years I’ve heard many remedies to poor shot placement. You may have even heard some of these fundamental corrections. Things like: Try bringing your strong foot back; focus on the front sight; press the trigger straight back or hold the gun tighter. All of which are solid points but meaningless without true understanding of how each will affect your shooting. They all can affect your shooting to one degree or another, however not to the level you’d expect.
So what does it take to hit? Of the seven or so fundamentals that anyone can list, there are three that are most important. It’s all about the fundamentals!
• Sight alignment (Not just the front sight. Front and rear together.)
• Sight picture
• Trigger press
If you understand the importance of these three fundamentals, you can make any shot with any gun. So long as the gun is capable.
Having been on “Top Shot” for two seasons, most know I fared well. Many ask how we made the shots we were tasked to make. An easy question to answer, but not necessarily an easy shot to make. A heaping dose of fundamentals of course, focusing on the three forementioned.
Just as I do when buying a gun or picking up a new gun to fire, you should examine it closely both visually and tactilly. By this I mean to pick it up and look it over. Examine the sights for apparent mechanical zero. You can’t shoot a gun that has the rear sight drifted all the way to the right from the last poor shooter who used it. Look at the bodies of the sights. Check to see that they are sharp and solidly black. If they are beat up or shiny on the edges it can cause you to obtain poor alignment because you get a glare that can throw off your spacing.
If allowed to, when arriving at a new challenge for a competition we would pick up the guns and start by looking at them for sight mechanics and color. We’d check to see what the picture looked like and then, if we were permitted, we’d dry fire them to feel the trigger weight and length of pull. I know that in the past I have said that dry fire won’t hurt your gun but there are some people who just worry and when you only have the one gun with the one firing pin that’s 100 years old, you can’t blame them for being careful.
While dry firing any gun you should intently watch the sight alignment, forgoing any idea of sight picture. You need only to be checking for disturbance in the sights while feeling what it takes to set that particular gun off. When pulling a trigger for feel it’s best to pretend that there is a tea cup on the front sight and you don’t want it to fall off. All you ever want to see is a little ripple on the surface of the tea.
After examining a gun and dry firing it, I start live fire. On “Top Shot” they would sometimes give us obscure parameters like, you have five rounds and two minutes to become familiar with this gun before the challenge. In two minutes I’d go through my visual and tactile inspection process, then load it up. My live fire process was methodical as well. This is where sight picture came in to play. I’d pick a spot on the target to create a good clear sight picture. I would do my best to fire three of the five rounds letting them go wherever they would go. My mental state was to fire as though the gun was empty. Still dry firing. Most of us won’t flinch or influence a gun when we know it’s empty.
I remember one gun in particular that, when fired from 30 feet, would impact 3 inches high and 2 inches right. An old revolver, we had no way to change the sights. Those first three shots impacted perfectly with all touching. My next two shots were fired holding a sight picture three inches low and two inches left. Bullseye!! I had figured out what it took to fire this particular gun and hit the intended target. Some of you may remember that pistol as it was the one I used to shoot two of three pipes from a mannequin’s mouth.
I hit two of the three pipes holding that pistol low and left for the first two shots. On the third pipe, I had pulled the gun back in and took a breather. When I presented the gun again I reverted to a standard sight picture, aiming directly at the pipe, and fired the shot missing the pipe cleanly high and right. Now you know what it took for me to hit the target and I explained why I missed the target. I would never have known why I missed if I didn’t have certain necessary information— information that is key for your own training.
• Know what your sights look like when aligned (equal spacing, level tops).
• Know what sight picture you need to hit an intended target (properly placed sights on the target).
• Know what pressure and movement it takes to fire your gun (whatever finger placement is necessary to get it done).
Couple this with: Knowing how to keep from flinching (pretend the gun’s empty); Knowing what you saw the instant the gun went off (follow through), and Knowing what you felt (Play it back in your mind’s eye).
Only when you have all of this knowledge and understanding can you truly call your shot. Then you won’t only know what it takes to hit but, why you miss.
