Monday, July 28, 2008

Range Report, end of July

Went to the range again. Testing myself and the new grip safety.

CRAP! No better. That does it, Ima gonna shoot a bunch of stuff other than the 1911. I keep shooting low and right. I hope its me and a SA trigger. I need REAL instruction to get rid of this flaw. I just can't concentrate it away.

A few VERY rare shots are sublime. Those are the ones in the bullseye.



About all I do well is this:

Some of those around the head and neck are 1 handed and one in the groin and another mixed in at the 9 ring are at 50 feet, but the majority in the 'chest' area are all 2 handed at a half size target at 21 feet. And they are all at this speed, "BANGandBANGandBANGandBANGandBANGandBANGand"
So I am hitting "minute of bad guy" accuracy at 7 yards almost as fast as you can pull the trigger. A few flyers.

Is that worth something?

There is reason to be discouraged, as it is same ol same ol. Whatever I try is not noticeably improving anything.

There is reason to be encouraged, too. I do HIT. When at the machine gun shoot I hit the bowling pins set up pretty regularly with a pistol. I can hit the half size silhoette center mass. The misses are all 1 hand, above. And I'm pretty fast. But, as of now, I am not going to be Mr. Shot Placement. No aiming for the tear duct and expecting results for me. Fine for generic goblins, but not good enough for Mozambique necessarily, I think. Not good enough for the critical Zombie forehead shot. I want to fix that.

Searching for dry fire drills now. And there is THIS guy and a specific training course he offers called Problem Solver...

I think I’d do a much better (and confidence-building) job with reactive steel targets. Lets say I get big into pin shooting and IDPA comptetition. Mainly because my shooting flaw isn’t as ciritical and I can be successful with those event and safely ignore my bad shooting habits. Reinforcing bad habits is not what I want. I’ve reinforced too many already.

5 comments:

breda said...

Fear not, the epiphany will come. Keep practicing.

Anonymous said...

Your shots groups are pretty consistent. Maybe you are doing nothing wrong and the sights are wrong. Maybe try adjustable sights if you pistol does not have them.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

I thought of that, steve. But I shoot other models of 1911 low and right, and DA revolvers. And when others shoot my 1911 they don't shoot low and right. It's me. All me.

Scary thing is, I shoot those dang LDA types much tighter and closer to the bull and just a bit to the left. Sometimes.

Anonymous said...

No, don't mess with your sights. The sights are fine. The group, while big, is in the right spot.

There are a couple of fliers, so you've got a bit of a flinch going.

I believe the biggest problem is the sight picture. You should be focussing on the front sight and placing it in the middle of the target. Sometimes it's hard to aim at a small point on a big blank silhouette, try switching to a target with a bunch of circles on it. Put the the sharply focused front in the middle of one of the blurry circles and shoot. Concentrate on maintaining the same sight alignment as you press the trigger. Close one eye if it helps, and if that gets tiring, put some black tape on one lens of your shooting glasses.

Go for smoothness and small groups. Speed will come later.

Do you have a .22 pistol to practice with?

Anonymous said...

Generally speaking, shooting low means you are not getting a steady trigger press, either by not taking out all the slack before the final trigger "break," or if very low, "mashing" the trigger.

Shooting to the right, assuming you are right handed, usually means too much finger on the trigger.

By all means, get instruction. Even Tiger Woods gets coaching.