Triangle Tactical Podcast and Blog on Guns, Gear, and Competition Shooting
Yesterday I posted about shot calling, with a great video from Shooting USA explaining what it is. On Sunday, I headed up to The Range in Oxford, NC to try my hand at calling shots, and I failed miserably.
While doing some reading on the topic over the past few days, it appears that there are a few factors that go into it:
1. The first factor is that some shooters instinctively blink when their pistol fires. I don’t think this is an issue for me, but just to be sure I went through some video from past matches where I had a camera down range, and I’m not blinking.
2. The second factor is knowing your sights. I need to learn what a good sight picture looks like, and what a bad one looks like.
One of the drills that is recommended from several different shooters is the “Bill Drill”, which is a 6 shot drill, fired at a target at 7 yards (or further depending on skill level). The goal is to learn to watch your sights go up and down, and how to control the pistol while shooting quickly, but accurately. Bill Wilson, and Ken Hackethorn explain it well here:
It looks like I’m going to need to start having a weekly live fire session again. I have not been live fire practicing at all for some time, as I had been budgeting more club matches instead, however I think that needs to change if I want to improve my shooting.
I’m having a little trouble with the Novak sights that came on my M&P9 Pro, so I picked up some digital calipers tonight, and I’m going to try and open the rear notch a couple thousandths with a file to see if that helps. I’ll be shooting IDPA at H2O Fowl Farms in Dunn, NC on Saturday, so hopefully I’ll be able to notice at least some improvement during that match.
