TargetTalk

I just joined a Bullseye league this year and have been practicing on improving my scores at the range and dry firing at home. Both my timed and rapid fire results have improved over the course of the year but my slow fire results are not improving as much. Any suggestions/tips on ways to improve slow fire results? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks.

General comments on slow fire. In slow fire even the master and high master shooters tend to go into slumps. Usually it is a matter of trying to make the shot too perfect and losing track of the fundamentals. After all you have all the time in the world to get it off right? Some people can hold the gun up all day and shoot great slow fire scores. Most of us must get the shot off within 3 to five seconds after the gun settles or we tend to get flyers. You need to experiment and have someone scope your shots for you to see when your best shots are occuring. Then my advice is, of course, try and make them all that way. :-) One drill that helps is to shoot two shots at a time without putting down the gun in slow fire practice to see if the second one is better. That can give you a clue that you are trying too hard. Another thing that would probably help is to work with a NOPTEL or other computerized system that allows you to see exactly what you are doing in slow fire. Watching the expert shooters at the matches that I go to has conviced me that slow fire is what keeps most experts who have been an expert for a long time from making master. They quickly get the timing down for very decent timed fire and rapid fire scores but lag ten points behind what they need on every slow fire target to break into the master class. Kate

lendal wrote:I just joined a Bullseye league this year and have been practicing on improving my scores at the range and dry firing at home. Both my timed and rapid fire results have improved over the course of the year but my slow fire results are not improving as much. Any suggestions/tips on ways to improve slow fire results? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks.

The first question I would have for you is how you are doing the trigger pull between timed/rapid fire and slow fire? You should be doing it at least essentially the same but there is a strong tendency to want to 'dress up the shot' on slow fire and start and stop the trigger pull process as the sights move around in what amounts to an effort to time the shot. Timed and especially rapid fire force you to go ahead and pull the trigger due to the constraint of target face time but with slow fire that time pressure does not exist.

Your dry fire practice should be aimed at developing a consistent trigger pull that can be applied the same way every time. Some top shooters report slowing down the trigger pull a little on slow fire, but not by much. It is important to start the trigger pull before the sights are completely settled in to the point of minimum wobble and then commit to the shot. If you wait to start the trigger pull until the sight picture is good then the wobble area is likely to start increasing again before the shot is made which increases the tendency to start and stop the trigger pull as the sight picture changes. This leads to some good shots but more 'fliers' that drag your score down.

Clark

All of my comments that refer to right/left are for a right handed shooter. If you are a lefty, then reverse them.

First of all, Dry Fire, Dry Fire, Dry Fire.

If that doesn't work then try dry firing.

When shooting, settle into the bull, accept your wobble area and smoothly pull the trigger all the way through without interruption. Even if the sights drift away from the center of the target, keep pulling and let the shot go. Your area of hold is better than it looks. In time your area of hold will shrink and you will develop a better feel for when to pull the trigger.

Pull the trigger as fast as you can without pulling it too fast. Dry fire and work on pulling the trigger faster and slower. At some point the gentle trigger "squeeze" will turn into a trigger "slap" that will throw the sights off. Work on being able to pull the trigger faster without disturbing the sights. Your trigger pull should be essentially the same in slow fire and in sustained fire.

Observe your hold to see when the sight picture settles down. Is it in the first second after you settle into the bull or after a couple of seconds? Note that very few people have a better hold after 5 or so seconds. The vast majority of us would shoot better if we got the shot off in the first second or two after settling in. You may see some good shooters holding for a lot longer than that. It is possible to shoot well after holding a long time, but a new shooter will usually be better off taking the shot or putting the gun down.

Get your grip and trigger finger position right. This is done by dry firing. You can't see the effects when live firing. If the gun jumps in a direction just as the hammer falls, that means you are applying pressure on the gun somewhere and counteracting the pressure with the trigger finger. It may be that your finger tips and/or thumb are pushing the gun to the right and the trigger finger is pushing the gun to the left. When the trigger releases, suddenly the trigger is free and the pressure you were applying is not transfered to the gun, but the fingers and thumb still are. As a result the gun will jump to the right. This is one example, there can be other causes and effects.

If the trigger finger placement is the cause of a sight jump then moving the finger in the direction of the sight jump will often, but not always fix it. i.e. insert the finger deeper if the jump is too the left, less finger if the jump is to the right. It may not take much change in the trigger finger placement; 1 millimeter change in finger position can have a fairly large effect on the shot.

If you take nothing else from this post, let it be DRY FIRE. That is the only way you can see the effects of your trigger pull and grip without the added uncertainty of wobble area and ammunition accuracy.

Best of luck,
Steve Turner

Ditto, on the dry fire!! Also start shooting air pistol. It has made a huge difference in my slow fire, but my rapid and timed went down hill because I only shoot FP and air the last few years. At Nationals , at Benning, I shot standard pistol, two zeros because my finger went chicken because it would not believe the gun would fire more than one shot. still shot 546

Brooks

Thanks everybody, I appreciate your responses and you've given me some great tips on things to work on. I need to become more aware of my trigger pull in slow fire vs. timed and rapid and try to make it consistent in all three. And if nothing else, do a lot more dry firing. Thanks again.

DRY FIRE

- Smooth
- Doesn't disturb gun
- Fast
- Consistent
- Uninterrupted

x 10,000