TargetTalk

Friends, any suggestion or link to any similar past post on how to go about this.

Shoot ten shots at a paper target, aimimg at the same spot every time. Move the sights in order to center the group.
Change/pacth the target and repeat until the group on the target is centered.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

rmca wrote: ↑Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:21 pm Shoot ten shots at a paper target, aimimg at the same spot every time. Move the sights in order to center the group.
Change/pacth the target and repeat until the group on the target is centered.

Hope this helps.

Thanks mate.

How do you make sure that you are aiming precisely at the same spot? Do you support the gun so as to minimize any movement to achieve precision?

As a novice, I feel that it is not possible for me to zero in with a free hand.

To zero the gun you need to use a vise, clamp, etc, or sand bags off a rest. Unlike "normal" shooting, pick a well defined point on the target. For example, align the top of the front sight precisely with the center bottom of the black bullseye, then release the shot without disturbing that alignment. Repeat as needed for at least 10 shots, taking your time to ensure EVERY shot is the same.

When finished you should have a small group someplace on the target. Adjust the sights until the group center corresponds with your aiming point. Your gun will now be shooting where you point it.

If you decide to shoot a "sub-six" hold you will have to adjust your sights "up" above your hold point to ensure that your group is centered in the 10-ring.

Dennis, aka Dulcmrman

Shoot thirty shots (half match) on a single target to start. Find the rough group center, ignoring the really bad shots. Make the sight correction. About four clicks will make one scoring ring correction. Don't worry about this now.

Thereafter, shoot five or ten shots groups, putting the first target behind the remaining targets (thirty more shots). Examine the rear target and again make sight correction.

Repeat ad nauseum. As you adjust your style, grip, trigger squeeze, lighting, or stance, this will compensate forever. You will also get a handle on how many clicks it takes to adjust the sights.

BTW Do NOT make sight adjustments when taking "sighters" starting a match. Just consider them warm-ups. Put one of the sighter targets behind your match targets and take a look at it after 20-30 shots. I recommend a sub-six hold and RWS Basic pellets.

Although the difference should be small, shooting off a rest will usually not match exactly with where a pistol shoots with one hand. For a beginner, the difference will often be larger because of triggering & sighting errors. As you improve, your group should shrink, but it will also typically move as you eliminate errors.

An example: I had a student who had adjusted the sights on his free pistol so that he was getting most of his shots in the black, vaguely near the middle. He also had a fair number of shots up at 1:00 that were in the vicinity of the 6 ring. There were fewer of them, but the group was actually slightly smaller. I watched him for a bit and asked him if I could try shooting it. I put several shots in the vicinity of the 6 ring at 1:00. Conclusion: he had learned to VERY consistently jerk the trigger, and had adjusted his sights to compensate. The "good" shots were the ones at 1:00. Once we had that sorted out, he could work on his trigger control, and he quickly started shooting much better.

If he had started off the bench, he probably wouldn't have fallen into that trap, but subtler errors can have the same effect to produce a difference between the sight settings off a rest, versus handheld.

I had a flesh eating bacteria attack almost 4 years ago..... My Gun Range did everything they could to keep me shooting because they knew how good any activity was to a guy in a walker after losing some body parts. Cheers to SKAGIT SHOOTING RANGE in Mount Vernon Wa for that..... For a while I shot pistol sitting on a stool resting my forearm on a shower rod they put between the shooting stall walls. I mention this because it helps zero a pistol. You need to hold the gun on target looking thru the sights to get a good zero. Putting a rod under your forearm at the correct height as a crutch for repeatability works, and they are under 20 bucks at home depot, a poor mans S1 setup.......

Spektr: Sorry to hear about your medical battle, but glad you appear to be back into shooting without a rest.

The Germans actually have a special shooting event for folks over 50 (which seems awfully young...). Apparently you can rest the bottom of the grip on something, but they make the grip with a wedge shaped bottom to you can tip it for elevation. I don't know the details, but Rink makes special grips for it: https://www.formgriffe.de/en/shpPfCnt.php?sCI=123.

The ISSF also has rules for something similar: https://www.issf-sports.org/getfile.asp ... dition.pdf

For young shooters who don't have the arm strength to hold up a pistol for long, USAShooting has the "Progressive Pistol" program, which uses a rather clever counterbalance system with a hook that goes under the forearm. That way the pistol itself is completely unsupported and fully controlled by the shooter, but they don't need to fight the weight: https://www.usashooting.org/library/You ... lans_2.pdf

Back to the original concern, any of these techniques will give you a more realistic zero than clamping the pistol in a vice, or shooting from a fixed rest that largely immobilizes the pistol against shooter errors. For a one-off to get started with a new pistol, parking the heel of the pistol on a sandbag is probably plenty close enough. Just don't expect that you won't have to make subsequent sight adjustments as your technique improves.