Shooting a Blank Target for Practice

[mprince]

I had read that several of the military teams advocated practice on a blank or turned over target so that their shooters could learn to focus on the sight alignment instead of worrying about sight picture as well. I had had that in the back of my mind and wanted to give it a try in practice but never had the opportunity (mostly because I never get to practice at all).

Yesterday at the indoor bullseye match in Oak Ridge, on the .22 portion , I shot my marvel kit with an ultradot on it for an about average score (for me) of 815. For Centerfire, I shot my Sams Beretta to practice ball gun/iron sight shooting, but when I put my outdoor glasses on with the reduced prescription for iron sights, I could not see the front sight at all. I don't know whether the problem was the lighting not working with the tint of the glasses or if I was just having a "bad eye day", but after my first shot at slow fire was a miss just out of the scoring ring, I knew I had to try something else.

So I just took off my glasses (I'm 20/40 in my aiming eye) after the first shot and shot the rest of the match without being able to see the bull at all. I ended up with a final score of only 753, but as I learned to focus on the sight and got a reference point somewhere in the center of the paper, my last 6 strings of fire averaged just under 89%, which on a good day, should get leg points with a ball gun, so I was pleased with the outcome.

My load was Remington-UMC green box 115FMJ, and my Sams gun will shoot this pretty darn well. With handloads it is unbelievable.

Anyway, I just thought I would put this out there for new shooters, who want to work on shooting iron sights and wanted a good practice tool. It sure makes it easy to concentrate on the iron sights when the bull is taken completely out of the occasion.

If this sounds like a silly recommendation, keep in mind this is from the perspective of someone who has been shooting less than 2 years and this might only help newer shooters.

Thanks
Mark

[CR10X]

Firing or dryfiring on a blank target is highly recommended for anyone that wants to get to High Master. Identify one thing to improve, train to improve that thing, move on to the next. Don't just do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome, it will just be chance. Oh, and have fun....

Cecil