TargetTalk

Hi to all,

As a newbie, I figure out that I have fired 5000 pellets in my home range in 4,5 months. Is this too many?

The question should be how much have you dry fired and how many rounds have you shot in competition in comparison to your pellet consumption at home.Personally I don’t think that is too many 4.5 month span of time shooting at home.

Do you enjoy shooting, having fun at it? Continue on, just leave some for the rest of us.

Xman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:28 am The question should be how much have you dry fired and how many rounds have you shot in competition in comparison to your pellet consumption at home.Personally I don’t think that is too many 4.5 month span of time shooting at home.

Hi,
I dont dry fire much, have been shooting in my study instead of sitting idle during Zoom meetings.

Just putting pellets downrange isn't going to help. In fact, it's a great way to reinforce bad habits until they become nearly unbreakable. If you really want to learn to shoot well, try to extract as much information as you can from EVERY shot. DON"T FOCUS ON SCORES!!! Concentrate on refining your shot process and making it automatic. Practicing shooting poorly is counterproductive. If you have a bad shot, figure out what part of your shot process needs work to eliminate it, and focus on fixing that. Once you have a good shot process that you can execute shot after shot, the scores will be there.

Gwhite wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:38 am Just putting pellets downrange isn't going to help. In fact, it's a great way to reinforce bad habits until they become nearly unbreakable. If you really want to learn to shoot well, try to extract as much information as you can from EVERY shot. DON"T FOCUS ON SCORES!!! Concentrate on refining your shot process and making it automatic. Practicing shooting poorly is counterproductive. If you have a bad shot, figure out what part of your shot process needs work to eliminate it, and focus on fixing that. Once you have a good shot process that you can execute shot after shot, the scores will be there.

Indeed, all is self-tested and true. Though I dont bother too much about the scores and doing pretty ok on focusing on the front sight. I am so far not successful in keeping the rest of your most valuable advice.
Thanks. You are a great instructor, speaking with 20 years of experience.

The value of dry fire is that it allows you to see things you can't normally observe due to recoil. Until you can dry fire with minimal movement beyond your natural wobble, the sights on your pistol are of limited utility.

When your brain gets to the point where you can dry fire all day long without disturbing the sight alignment, then it's no longer of much value. That doesn't mean putting ammo in pistol will be nothing but tens. As soon as there is a real shot to be fired, with a measurable outcome on the paper, your brain can still make a hash of things.

If you can work with a coach or a friend, "ball & dummy" training can be helpful to separate out how you dry fire from how you shoot with ammo.

Do you consider Keith Sanderson a novice?:

https://www.usashooting.org/library/Ins ... t_2009.pdf

Trigger time, is trigger time. How it is achieved is moot.

m1963 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 5:23 pm Trigger time, is trigger time. How it is achieved is moot.

They are not the same thing. Dryfire allows you to devote all your mental energy to process, not result. Except during matches, only process matters.

"I find no value in endlessly dry-firing any gun and not knowing the results of each trigger pull; though."

This reminds me of a post sometime back by Conradin about dry firing. He wanted to know who was going to tell
him if he was doing it right.

Let's get real! If you can't tell if you're screwing up while dry firing, you sure as hell won't be able to tell burning your ammo.

I have a AV V-10 (updated version of Gamo Compact) and have put a few thousand pellets through it.
There is a clear difference between dry firing and live firing. Live firing produces a noticable upward kick that I have been trying to control with little luck. Dry firing doesn't do this. I have seen several on-line comments about controlling the kick, so I understand that this is common, but whether it is common to all pellet pistols or just mine I don't yet know.

What I would like to know is does the IZH 46M also kick up during firing.

Also, besides concentrating on perfect follow-through is there a way to control the kick?

So far my targets look like a shotgun blast with my average scores around 372 and not improving.

I work out often with a gyro ball and hand gripper tk increase my firearm stability and grip strength. That should help reduce the kick over a long period.

Also, when I dry fire, my goal is to move only my trigger finger. The natural tendency is to squeeze all of your fingers, and that will cause an increased kick.

Unless you have a pistol with recoil compensation, there will be kick. The heavier the pistol, the less it will move. The IZH, for example is heavy, but it also has a much higher velocity, so the two will cancel out to some extent.

If the pistol is vaguely accurate, the force of the kick will be quite consistent. How consistent the movement is depends on how consistently you hold the pistol.

The motion from the kick will be predominately vertical. If the only problem you had was from the kick, you would get a vertical stripe of shots on your target. NOT a "shotgun pattern".

Don't worry about the kick. Trying to "control" it with a tighter grip will be detrimental to your shooting. Work on getting & maintaining a consistent grip, focus on the front sight and dry fire until your sights don't move. That should largely take care of the "shotgun pattern."

The movement from squeezing all your fingers isn't "increased kick". It may look like it, but it's just you moving the pistol around, and should be readily apparent if you dry fire.

I started with a Gamo Compact last September and have been making progress since: my first 60 shot after 3 weeks with the pistol, was 366. I shot a 506 last week. I’ve made the trigger a lot lighter - it’s down to about 1 1/2lb - 2lb now, that made a very big difference.
Make sure you’ve got the right size targets for your distance (I had the wrong size for 3 months!). I use HWS Diablo Basics. I keep hold of the grip for each target of ten shots: I load and cock the pistol with my left hand, putting the base of the grip into the top of my thigh for the downward cocking motion. I shoot about 3-4 times a week (50 shot) and dry fire twice a week.
I’m 61 years old too. Good luck.

emre-nur wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:51 am Hi to all,

As a newbie, I figure out that I have fired 5000 pellets in my home range in 4,5 months. Is this too many?

Looking back on my typical use and the amount of pellets I bought throughout the year in 2021, I shot a little over 20K.

That's shooting 60/day almost every day, plus a few league meets and the occasional day when I go longer. Whether or not you're shooting "too much" is up to you and how you feel like that's helping you improve. But I'm pretty sure that the elite shooters are doing way more than you or me.

emre-nur wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:51 am Hi to all,

As a newbie, I figure out that I have fired 5000 pellets in my home range in 4,5 months. Is this too many?

It's not the quantity of your shooting but the quality of your training.
Are you just shooting for the sake of it or are you doing a focused training drill?
You need to know the difference between practice and training.....

I admit that in the few months since I returned to AP, I don't dry fire as much as I've " been told to". I find with my 46m that when I do, I walk away with more confidence than I should. I seem to have much better trigger control in dry fire that does not perform so great at the range. Some of that might be down to the dry fire without charging the air chamber feels terribly different that live fire and charging it with air is not always possible in my home. I believe I am lucky that it takes only 12 minutes to get to the range. I do respect the wisdom of much better shooters than me that I should be training dry. I am not saying I don't need and wouldn't benefit from dry training.

What helped me do more dry fires is to get a small hand counter. Dunno why, but it motivates me to do a lot more dry fire reps. Yesterday I did 100 and the day before I did 180. Doing a lot more dry fire reps than shooting reps helps me get the mentality that I need when I pull the trigger, and makes it easier not to switch into the I'm-really-shooting-now mode that makes me get twitchy.

Pirate,
Are you actually lifting and holding your pistol just as live fire 180 per day? Seems like it would be enough to cause injury eventually?