When to cancel the shot.

[shooter.177]

Hi,

I would like to know if I am doing right thing.
Before I used to cancel a shot if there was trigger delay for long time.
If I forcefully take the shot it used to land in upside or down on the target on 8 or 7 ring.
Recently a good friend of mine was telling me that if you try to take a shot after there was slight vertical movement in the arc while aiming, better to cancel the shot, because there is more chance of it going up or down, but with slight horizontal movement you will not go beyod the 9 ring.

I tried it, I feel the same way, and my groups became better, thanks to him. But being a beginner, is there any problems doing like this. Just want to make sure I am follwing the right path.

rgds,

[David M]

You abort a shot the first time that the little man in your head says "Put the gun down", don't argue with him.
The shot should flow in a sequence, anytime the sequence is interrupted, paused, stopped or if you start thinking listen to the little man.

[Gerard]

A significant problem arises in that there seems to be another little man in there, and he talks loudly and with some authority as he attempts to explain that if you just hold on another second and restrain your arm your hold will steady out enough for a 10. He's a liar of course. But a convincing one, because he's your ego. Letting go of ego seems rather central to being able to hear the voice of that other, more honest little fellow, who earnestly and in a timely fashion advises when it's time to put the gun down.

[jhmartin]

The shot should flow in a sequence, anytime the sequence is interrupted, paused, stopped or if you start thinking listen to the little man.

As David said ... the shot process must be a flow.
If the little man or the big man starts talking, you are not "flowing", you're listening and not shooting.

[shooter.177]

The shot should flow in a sequence, anytime the sequence is interrupted, paused, stopped or if you start thinking listen to the little man

Thats true, But may be beacase of my inexperice, few shots takes trigger delay, It doesnt break as soon as expected. Then I used to try to make the shot with effort, but most of the time it used to land on 7 or 8 ring.
After started canceling more shots, i get better groups.

rgds,

[john_almighty]

The shot should flow in a sequence, anytime the sequence is interrupted, paused, stopped or if you start thinking listen to the little man

Thats true, But may be beacase of my inexperice, few shots takes trigger delay, It doesnt break as soon as expected. Then I used to try to make the shot with effort, but most of the time it used to land on 7 or 8 ring.
After started canceling more shots, i get better groups.

rgds,

You are doing as David said. You are realising what shooting with flow means, once you have done it a few times, you recognise it. And deviation from it will cause trigger delay or other distraction because you do not see the flow. Forcing the trigger will cause a snatch in many cases causing you to shoot on right side into 7s or8s if you are in 10 or even worse otherwise.

[Rover]

There is something going on that my friend "Old Dog" Vic Alvarez once told me.

(Paraphrased) "You are shooting in the past. While nerve impulses from your eyes (sight picture) are traveling to your brain and being processed, time elapses. By the time you can react to all this and send back the impulse to pull the trigger it's all over."

This is the reason you try to trust your hold and go with a good trigger squeeze, rather than trying to "ambush" the bull as it drifts by. You'll be "a day late, and a dollar short."

This is a tidbit I hear very little about, passed on to me by a fine shooter.

[Isabel1130]

There is an almost uncontrollable urge for most people to hesitate on the trigger when they know there is a round in the chamber.

One of the beauties of dry fire is it teaches you that your sights will stay aligned if you are aggressive and smooth on the trigger.

If you ever pick up your gun, thinking, " there is a round in the chamber, therefore I must be more careful than if this were dry fire" YOU NEED TO PUT DOWN THE GUN, UNLOAD THE GUN, AND DRY FIRE UNTIL YOU REASSURE YOURSELF that you are not moving the sights when you pull the trigger.

When you get to the point, where your shot process is automatic, and you are not thinking about anything other than shot process/dry fire, your live fire will start to get really really good.

[Gerard]

As much as I continue to work on implementing that trustful approach and still fail to do so 100% of the time, what Alvarez told you is pretty much how I shot air rifles and arrows and even threw stones and snowballs as a kid. Back then I pretty much hit everything aimed at. It was beyond easy. Seemed to just happen without any effort save lifting the object, whatever it was to be launched. After that it just happened. It's all the thinking afterwards, as an old dude taking up target pistol, that's made it difficult to place centre shots every time.

Recently I've been shooting less and less with the fancy Olympic Champion glasses with prescription lens, and just using my working glasses, a pair of 'office gradient' things with variable focus depending on where I look through them. My groups are tighter. Not because I can see the sights and/or target better, because both are much worse with these glasses than with the finely tuned shooting setup. But because my sight picture is quite a bit worse, I don't worry about it in detail, just strive to get things approximately lined up then get the trigger moving and try to hold through that with sights not moving. Simpler seems better. I'm not absolutely sure I've ditched the shooting glasses yet, but for now it seems a good idea, at least until I get back to shooting automatically all the time... not just a few shots in a row now and then before getting caught up in scores or whatever other distractions.

[shooter.177]

I noticed my bad shots also land in same area, beacause of bad trigger.
Whats the best way to correct this.

[Gerard]

Spreading to the lower left is most likely a result of snatching the trigger, grabbing the shot not properly squeezing it.

[C. Perkins]

Just my humble opinion...

Those bad shots are at 6'Oclock
All of those 7 and 8 s would have been 8 and 9s

Holding too long
Dropping your head
Dropping your arm
Tired
Lost your sight picture

You can dry fire in between shots...

Clarence

[Isabel1130]

One of the reasons it is so difficult to diagnose is that it is entirely possible to make more than one error at a time, and few of them are mutually exclusive.
I find the longer I hold, the more opportunity for some other error to creep into my shot process in addition to the over holding. Your wrist gets floppy so you drop it as the shot goes off, your sight picture gets erratic so you snatch the shot, etc. etc. etc.
I find that over holding in and of itself will often yield a random eight, but overholding in conjuction with a triggering error can get you a six or worse.

In short, there is one way to do it right, and many, many ways to screw it up.

[shooter.177]

I have partially come out of this probelm by canceling more shots which takes trigger delay or causes vertical movement just after taking aim.
but some times I cancel shots 3-4 times, that i think its not good.

[Gerard]

Here's an image version taken from a PDF available from www.targetshooting.ca. who hold the copyright on the information contained. I'll post it here to make it visible to shooters who don't want to download a potentially dangerous PDF - as virus-laden PDF files seem to be becoming more common these days. I've found the simple shot layouts and analysis quite useful in helping to diagnose whatever errors might slip into my shooting now and then.

Oops. Seems the image is too big for the forum attachment thing to upload. Fine, I'll pop it onto my server and keep it there:

[shooter.177]

Thanks Gerard. I think there are multiple probelms for me, need to be corrected after looking this. :-P

rgds,

[Gerard]

Thanks Gerard. I think there are multiple probelms for me, need to be corrected after looking this. :-P

rgds,

Try not to obsess over micro-details though. This can be quite dangerous. Of course accurate, thorough knowledge and awareness are important and useful... but not always helpful to apply at the time of the shot. Over-thinking your technique during what ought to be a virtually unconscious shot process is almost certain to earn you an 8 or a 7 or worse, even if your initial hold looks like a nice fat 10. Learn as much as you can. Then forget it and shoot.

[ronpistolero]

Hi. What's the difference between snatching and jerking?

[Gerard]

Neither is terribly specific, though snatching is more often applied to what is more technically known as 'heeling' which is a learned reaction to recoil, or the anticipation of recoil. Jerking can happen in any direction, depending on the source. One can jerk the trigger down or to either side, jerk the whole arm, whatever. For my first six months I had what seemed to be an incurable tendency to jerk my whole forearm at the moment of the shot, about once ever 3 or 4 shots on bad days. Thought I had some sort of nervous system problem. But with training it eventually went away, and hasn't happened at all for almost a year now.

[ronpistolero]

Thanks for your thoughts, Gerard. I have had this problem since way back when I first started to shoot 20 years ago. I never had a coach and was doing quite well due to its consistency, hence I didn't really feel a solid need to fix this until I realized I totally stagnated and now has gone down with my scores. So, how did you fix this common problem of ours?