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Admission of Guilt

S

SnakeEye

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Alright here it is, I admit it..
I cant seem to shoot for shit.
I spent the day at range yesterday and dispensed roughly 500 rounds over a 4 hour period. And i can safely say all i did was waste good money.
Sometimes i can spend and entire 17 rd mag and not even hit paper. My groups i think are somwhere in the 2 ft range :O . im there watching in shame as other shooters with higher caliber firearms rip 4" holes in their targets from consisitently hitting the same place. (im firing 9mm(sw99) and .45(defender)

I can remeber when i took my first courses a little over a year ago from Darius I was hitting 3" Diameter steel targets at 25 ft consistently after only a few hours training. Now i seems to have degraded into some kind of shooting special needs student, obviously completely losing the basics that i grasped so quickly then.
half the problem i suppose is admitting i have a problem and asking for help.

what the hell can i do to help remedy this horrific affliction.
I love shooting, but when you cant hit shit its just becomes a waste of money and ammo and a severe morale killer.
thx
guilty as charged.
 
make sure you are not flinching. get some snap caps, have someone load them in your mags, see what happens. Don't be afraid to ask people at the range form help.
 
SnakeEye said:
Alright here it is, I admit it..
I cant seem to shoot for shit.
I spent the day at range yesterday and dispensed roughly 500 rounds over a 4 hour period. And i can safely say all i did was waste good money.
Sometimes i can spend and entire 17 rd mag and not even hit paper. My groups i think are somwhere in the 2 ft range :O . im there watching in shame as other shooters with higher caliber firearms rip 4" holes in their targets from consisitently hitting the same place. (im firing 9mm(sw99) and .45(defender)

I can remeber when i took my first courses a little over a year ago from Darius I was hitting 3" Diameter steel targets at 25 ft consistently after only a few hours training. Now i seems to have degraded into some kind of shooting special needs student, obviously completely losing the basics that i grasped so quickly then.
half the problem i suppose is admitting i have a problem and asking for help.

what the hell can i do to help remedy this horrific affliction.
I love shooting, but when you cant hit shit its just becomes a waste of money and ammo and a severe morale killer.
thx
guilty as charged.
Click to expand...


Any time you'd like to go to MRA with me, let me know.
 
SnakeEye I dont want to make this seem as if I'm rubbing it in, and I'm not the best pistol shot. But remember the old joke about how to get to Carnagie Hall ? Practice man, practice !

I haven't shot much for pistols since I got out of the Navy in '78. I've fired a couple of handguns at the shoot's we've had recently and I finally got myself a pistol of my own.

I took my S&W .40VE to the range today and put about 150 rounds through it. Here's a couple of the targets I had set up at about 30 feet.

I warmed up by just plinking at some clay pigeons and then shot a few targets. First target I put 9 out of ten "on paper".
View attachment 270

Second target I got all ten "on paper".
View attachment 271

Third target I'm getting my grouping tightened up a bit.
View attachment 272

Last target, 7 out of ten "in the black". [smile]
View attachment 273

Don't feel bad, if I back the targets out to 50 ft. I'm lucky if I can hit it half the time ! [thinking]
 
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While it may be a trigger issue, it sounds more to me like you are trying to shoot too fast. Slow down for awhile. Breathe, let out half, steadily squeeze the trigger.

When you first started shooting, it was so new you automatically paid a lot of attention. Now you may not be putting the same "thought" into each shot.

I also agree that a .22 works wonders to get back to basics. If you aren't firing pretty regular, it's easy to develop a fllinch, or bad habits. Take a .22 and take your time.

Maybe try loading one bullet in your gun at a time. See if slowing down that much helps. Build you speed gradually

Bill
 
I would pick up either a Smith and Wesson 22A or a Ruger 22/45. I bought both used from Four Seasons a few weeks back ($160 for the 22A, $190 for the Ruger) and shooting 500-1000 rounds a week (550 rounds for $8.96 at Walmart) will help you find out what you're doing wrong and help you get back on track.
 
Shooting skills are like a salad on a hot day.....perishable. You lose muscle memory if too much time passes between shooting sessions. Did you also notice that your gun felt different in your hand?

Shoot more often and your skill will return.
 
I dont know if your doing what I tend to do but sometimes I forget to keep my eye on the front post and let it wander to the target. When i do this I am terrible, but when i keep my eye on that front sight its much better.

keep us posted
 
Pride for me is quickly punished by me shooting like crap. Mostly after I have a great day at the range I'll feel so good about my shooting skills that I'll slack on my trigger-pull and form. [rolleyes]

Arrrr

-Weer'd Beard
 
If you are shooting 500 rounds in 4 hours and not feeling good about it, you are probably practicing and engraining bad habits. Shoot 50-100 quality, deliberate rounds a session for now. Dryfire until you get some good trigger control and sight pictures before you try it again. It will get better.
 
I had to make major changes in the way I shoot as I got older. One day I just realised that old age and gradual changes in my eyesight had taken a toll on me.

The first thing I did was try different changes in my stance and found that I could no longer use the Isosceles stance. No matter how hard I tried it was evident that I could no longer shoot like that.

When I started using the Weaver stance I was shocked that I was shooting better than I ever had. By bringing the hand gun so much closer to my eyes I could actually concentrate on the front sight.

I also had to keep reminding myself that the target is suppose to be a blur behind the front sight.

The point I'm trying to make is everyone is different and if constant practice is not the answer you have to go in a different direction and try and figure out why you are having a problem.

Ask some one at the range for help they might notice some thing that's fixed easily.
 
Mr twigg: that first screen shot looks about me at my current days best.

Thor67: i have a pile of those correction targets in my range bag , but you need to hit with some consistency to use em. im so over the place its not of much use to me at this point.
---
im firing slowly and im not doing any follow up shots. im treating each shot as the only one. so much so that after a few 16 round mags i have to pull my arms to my chest (muzzle downrange) to give them a break halfway through.

im focusing on my "front" sight only, not on my target downrange. Alligning the top of and centering it with my slightly out of focus rear sight, alligning all with the blur of a target downrange.
im not breathing just before or at the trigger squeeze, and im holding my trigger at the its rearward most point of travel after the discharge, releasing only after the full cycle has completed
as near as i can tell im doing everything by the book, but my results are inconsistent at best.

its got to be something stupid that im doing.
 
SnakeEye - Sounds like your target will look like #8 in the diagrams I posted the link for.

What this means is that you should go through all of the fundamentals again. Start shooting at 5 yards. Watch your stance, watch your breathing, don't overgrip (if your arms are getting tired with a couple of mags through the gun this could be an issue. Overgripping could cause your arms to shake. It may even be imperceptible to you, but the gun will know and waggle.), don't undergrip, watch your arm placement, watch the sites (top to bottom/right to left), redo the right eye/left eye dominance test just to make sure.

You might even try doing some shooting from the benchrest which can help narrow down some of these issues.

ShootingUSA had some great "ProTips" http://www.shootingusa.com/PRO_TIPS/pro_tips.html that discussed the fundamentals. Rob Leatham's site has some too: http://www.robleatham.com/

Good luck. Let us know what works.
 
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SnakeEye,

One or the instructors I know starts his basic pistol class about 2 yards from the target. Only thing on the target is a series of 1" spots, no rings. First shot is fired aiming at the dot, then a second shot is fired aiming at the first hole. All slow and methodical. He has found he's able to identify bad habits much quicker this way.

He won't move the student further back until they can consistently fire two shots touching.

It does seem to help identify problems and give some immediate feedback to the shooter.

CD
 
SnakeEye,

There's some good advice here. I'll add my 2 cents:

1) Shoot fewer rounds, and take longer to do it. I don't know about the rest of the guys here, but 100 rounds is about the limit for me shooting paper targets. You get tired and develop bad habits out of your frustrations if you are not shooting well. Been there and done that! Slow down and make each shot count.

2) Move the target closer. If you are not consistently on paper you can't diagnose your issues. Some days when I'm not shooting well I'll move the targets up to 10 feet and then slowly move them back. There's a bit of a mind game in this for me ("OK, I hit it at 10 feet, I should be able to do it at 15 feet," and so on out as far as I want). Also, don't use bullseyes, use paper plates for a while, or just sheets of blank paper.

3) Get some snap caps in your caliber and use them mixed into your magazine with live rounds. Preferably have someone else load the mag. If you are by yourself, load 2 mags with the snap caps randomly mixed in and mix up the mags before loading them in. When the gun goes 'click' instead of 'bang' you'll see your and and arm move as it does during a typical shot. The first time I did this I was amazed. It was like watching someone else's arm flailing around in front of me! I had no control over it. Turns out I had developed a strong flinch that I'm still working to get rid of. (see http://northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=5271&highlight=flinch)

4) Hook up with an instructor for an hour or two. I've recently started shooting bullseye. I'm not very good really and I was getting frustrated. There was a nice older guy at the range one day watching me shoot and seeing my lack of control. He asked me what I was doing and I responded "practicing for bullseye". He looked at me and said "that's not practice." He spent an hour of his time with me working on my technique. In that hour I shot maybe 20 rounds, and after each one he helped me diagnose what I did wrong and right. What a difference that hour made for me. I'm very grateful to him for it.
 
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SnakeEye, if you want to join me for a night at MRA sometime, I will do my best to diagnose your shooting problems.
A lot of times the shooter will not recognize the problem until someone else points it out to him. Just drop me a PM. BTW I am in Lynn.
 
I shoot every Sunday morning at Danvers F&G. I also extend an invitation. I'm no expert, but I shoot well enough and there are lots of guys at the club who can help. Let me know if you'd like to shoot.


Chris
 
thanks for the tips all, them more self diagnostic info i can amass the better. And i think having someone take a look at me actually shooting would probobly help to isolate the issues i cant see for myself.
however I think i may have found a pretty substantial chunk of my problem by accident.

i went to my job interview last week and subsequently had to take a pre-employment physical at Concentra.

As it would turn out it i have substantial vision loss in my left eye.
im left handed and left hand dominant.
they said that if i were to go for a drivers licence now i would not pass the basic eye exam. :O

its funny because i dont/didnt think i have a problem ,but then i wouldnt know the difference would i. but it would certainly explain alot.
Over the last two years or so ive been doing CAD work almost exclusively as opposed to previously, and pretty much spending 8-12 hours a day staring a foot and a half into a monitor trying to click on minute features.
ive got to get a real eye exam from an optometrist before i can conclude either way, but it was shocking news.
 

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