A few fundamental issues

1. My stance determined using eyes-closed arm lift in the most natural position puts me almost perpendicular to the line.  However at my age (68) this puts strain on my neck, and while shooting it feels more comfortable to rotate 20-30 degrees from perpendicular.  Which one is right?

2. One reads that dots should be centered in the scope, but why?  With irons deviation of sight alignment throws the shot way off, but with an optic the shot goes where the dot is - even if off-center in the scope.  So is dot centering recommended to maintain a consistent grip and hand position?

3. For live fire practice I start with the 22 then go to the 45.  I noticed that usually the first shot with the 45 is very close to the center, and usually the best shot of the string.  I thought this was due to recoil / blast reactions after witnessing the first big boom.  But recently I noticed my first shot with the 22 is also often the best of the string.  So maybe I'm changing from good trigger concentration at first to paying too much attention to the target later?

4. My range has mostly 50' lanes and a few 75', and I use B3 or B16 targets depending on which lane I get.  I assumed the black circles were scaled so you are shooting the same MOA at 50' as at 75' - but this is not the case.  The B3 black measures 77mm, and the B16 is 136mm.  75' is 1.5*50', so to scale at the same angle the black at 75 would be 1.5*77mm = 115mm, not 136mm.  So is the 50' target intentionally more difficult, or am I missing something (as usual).


thanks

I don’t have all the answers and the answers I give might not be correct but I’ll give you my 2 cents.

1) I would shoot the position that is most comfortable which for you sounds like the one that puts less strain on your neck.  FWIW, I can achieve a NPA almost perpendicular to the target (like you) and again at approx 45 degrees. It depends on where I set my feet to start with but I always prefer to shoot near that midpoint. Perpendicular position has always felt unnatural to me so I don’t use it.  For me it’s not so much my neck being strained but rather my shooting arm feels under tension.

2) I haven’t used a dot in years but I think keeping it centered within the scope forces you to not alter your grip or get sloppy with your trigger control.  In other words you sort of treat it like you would sight alinement for concentration purposes.  There might be a more scientific reason for doing this (like a centered dot has less parallax maybe?) but if I was using a dot, I would concentrate on keeping it centered.  Photo Escape (vendor on this list) has a nice, well made device for achieving this.

3) I’m going to struggle with you on this problem because I do the exact opposite.  In my case the first shot or two of either gun are off and they are usually high/right.  After that the shots are more consistently centered.  For a while I was thinking it was mechanical (cold barrel for the first shot).  This past season (in a couple matches anyways) I put some extra concentration on my trigger control for these first shots and (wouldn’t you know) I had better results.  I am thinking my problem is mental (need to concentrate on trigger which I should be doing for every shot).  Yours could be equally mental just the opposite.  You may try experimenting with that.

4). I haven’t shot the 50’ targets for a while but I do remember them being harder to get good scores on.  I don’t know the reasoning behind the sizes so I won’t be of much help on that one.

Good luck.
John

JHHolliday wrote:
2. One reads that dots should be centered in the scope, but why?  With irons deviation of sight alignment throws the shot way off, but with an optic the shot goes where the dot is - even if off-center in the scope.  So is dot centering recommended to maintain a consistent grip and hand position?

That may be what the marketing says but don't believe it.  Put the scope on a solid rest and without touching anything look through it at a target while moving your head around, you may be shocked.

1. If you think the more perpendicular position is more stable AND it is just a matter of stretching and practice, then you can train yourself to make the position comfortable. If it is more of a bone interference issue then train to make the more comfortable position stable.

2. Dots have parallax error. That means that the POI will change depending on where the dot is within the tube. It is distance dependent, so it might be very small at one distance and pretty bad at another distance.

As mentioned above, the dot position in the tube is also an indicator that your grip and stance are coming back to the same position.

3. Could be a lot of things. Like John, I have had the opposite problem. If I fired 2 shots during slow fire the second was usually better. That indicated to me I was being too careful and interrupting the trigger on the first shot, then the second shot was more like timed fire with a smooth and continuous trigger pull. That gave me something to work on to improve my slow fire trigger pull.

You might be approaching the second shot differently mentally, taking your time on the first shot, then rushing and jerking the trigger on the second shot or relaxing your grip or a lot of other things. The gun could also be shifting in your hand in recoil from the first shot. This is less likely if the effect is the same with 22 and 45, but still possible. It could also be the dot not coming back to center and parallax error causing the shift.

Is there a pattern to the second shot? I don't put much stock in the wheel of misfortune but rushing the shot and jerking the trigger usually throws the shot low and left for right handed shooters.

4. Yes the 50' target is smaller than just shrinking the target proportionally. Don't forget you get the higher score if the hole touches the line so the scoring rings are effectively 1 caliber larger. The 50' target is still smaller, but the effect is a lot less shooting 45 than it is with 22. I can only assume they took into account that most 50' ranges are indoors so there is no wind, rain, lighting changes etc.

Merick wrote:

JHHolliday wrote:
2. One reads that dots should be centered in the scope, but why?  With irons deviation of sight alignment throws the shot way off, but with an optic the shot goes where the dot is - even if off-center in the scope.  So is dot centering recommended to maintain a consistent grip and hand position?

That may be what the marketing says but don't believe it.  Put the scope on a solid rest and without touching anything look through it at a target while moving your head around, you may be shocked.

This is a question that should be resolvable experimentally (so here goes!).  My 208's grip has nice palm shelf that was repurposed to clamp the pistol to a stable table:

https://postimg.cc/14vGvPGT

The table was adjusted to line up with a cardboard box test target 60' away (one of my home AP ranges), and the dot pointed at a 1" round "splatterburst" target sticker:

(Image attached)

The target sticker is about 5 MOA*. The dot is (nominally) 3MOA, but with my corrected astigmatism, etc sighting from arm's length the dot covered the target sticker.  Here is a (lucky) photo that shows the sight picture, and if you look closely it shows the dot over the target sticker:

https://postimg.cc/w73hPPFB

Centering the dot on the target sticker while in the middle of the optic, I then moved my head right to left and watched the dot/target relationship from edge to edge.  Though not shocking, sure enough the dot moved in relation to the target - the maximum deviation was somewhat more than the target diameter, maybe 1.5-2".  This effect was most noticeable at the edges of the optic lens, and if the movement was kept near the middle (say 1/2 the diameter) the deviation was quite small.

On a practical note the mis-alignment from not centering the dot was a lot smaller than my wobble at that distance 

Nice work. When you run the experiment your self you really learn.  Maybe not a big as your wobble, but enough to bump a few from "just out" to "touching".

At one time I had a scope on my service rifle and I was having a terrible time. Finally I put it on a bench at the range to test it and found it had enough parallax to sweep the whole target frame.