Bullseye Practice

What do you guys do for practice at the range? 1 shot drills? Check every shot through the scope? Need ideas

1 shot and 2 shot drills

What about for slow fire practice?

I use the two shot timer for slow fire

Slow fire I focus on everything. Everything needed to make a good shot. Really what I focus on most is trigger control, proper grip, follow through, and calling the shot. If I didn't call it right then I wasn't paying enough attention to something and made a mistake somewhere. And don't be afraid to abort a shot.

There are a bunch of good exercises in the Marine Corps workbook.

How far along are you in the Marine Corps workbook?

I haven't made it past the 10 10s on two targets in a row, been shooting bullseye for three months and my record is 97

Keep at it. Zins recommended that I have other things to work on as well. I completed the 10-10s with the 22 in The winter of 2015. It was about a year after my first matches.

I continue to work on slow fire, one shot drills and the workbook with the 45. I have not completed the 10-10s yet with the 45. When I noticed my sustained fire becoming weaker I went back to the book with the 22. It took a couple of weeks to get back through the 10s drill.

Some of you know what I'm going to say, so just bear with it.  I'll keep putting this out there because so few will.  It's your dime, so keep reading if you want to.  I could have typed a lot more detail and stuff, but this should give some picture of my personal opinion on this. 

Do we like where our shooting skill is?  Are we at the classification / score goal we want to be?  If not, then why are we "practicing" what we are already doing? Will constant repetition of the same thing produce improved results every time? 

At the range I'm generally either training or shooting a match, very little practice.  Each range session has a specific area or areas to work on or a specific purpose (like sighting in, testing a new batch of reloads, etc.)

The good thing about the workbook is it gets shooters to range and sets up some specific goals, but without a coach or someone to help identify the areas to train on, it sometimes becomes just "practicing" what we're already doing.

Remember all those drills for football, baseball, basketball, etc., etc., the good coaches made the players do.  It ain't practicing than gets an athlete better, its training on the very basics for each individual component and movement of the entire game and then putting those skills together to succeed. 

There are several areas that we need to address with consistent and timely training. (And for the OCD among us, they can be broken down into many sub components under that great big heading called "shooting") 

My particular areas are generally grouped as: visual focus and awareness, grip and position consistency, trigger operation, and mental conditioning.  Then additional training combining these to make sure the gun is as parallel with the line of sight as possible and completing the shot within the minimum wobble area.  

Every area moves toward the goal of keeping the gun's angular position constant and completing the trigger process within the minimum wobble area / time. 

So for me, I don't practice.  Each session at the range is training and reviewing each of those basic areas.  Mainly at this stage for me its training and reviewing the visual focus throughout the entire shot process (as many perfect calls and recognizing the approach of the minimum wobble time as possible in a row) and trigger operation (smooth, progressive pressure and consistent operation within the minimum wobble (SF) or return to black (TF / RF) that does not alter the orientation of the gun.  

And for slow fire, training on recognizing when to abort the shot. (At my stage, I'm losing more points to the shots I should not have taken than the ones that were completed correctly. I know that sounds obvious, but after spending so much time training to shoot and complete the shots consistently, eventually it gets to the point that its as important to recognize when not to shoot. And that will be hard after all that time training to complete the shots well.  But recognizing when the process is off will be its own reward and we will not be "practicing" bad shots.  Remember, we only want to remember and replicate the "good" shots".) 

And were not talking about keeping score here, but a true analysis of each shot for how well that training area was performed, calling the shot correctly and reviewing every correct (good) repetition mentally (and just plan forgetting those that did not meet the goal). Did I truthfully see everything?  Did the shot complete at the optimum time? Did I call the shot correctly? Did I maintain visual focus and mental commitment throughout the shot?  (And most importantly for slow fire) Did I abort the shot if it was not progressing correctly? 

So lastly, training is also spending the time to study and review the good shots.  Quit searching for "what did I do wrong" and start recognizing what is working.  And study the 10 and X's, forget the others. 

There, that's probably a little more complicated and maybe somewhat more "soul searching truth" than was anticipated, but to me, that's the difference between "practicing" and "training". 

Respectfully, 

Cecil

Cecil has it right.  There's practice and there's training.  In a lot of respects don't train on blacks with scoring rings.  Train to keep them all in the black.  In slow fire train to keep them in a cluster.  In T & R keep them in an ever decreasing cluster.  Make an overlay of a target ring set to gauge the cluster to target ring size.  I wish a target company made centers with no rings.

Wobbley wrote:Cecil has it right.  There's practice and there's training.  In a lot of respects don't train on blacks with scoring rings.  Train to keep them all in the black.  In slow fire train to keep them in a cluster.  In T & R keep them in an ever decreasing cluster.  Make an overlay of a target ring set to gauge the cluster to target ring size.  I wish a target company made centers with no rings.

They do.  check eBay seller dpssports

Or you can get the targets with a black bull but no rings from the DPS website:

http://www.distinguishedprecision.com/Bullseye-Pistol_c_8.html

I can't see my shots in the black let alone the rings from the firing line.  Sure with the spotting scope I can but not 22 holes at 50yds.  Not even on 60x setting.  I gave up on the training manual as shooting at a white sheet of paper just wan't doing it for me.  So I started just trying to get them all in side the 7 ring.  Just this month I have been able to move that to 7 to 9 in the black.  I was so close to cleaning a target the other day on TF with one just outside the black and 7 tens.  starting to feel like it is coming together.  Maybe a lot of it it the KC trigger.  What I got to correct is the first target everyday is terrible then after that it is the first shot of each string with the number one shot being the worst.  More dry fire I guess.  Don

What I am doing is I shoot a string of ten, but I check every shot and if I shoot a 8 or less, I replace the target. I get targets printed for free so that helps with cost

Aprilian wrote:

Wobbley wrote:Cecil has it right.  There's practice and there's training.  In a lot of respects don't train on blacks with scoring rings.  Train to keep them all in the black.  In slow fire train to keep them in a cluster.  In T & R keep them in an ever decreasing cluster.  Make an overlay of a target ring set to gauge the cluster to target ring size.  I wish a target company made centers with no rings.

They do.  check eBay seller dpssports

Thanks

One shot.  One shot at a time.  One 10 at a time.  Do it again.