DoubleA

My current load for 100yrd stuff is 55 grn hornady bulk over 24.5 grn x-terminater with Cci #41 at 2.245 COAL. It shoots at 3000 fps out of my 18" 1/8 and just as accurate as my long range 77 Sierra's without having to weigh each charge.

I bought unique tek micrometers for a pistol and rifle bar and absolutely love them. It is especially nice if you have to work up different loads with different powders due to availability. Not only do you have speedy repeatable adjustments, but the fine threads allow for more precise adjustments.

If it was an issue with just the one mount, then I would do just that, but with both of them doing the same thing the faith in the mount design is gone.

I was just about to pick up a Skel mount before I read this. I want to replace my Larue LT-104 because it has shifted multiple times and I just cant trust it anymore. I have 2 scopes in the Larues and both have changed their zero, one of which while actually shooting. Maybe it would be better to just go with the RAMP Warne so it has a little more beef to it. Just looking at the design, I cant imagine it weighing much more than the Larue's. Besides, something about those vertical rings just rubs me the wrong way.

This is exactly why I practice all load styles. Wouldn't it be ideal to have all styles under your belt and readily accessed to make the most of the stage situation that you face? Whether it is loading close to or around a barricade, over a barrel, through a port, hauling butt, or even the occasional prone, no one load style is the easiest or fastest for all positions. Why not have more tools in your bag of tricks that you can use confidently when the time comes?

I'm just wondering how short is too short? I measured some federal premium vshok 223 that had cases 1.737 consistently.

The best you can do is shoot at smaller targets. There are places that you can go to download printable ipsc targets and such where you can simulate how they will look at particular distances, but it obviously won't get the exact results because a .45 at 10 yards is going the be the equivalent of a tank round at simulated 50 yard targets. One accuracy drill that I love to play is sticking a paster or piece of tape on the cardboard and shoot away all of it with accurate shots. It feels good to aim for a sliver of paster and be able to tag it at will. Great confidence builder too!

I don't think there is anything wrong with squinting one eye a little. Hell, when I get in the sun it's hard for me to not squint both eyes just walking for point A to B. In all seriousness, the tape is going to help, to the point that you may even shoot some matches with it. I actually started rubbing just a little chapstick in the lense instead of tape so that I could control the level of distortion. That way I still had decent depth perception yet still have the effect of handicapping the eye I don't want mucking up the sight picture. I generally don't have to do this anymore, but now and again do it anyway to reinforce the training that keeps my mind from fully registering the double image.

This may or may not come out right, but I'm going to try to convey what's going through my mind anyway. There is a difference in seeing or watching something and looking at/for it. I think it is two states of mind, one is visual observation and one is visual intent to observe. Visual intent to observe is what is driving your eyes from target spot to front sight back and forth while dragging the gun along with them. To call a shot, however, is a pure state of observation in my opinion. You don't have to want the bullet to hit anywhere in particular to see where it actually will hit. You do need to want the shot to land on a particular place on the target in order for the target and sights to line up there though. So I think the trick is switching frames of mind readily until you reach a point in which you can program a COF in your mind and then hit "run" when the buzzer goes off. The rest of the COF can be spent in pure observation mode(for the most part) which allows the super speedy make up shot "program" to run if necessary due to thorough training. What plagued me for so long is intending to see the front sight lift and call the shot. It was killing me that I could witness everything I needed yet could not see what was actually there. I think many people when they are told "front sight" start to do this. Staring at it until it is all crisp and perfect, lined up on target, everything is good to go and then fire. The shot looked good, "I swear I saw the front sight" , but when you get to the target the hit is not where you thought it was. I think this is a "love is blind" moment. You want to see something so bad that it obscures the truth. While it may not be so extreme for most people, I think that the frame of mind is the key component to making front sight focus work correctly and not cost extra time. The thing with target focus could be chalked up to less mental strain in maintaining discipline to follow through with front sight focus when it is not required to make an acceptable shot. The perception of time getting away from you can cause that visual intent to observe something happening instead of just watching it happening. I hope that makes sense...

I hope this helps some!

This! This is what I mean when I say focus on the area in space where your front sight is. The front sight has got a crisp focus because that is the length that your focal point is at, but it's the change in the light that tells you where the shot went. If you think about it, when you fire, the sight moves back however long the cycle length is, so if you are trying so hard to see the fine details on the front sight and then fire, it will pull the sight abruptly out of your focal length making more difficult to track. This explains why many people have their "aha!" moment when shooting at dusk. The muzzle blast enhances the sight picture and they can see the actual position of the sights as the bullet exits the barrel. It's also why I like shooting light colored plates a whole lot better than black plates It is true that depending on distance and difficulty of the shot, different sight pictures are required for maximum efficiency.

This may sound strange, but it helped me a great deal. Instead of focusing ON the front sight, focus on the point in space it is inhabiting. I like to visualize an area of focus that encompasses the front sight, rear sight, and target when aligned in front of my eyes. The focal length is at the distance of the front sight, but view the area at that distance in the relaxed way you would view one of those 3D pictures. Fire your gun some like this without really trying to stare at the front sight. The point here is to learn to see everything that is going on. Once you can see everything to a certain extent(front sight lifting, brass ejecting, muzzle flash, etc) you can start shifting your awareness around on the things that you see. The goal is to be able to see the front sight and it's relationship to the target and rear sight without having such a hard front sight focus that it drowns out the other inputs that allow you to successfully call the shot. You can also try this. Find your focal length with your gun drawn pointed at the berm, then lower the gun a little so you are looking at a point in space over the top of the front sight a few inches. Start to fire in 1 second intervals without "looking" at the gun and begin raising the gun slowly back into your line of sight again while continuing to fire. Just observe what you see. I hope this helps! If you like this, then try to learn to remember how it feels in your eyes to focus at this length and intensity. It helps make your draw and first shot faster and more accurate.

That is good to do to a certain extent in my opinion. If you spend most of your time pushing it based on a speed focus of having to beat a par time, when you are actually live firing it is highly likely that you will shoot with that focus as well. What you really want is to do what it takes to shoot each plate more efficiently. I would spend most of my dryfire time focusing on correct execution and then throw in some reps with the par time to A)find out the time it takes you to do a rep correctly to monitor progress, and B)push your comfort zone a little in terms of how much you can get away with not seeing and still make the shot. Speed is the observation, not the driving force. With par times it can be easy to get sucked into just beating the time which leads to sloppy dryfire and in turn will show it's consequences in live fire. At your live fire range you can also shoot rows of dots at shorter ranges to mimic a plate rack and get some feedback on if you have trained correctly.

Right on! The sights give the best feedback on the shooting. Using them, we get to KNOW what is going on...better. Knowing is awesome. Don't you win Majors without sights on your gun? No Majors. A few local matches. We do have other senses we can use, to varying degrees. And, we can trust a bit in our work to build a good and consistent index, grip, stance, etc. Ultimately, our bodies crave feedback (if we can get out of our own way with regards to expectations). We can get feedback in a variety of ways. The best feedback comes from our vision. We trust it the most and use it the most. The best visual feedback comes from the sights. Shooting matches without sights on my gun lets me know how much of a difference the sights really can make. To add to this (and kinda carry on with what Brian shared)... It's not just our sights we need to see. We need to locate...to KNOW...where other things are as well. We do this pretty well with vision. If I want to drive the gun to a target, I want to pick a clearly defined SPOT on that target to drive the gun to. Not brown, not vague...clear. Once I located that SPOT, I know where the gun needs to go. My body can then make the adjustments it needs to make to achieve the clear and known goal. On the target spot... Lately I have been really thinking about this in terms of finding the spot and it being in focus, or it just being identified. Because of the way my brain works I see relationships between shapes, angles, and lines. I can identify where I want to hit on an open target by just looking at the shape around the head area. In my mind I see the equivalent shape of the head if it were made into a point from where it connects at the shoulders to the top of the head and then folded down. This points right at the middle of the top 1/3rd of the lower A zone. The target doesn't have to be in focus for me to see this , all I need is the silhouette. I haven't really nurtured this very much in fear of it being wrong or causing bad habits I'd have to undo later, but it seems worth looking into. Thoughts?

No, not looking for holes. That is about the last form of feedback that I'd seek. When I am shooting well, it's not really about the target...more about execution. Even with no sights? I'm curious to know where your feedback was coming from... More like dying to know... I would thing that as angular as a glock is, you could know reasonably close where the shot will land by just looking at the slide. I used to shoot turtles in a pond at 50 yards or so when I was a kid by looking down the side of my grandfathers pellet gun because the pellet drop was so great the the sights were useless.

Another way that may suit you is this. Make it a 100 yard zero for the 55 and 200 yard zero for the 75's. That way it may be easier to get them to match up on one zero for both without having to go to the extremes of one or both cartridges to close a 4" gap.

The ball and dummy drill is great for diagnosis and treatment to a certain extent. So is burning rounds into the berm and dryfire. For me, the flinch happened most when I was trying to be most accurate. It's a mental block that some shooters, including myself have to fight constantly. One way I had found that was free is to dryfire with your eyes closed and visualize the sights on target and then lift in recoil along with the bang, flash, and jarring in your hand. The object is to physically feel everything in the trigger and visualize everything else in as much detail as possible. Even visualize the sight wobble that is unavoidable. The more real you make it in your head the better. This way you can "shoot" unlimited rounds and train your brain to subconsciously react to perfect sight alignment on target with a felt controlled trigger pull, not a "there it is,shoot now!" trigger pull. Do this a lot with as much focus as you can muster. Listening to music really helped me to visualize in the most detail. In live fire you want to go ahead and visualize a few rounds and the fire a few. Mixing dry and live fire together pure gold and really helps to stretch a limited ammo budget. As for the Dot Torture drill, I found it to be a great test, but not so much a good drill for me. It actually made my flinch worse because it became more about worrying about hitting the dot than learning to trigger smoothly. This may not be the case for you, but be aware. One more thing that I have done that may help is to fire the gun one shot every 2 or 3 seconds into the berm starting at low ready. With each shot feel the trigger to the break and then raise the gun closer and closer into your final firing position where you are actually looking at the sights. I taught myself to shoot an old 8mm Mauser that would spit oil in your eye every time you pulled the trigger this way. In the end you want to use all the tools out there to help beat this flinch and then maintain it. Everyone is different and mental blocks are a PIA to beat, so try everything.

And that's just the set up for making Dillo's!

Aaron, you and Reagan had better get your tails back down here before next April. Thanks again for all the hard work! Justin, It is on my to do list to make it down for a couple of the monthly matches this next year if it kills me. I've got to try my hand at WW2 also. That just looks too fun and manly to not do!

Hahaha Seriously though, what a sweet first match experience you had Jacob. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little jealous. I did however get to sleep at the range both weekends and hang out with brother doing something besides "work" work which was cool. As tired and worn out as I was at the end, I still can't wait until next year. All the RO's I worked with and all the ones I didn't get to work with this year are an incredible group of people. I do feel honored to be a part of that group and can't wait for the reunion tour. I can't thank Sheldon and Marcy enough for powering through the hardships to make the match and my personal experience what it was. Their dedication to each other and Texas Multigun is simply staggering. The next step for me is to find a 3 gun match that is somewhat local. I'll be damned if I go a whole year without shooting another one again!

As far as bending to a group of people in a way that makes no real sense to us as shooters, yes it sucks. As far as being a shooter, I like being challenged by a variety of targets that will make me a better overall shooter anyway, so big deal. Personally, I think there are far more important battles to expend my energy on than the shape of cardboard I shoot at. On the bright side, the center is easy to find and the targets are easy to duplicate.

The WW2 guys are going to need a bag of mags. Haha

I like the fiber optic especially now that I've learned to use it properly. It is easy to black it out though if you like switching back and forth to get the "trick of the day" effect. I will take a piece of fiber rod and insert it, heat the end and pull the melted tip into the recess of the sight (the side that faces you when aiming) and let it cool. Then I take it out and spray paint it with flat black and finish the installation. It looks like the black iron sight was made that way and adds another texture besides serrations to show up nice and crisp when you have a good front sight focus.

I have though about setting the bullets on the head so they all stand up in a shallow container and just pouring some kind of ink fluid in to a 1/4" up, then drain and let dry. I would think that has the potential to be fast and low labor.

Here is another great tip for weight loss and performance gain, one obvious and one sorta hidden. Eating foods that are as close to natural as possible helps your body grow healthier overall which in turn helps get to and maintain a healthy weight. Also, it takes more calories to break down and use proteins than fat or carbs, so getting a higher percentage of your daily calories from protein not only helps you lose weight but also builds muscle( if you exercise) which in turn burns more calories. BTW just in case someone feels the urge to get all PC and read the letter as opposed to the word, when I say lose weight, I actually mean lose fat. This of course is what most people mean when they say it, but technically speaking weight loss and obsessing over a scale is grossly misleading when it comes to getting rid of the fat. You could cut a leg off and lose a lot of weight real fast, but that's not what we are after. Build the muscle and burn the fat. The scale may not show much change, but that doesn't mean your physical appearance won't!