Fuzzy front sight

[Jshuberg]

How do you do this?

[Supermoto]

the same way you do with your clear front sight on a fuzzy target. You line up the sight on the spot on the target you want to hit. You prefer the target to be fuzzy, I prefer it to be clear

[Jshuberg]

Yes, I understand the relationship between the target and front sight, but how are you able to tell that the relationship between your front and rear sights are aligned well enough if they're both blurry?

[Supermoto]

I put the fuzzy front post in the fuzzy notch. I can still tell if they are lined up and evenly spaced. It probably helps that I use a narrow front sight and wide rear sight. I also am/was primarily an open shooter, so my eyes are use to a target focus

How do you know exactly where your front sight on a fuzzy target? you just do

Edited December 6, 2013 by Supermoto

[Jshuberg]

I'm not saying I don't believe you, I'm just saying it sounds like it would be a lot harder that way.

For example, in order to hit a 6" target at 50 yards with a perfect sight picture, your front sight needs to be aligned in the rear to within .010" of dead center (depending on sight radius). That's a very small amount to see 2 feet away from your face even when you do have a hard sight focus. With my eyes, that distance is actually smaller than the fuzziness of the edge of the front sight when I'm focused out to 50 yards. Without a well defined edge, being able to observe a .012" alignment error (which would be a miss) just seems prohibitively difficult to me.

Alternately with perfect sight alignment and a 1" arc of movement, the most you'll ever be off by is 1" at any distance. The target can be moving all over the place relative to the front sight, even disappearing behind it, but if you're sight alignment is good you'll hit the target.

Since the precision of sight alignment is so much more important than sight picture in order to hit a target at 50 yards, it just makes sense to put your focus and attention on the front sight. All you really need is a rough sight picture - you actually don't even need to see the target when you break the shot, just your sights. All you need to know is that the target is back there somewhere, within your arc of movement from your front sight, and you'll hit it if you have proper sight alignment. You call your shots by observing your alignment error when the shot breaks, sight picture error can pretty much be ignored unless it was greater than your arc of movement. The easiest way to do this is to be tightly focused on your sights.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something significant, and I believe the geometry agrees with me, sight alignment is pretty much everything at distance. Putting your focus on anything other than what demands the greatest precision is just making it harder.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Jshuberg

[Dwight Stearns]

It doesn't really matter if you have a front sight or target focus concerning sight picture. To ensure proper sight alignment though, you need to be focused on the front sight. It simply isn't possible to determine how well aligned the front sight is relative to the rear when both sights are fuzzy.

When shooting targets up close, sight picture dominates. You can have a moderate misalignment of the sights and it won't throw you off that much. However, as distance increases, sight alignment becomes more important and surpasses sight picture in importance. It's at this distance and beyond where a front sight focus is essential. The exact distance is going to differ between shooters, but generally is around 15-20 yards.

I guess I am a little confused. In 23 years as a LE firearms instructor and 25 years of hunter education, my understanding of sight alignment was the relationship of the front sight, rear sight and the shooter's dominant eye. Sight picture was the relationship of the sight alignment and the target.

A shooter can aim the firearm into the sky and still have proper sight alignment. Maybe I learned it wrong.

Dwight

[Supermoto]

Are you saying that you can hold 1" sight movement at 50yards

Alternately with perfect sight alignment and a 1" arc of movement, the most you'll ever be off by is 1" at any distance. The target can be moving all over the place relative to the front sight, even disappearing behind it, but if you're sight alignment is good you'll hit the target.

Are you saying your point of aim on the 50y target is 1" arc of movement? Basically keeping it complete still or are you saying if you muzzle moves in a 1" arc you will still hit woth in 1" of your intended target?

For me , if I try to shoot a shotgun shell at 25 yards. If I front sight focus, I can no longer see the shotgun shell. Doesn't matter how crisp my sights are if I have no idea where to put them. If I focus on the shell, I can line the sights up enough to hit the shell

Edited December 6, 2013 by Supermoto

[Dwight Stearns]

I put the fuzzy front post in the fuzzy notch. I can still tell if they are lined up and evenly spaced. It probably helps that I use a narrow front sight and wide rear sight. I also am/was primarily an open shooter, so my eyes are use to a target focus

How do you know exactly where your front sight on a fuzzy target? you just do

Like you supermoto, I use a narrow front sight (.070) with a small fiber optic (.040) along with target focus. That sight combination makes it very easy to maintain good sight alignment. Then it's as simple as putting the front sight where the bullet needs to go.

Dwight

[Jshuberg]

I'm saying that if my front sight is perfectly aligned in the rear, but as an aligned unit the gun moves up an inch in space, my round will place 1" higher.

Actually it will be slightly higher than 1" because if you move your hands up 1", the muzzle of the pistol will rise a fraction of a degree because your arm is pivoting at the shoulder. I haven't bothered to work out the math of this, the amount of alignment error introduced by my arc of movement is typically less than the amount of alignment error that would cause me to miss the target.

For clarity, yes - sight alignment is the relative alignment of the front sight within the rear, and sight picture is the sights relative to the target. I've been using sight picture as specifically the *front* sight relative to the target. I apologize if I caused any confusion. Also, although the arc of movement is technically any motion of the gun, I don't use this term to refer to changes in the orientation of the gun, but rather changes in the location of the gun in space. In practice, with a moderate grip changes in orientation due to arc of movement are reduced to near zero and can basically be ignored. However, the location of the gun in space does move around a bit because our outstretched arms are not a perfectly stable platform. Errors in sight alignment are almost entirely from trigger squeeze, and errors in sight picture are almost entirely from arc of motion or other changes in the location or position of the arms.

My point was that the location of the target relative to the sights doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the front sight relative to the rear sight at distance. If you have a 1" arc of movement that little target all the way back there will be moving all over the place relative to your front sight. That's fine, let it dance around as much as it wants as long as the dance is centered around your front sight. Instead of focusing on holding the target tight to the front sight, focus on holding the sights relative to each other, and you'll hit it every time.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Jshuberg

[rougeqc21]

As a new shooter, this has been something that really took a "click" moment. Hard focusing on my front sight now occurs naturally, the next step has been figuring out the mechanics of maintaining that focus throughout the recoil impulse. I feel like I overcorrect and lose time reacquiring the sightpicture; haven't found a good method of riding the impulse and returning. I do though feel when the connection between the sight alignment and picture is made, and my brain goes into an autopilot and depresses the trigger. Almost like when I was learning sporting clays and adapted to simply looking at the bird and not my barrel. At some point my brain just said, things are aligned, fire.

[toothguy]

My point was that the location of the target relative to the sights doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the front sight relative to the rear sight at distance. If you have a 1" arc of movement that little target all the way back there will be moving all over the place relative to your front sight. That's fine, let it dance around as much as it wants as long as the dance is centered around your front sight. Instead of focusing on holding the target tight to the front sight, focus on holding the sights relative to each other, and you'll hit it every time.

I think this is really good. For something like standing at 50 yrds shooting PPC. You can actually sway more than you think as long as the front sight to rear sight relationship is maintained and still shoot tens.

[Onepocket]

What is everyone USPSA classification I am unclassified. I have not joined USPSA yet.

[Jshuberg]

I noticed something interesting when I read over this thread again. I was describing the target as moving around relative to the front sight as the result of arc of motion. That's obviously not really what's happening, it is the sight that's moving relative to the stationary target. However, I've intentionally convinced myself through visualization that it's the target that is moving, while the gun remains stationary.

For whatever reason, human intuition is hardwired to favor sight picture over sight alignment. Many shooters will instinctively try to hold the target to the front sight as tightly as possible, and sight alignment tends to take a back seat to this. However at distance you want to do the exact opposite, you want to favor sight alignment over sight picture. This is where natural human instinct needs to be overcome in order to shoot as well as possible. While the subconscious mind can do many things simultaneously, unless you teach it that it's OK to allow sight picture to drift at distance, it will try to hold the target tight to the sights, which can interfere with maintaining proper sight alignment. When first learning to shoot accurately, the conscious mind can only do one thing well at any given moment, so it must also be taught to favor sight alignment over sight picture at distance.

The easiest way to achieve this is to change the reality of what is occurring to something different, where human instinct works for you, rather than against you. If you were shooting from a rest, and the target was moving around out at distance, the mind will realize it has no control over the position of the target relative to the front sight. The mind will then more naturally let go of sight picture in favor of sight alignment. This is what we want to happen when shooting at distance, so we need to find a way to change the reality of the situation so that human instinct begins working for us. We do this via visualization.

When a person visualizes that it's actually the target moving around and not the gun, the mind behaves as if this were actually the case. You want to fool yourself into believing that it's really the target that is moving around a perfectly stationary gun. When you do this, you'll shoot better at distance. There are a bunch of little "tricks" like this, where overlaying a visualization on top of reality can fool the mind into changing how it naturally reacts in a way that enhances your ability to shoot well.

I found it interesting that when describing arc of movement I actually described it as the target moving relative to the sight. I've used this visualization technique so much that I actually perceive the target to be moving to the point of even describing it that way without thinking about it. I think that's kind of neat!

Edited December 6, 2013 by Jshuberg

[Onepocket]

Can some one explain to me what he just said. I just line up the sights and pull the trigger.

[toothguy]

For whatever reason, human intuition is hardwired to favor sight picture over sight alignment. Many shooters will instinctively try to hold the target to the front sight as tightly as possible, and sight alignment tends to take a back seat to this. However at distance you want to do the exact opposite, you want to favor sight alignment over sight picture. This is where natural human instinct needs to be overcome in order to shoot as well as possible. While the subconscious mind can do many things simultaneously, unless you teach it that it's OK to allow sight picture to drift at distance, it will try to hold the target tight to the sights, which can interfere with maintaining proper sight alignment. When first learning to shoot accurately, the conscious mind can only do one thing well at any given moment, so it must also be taught to favor sight alignment over sight picture at distance.

+1, I think it's important to remember that you are aiming within an area not an exact point. That area will be the size of your wobble zone. The surest way to miss at distance is to not accept area aiming and try to aim at an exact spot. This along with transitioning your vision back and forth to confirm alignment leads to throwing shots due to working the trigger poorly.

Edited December 6, 2013 by toothguy

[Zoomy]

I am also a cross dominant shooter and have mild near sightedness. I took the advice and got a set of Rudies set up so the left eye has a crystal clear front sight and the right eye is set for distance. I also got a lens that so I could have both eyes set for distance for shooting a scoped rifle. I set up an experiment where I painted a metric black except for the head and placed it over a no shoot with the head in the center of the no shoots torso A zone. Walked back 15 yards. and took a look thru the sights. My front sight was nice and sharp but the head target was very fuzzy. I set my timer to random start and Ran some two shot runs. The first I went my normal draw speed and first shot speed. The results,1.85 sec.and two shots above the head into the no shoot. Next run I used normal draw speed but but slowed down the first shot. Results 2.15 sec. first shot low center B, second shot high right into the no shoot. Third run I really slowed everything down. Results,3.95 sec. Low center B and high far right B.

Put my distance lenses in and repeated.Firt run 1.72 sec. left side A and right side B.

Second run with first shot slowdown 2.33sec. and two A's

Third run slowing everything down 3.49 sec. and two A's half inch apart.

Put back my sharp front sight lens and the best time I could get shootin two A's was 4.26 sec.

Do I just keep using my front sight sharp lenses and hope it gets better?

At the indoor range I tried an experiment. I placed a bright orange circle on a target and sent it out to 50 feet and shot 10 rounds in ten seconds using both lenses. I tried not to concentrate on the center of the orange but stay within the orange area.

Both eyes for distance lenses I was able to put all shots in the orange circle with two not fully in the orange.

Next with the front sight sharp lens. Only two shots in the orange with all shots in a 7.5 inch circle.

Did I waste my money buying the front sight sharp lens? What am I doing wrong?

[Dwight Stearns]

I'm saying that if my front sight is perfectly aligned in the rear, but as an aligned unit the gun moves up an inch in space, my round will place 1" higher.

I'm no math major, just a cop and a shooter so this makes no sense to me. If you see perfect sight alignment and have one tenth inch of wobble (gun movement), the point of impact cannot be .1" at any distance. The POI error would be .1" at the muzzle and another .1 for each eye to front sight distance. So for simplicity, if it is one yard from your eye to the front sight and you wobble .1" at the shot, you will be .1 inch off at the muzzle, 1.1 inch off at 10 yards and 5.1 inches off at 50 yards. Now I admit that sight alignment error is more critical because sight alignment error is magnified according to sight radius. A .1 inch sight alignment error with say a 6 inch sight radius means a .1 inch error at the muzzle, .7 inch error at 1 yard, 6.1 inches at 10 yards and 30.1 inches at 50 yards.

Dwight

[Jshuberg]

If you mount a gun to a stand and aim it at the center of a target 50 yards away, and then raise the stand an inch without disturbing it's orientation, the bullet will impact one inch higher.

You're presuming that the angle of the pistol to the target changes as the pistol moves due to arc of movement. If our arm was a rod with the pistol firmly mounted at one end, connected to and pivoting at the shoulder, you would be correct (actually you said eye, but the analogy still holds). This isn't actually how we work though. When holding the pistol and trying to maintain proper sight alignment, we are leveraging the bodies ability to maintain level and balance. The angle of the pistol to the target does move a little due to arc of movement, but nowhere near the amount suggested by the math if our arm was a solid rod.

Try this, fill a small glass all the way to the rim with water and hold it out at arms length. Now raise and lower the cup up and down around 2 feet or so. You'll notice that you're able to keep the cup level, despite the fact that your arm is moving in a fairly large arc without much effort. Most people can even do this with their eyes closed after a little practice. The reason is that we've spent our entire lives learning how to stay level, to stay balanced while constantly in motion. What happens is that when we focus our attention on sight alignment, we leverage our well developed ability to stay level and maintain balance. Even though the location of the pistol is moving in front of us, our mind is subconsciously making tiny little adjustments in our wrists and hands (and possibly elbows if they're not locked) to keep the gun level and continually oriented despite our arc of movement.

If you wanted to you could actually measure your arc of movement, predict how much that movement would translate to at 50 yards, throw a laser on your gun and have a buddy observe the movement of the dot with a scope. What you'll discover is that when you're focused on maintaining alignment, the actual movement of the laser at distance will be significantly less than what you predicted.

A persons accuracy at distance is entirely dependent on their ability to hold proper orientation of the pistol to the target, during both arc of motion and trigger squeeze. If you can do this, you can shoot accurately at distance. If you can't, you won't. It's that simple. It's all about alignment. The best way to maintain that alignment is to be focused on the front sight, and on keeping the gun level and perfectly oriented towards the target. You also need to be willing to sacrifice sight picture to your arc of movement in order to maintain the most perfect sight alignment possible.

The target drifting around the front sight due to arc of movement will not significantly effect your ability to hit the target. The front sight being even slightly misaligned relative to the rear will significantly effect your ability to hit the target. It's much easier to do when focusing on the sights when shooting out at distance.

Edited December 7, 2013 by Jshuberg

[toothguy]

The target drifting around the front sight due to arc of movement will not significantly effect your ability to hit the target. The front sight being even slightly misaligned relative to the rear will significantly effect your ability to hit the target.

+1, Shooting PPC at 50 yrds has been described to me like shooting in a pipe or tube the size of the 10 ring, extending from the target to the shooter. Just keep your sights aligned while keeping your wobble zone within the pipe.

[Dwight Stearns]

I say eye rather than shoulder because to have and maintain perfect sight alignment requires three things: front sight, rear sight and your eye. I know that the pivot point is the shoulder. I agree that raising a stand on which the pistol is rested one inch changes the POI one inch but when that pistol is moved one inch, the eye also has to move one inch to maintain perfect sight alignment. That doesn't happen during most wobble.

I support your statement that maintaining proper sight alignment is more important than the position of that alignment on the target. With that said though I'm sure everyone at one time has drawn to a target and realizing the sight alignment is not perfect, simply adjusted the sight picture to correct the error rather than correcting sight alignment. Maybe not at 50 yards but at closer distances. For a tough target at 50 yards, in bulls-eye or Bianchi, yes, sight alignment is the mantra. I don't shoot those. My targets are usually steel or A-zones, rarely at 50. Perfect sight alignment/sight pictures are not necessary. They just have to be good enough. For that, target focus works just fine for me. It's like most things in shooting. There is more than one right way.

Dwight

[Jshuberg]

That I will absolutely agree with

One final thing though. I believe it would actually be *hard* to maintain a perfect sight alignment at the extremes of a large arc of movement, meaning that when the gun moves up in space the muzzle also angles up accordingly. This is because human instinct takes over and prevents this.

Our mind knows that what we are trying to do is hold a constant orientation of the pistol to the target, using our sights as a reference. Without having to specifically try to, we automatically hold the gun level to the target despite our arc of movement. It's our instinct to do this, we don't have to learn it or drill on it, it just happens for us because its in our nature to maintain level and balance.

When you stop and think about it, this would mean that only at the center of arc of movement are the sights perfectly aligned relative to our eye. At the extreme of the arc of movement upward, the sights *should* look ever so slightly aimed downward when we keep the pistol level to the target. That isn't actually what we perceive though. Maybe because our mind knows what it's doing and lies to us and tells us it's perfectly level. Maybe it's because our subconscious is maintaining sight alignment, while the conscious mind is distracted with raw observation or visualization, and it simply doesn't notice. I'm not actually sure.

The reality is though that we perceive the sights to be properly aligned, even at the extremes of our arc of movement when logic tells us that we should perceive a slight misalignment. At least this is how it works for me, and none of my students or buddies have ever told me they observe anything different when working this technique. It sounds complex and maybe even a little far fetched or magical. It's actually really simple to the point of not having to do anything at all for this to happen. It's simply allowing a burned in human instinct to take place.

This is why I think using the visualization technique posted above is a better approach to favoring sight alignment over sight picture at distance. Rather than trying to retrain our human instinct to do something other than what it normally wants to do, we use visualization to fool the mind into naturally performing how we want it to. Convincing yourself that the target is moving behind a stationary front sight is *much* easier than training yourself to overcome your natural instinct and be able to to "let go" of sight picture in order to favor sight alignment.

The more we can tap into our pre-existing and well developed instincts in building our shooting technique, the less we have to learn or train on or override what our brain wants us to do. By using techniques that leverage natural human instinct, the act of shooting becomes so much easier. It's become an obsession of sorts for me to discover techniques that allow instinct to take over the more difficult or cumbersome aspects of shooting, which greatly reduces the learning curve to becoming proficient. On those occasions where natural instinct is working against what we need to do to shoot well, overlaying a visualization on top of reality to change how the mind naturally reacts, from working against us to working for us, is an incredibly powerful tool.

For me, having a hard crisp focus on the front sight, while visualizing a perfectly stable front sight relative to a slightly moving target behind it was the recipe for greatest accuracy at distance. YMMV.

Edited December 7, 2013 by Jshuberg

[Jshuberg]

Alright, it's a Saturday, -4 degrees out, nothing on TV, and I'm bored so I'm going to ramble on a little bit more about this instinct thing.

Ever since we were born, we have been tasked with dealing with the relative location of objects around us, and there are two aspects involved with the relationship between objects, location and orientation. The vast majority of the objects we deal with are close to us, within reach or even closer. Because of this we have developed the instinct to favor the location of an object over the orientation of an object. For example, when threading a needle and our hands are moving around in front us us, we try to line up the position of the thread relative to the eye of the needle. We do not correct for the position of the thread moving around by adjusting the angle that we hold the thread, we correct the position of the thread. When we need to set something down precisely, we first move it to the correct location, and once there we adjust it's orientation. Trying to do it the other way just feels more unnatural and clumsy, and requires more mental effort.

The same translates to shooting. Dwight mentioned earlier that it's not uncommon for a shooter to correct a misalignment of the sights by moving the front sight off center slightly so that the bullet impacts where he wants it to. Some people will tell you that doing this is poor technique. My opinion is that if you can do this and hit the target, let it happen. Instinct is taking over, and adjusting location to correct for an error in orientation. The reason I think this is better (up close at least) is that this is a skill that you already posses. You may have to adapt this skill to pistol shooting, but you don't have to work on developing a brand new skill that requires you to contradict what your entire life experience has taught you in managing the relationship between objects. If you observe an alignment error of your sights, and your natural reaction is to move the position of your front sight, do it. You'll undoubtedly shoot better this way. At least up close.

At some point though, as the target gets further away, this technique stops working. At distance you need to be concerned primarily with orientation, and position needs to take a back seat. This really sucks, because this goes completely against how we have developed and honed our instincts for the management of the relationship of objects. Through brute force training and repetition a person can learn to overcome their natural instinct to favor location (sight picture) over orientation (sight alignment). This will take quite a lot of training though, and will probably never feel natural. Your mind will simply always prefer to hold the front sight tightly to the target whenever possible.

This is where that visualization trick comes in. By imagining that the target is moving behind the front sight, your mind will easily give up trying to control the location relationship. Also, by focusing on the front sight rather than the target, you're emphasizing the fact that the location of the target isn't really of much concern. The natural instinct to manage the relative location of objects then falls away, and our natural instinct to maintain level and balance is allowed to take over. The same way we can hold a cup of water level as we move our arms or walk around. We do need to put our mind on the task of remaining level, but we have a very well developed sense of balance that assists us in doing this. The end effect is that it doesn't take too much effort to hold an orientation if we focus on doing so.

So why do we want to "let go" of sight picture, to sacrifice it to our arc of movement in order to shoot well? Two reasons - the first is simply that its not necessary. If our hands drift up an inch, the bullet will impact roughly an inch higher on the target. The effort involved in maintaining a perfect sight picture and a perfect sight alignment simply isn't worth it, as you've passed the point of diminishing returns for the effort involved. The second reason is that when you try to hold the front sight tightly to the target, our location instinct kicks back in and starves out our balance instinct for control of the gun. It's simply not possible to maintain the tightest alignment possible if your allowing yourself to be concerned with location of the front sight relative to the target. You need to let go of sight picture in order for instinctive sight alignment to kick in.

So that's basically my theory on instinctual aiming. In practice it seems to work really well, but I'm sure that there are other techniques that are capable of producing similar results. If for some reason it doesn't seem to work for you, don't force it, find another technique that does work for you. My best advice would be that whenever you find something that just seems to work without effort, screw what the so-called exerts have to say and leverage your instinctive abilities to operate your weapon whenever you find them. You don't need to train to develop your instincts, they're already there and working for you. With minimal effort you should be able to adapt your instincts to pistol shooting, as opposed to developing an entirely new skill set to do the same thing. If you find an area where your instinct seems to be working against what you need to do, try to construct a visualization that changes your perception of reality to the point where your instincts begin working for you rather than against you.

end of rant

Edited December 7, 2013 by Jshuberg

[Onepocket]

Ugly day!!!! Last week at the house I found the spot on my glasses that needed to be covered to block my left eye. I dry fired with my shooting glasses every nite. Went to the range yesterday and practiced with the tape, went OK. Shot in an USPSA match today, not good. After a while the tape caused a almost disorientation unbalanced feeling. I tried to shoot the whole match with the tape but it got so bad I had to take a minute to take off the tape. The last stage was with both eyes open and it felt great!!! I may practice again closing my left eye on targets over 50yards. But never tape. I fished off shore for years 60 miles out in a 23 footer and never felt so out of sorts.

[Dwight Stearns]

Good rant Jeff. I understand your concept of the target "moving" behind the sights rather than the target during wobble. Your focus and concentration on the front sight makes it appear rock solid and it's the target that wobbles. No doubt it works very well. What good target focus shooters do different is the target is in focus and the concentration is still on the sight picture. Thus the target is stationary and the sight picture moves around it. For many it works very well within it's application. I.e. not bulls-eye.

One other thing, target focus is more natural than front sight focus. We engage in target focus thousands of times each day. Whether we are driving a car or playing a sport such as basketball. And It's what we do under extreme stress.

Good discussion Jeff

shoot safe

Dwight

[Jshuberg]

One other thing, target focus is more natural than front sight focus. We engage in target focus thousands of times each day. Whether we are driving a car or playing a sport such as basketball. And It's what we do under extreme stress.

That is an absolutely fantastic observation, and is probably one of the hardest things for the new shooter to learn. When I shoot, I basically have 3 different zones that determine how I'm going to aim. I have very creatively named them A, B, and C:

Zone A is up close and I use a hard target focus and a flash sight picture. I put the front sight over the target and pay no attention at all to the rear sights.

Zone B is a little further out. I still use a target focus, but I start of pull it back a little towards my sights. Here I correct my aim if my alignment is off.

Zone C is furthest out, and where I use the technique I've been describing above.

Basically, the further away the target is, the more I pull my eyes back to the sights. I also have a trick that allows me to more naturally and instinctively shift my focus to the front sight. I basically ignore the target. Not completely, but my attention to the location of the target falls away the closer my eyes move to my front sight. It sounds crazy, but works surprisingly well.

It takes very little mental effort to to hold your front sight somewhere approximately in the center of the area the target is dancing around. Again, you need to let go of trying to manage the location of the front sight relative to the target. There still is a location factor happening, but it requires so little mental effort to maintain, you're basically all but ignoring the target, and putting your mental energy on holding the gun level in space. The same way you can set that full glass of water down on the counter without spilling it. Very little attention is paid to the location of the counter when you set it down, the vast majority of your attention is on keeping it from spilling.

Because your paying almost no attention to the target, it becomes easy to shift your focus on your front sight. If I'm teaching this technique to a student who is struggling, and I suspect he's having a hard time letting go of the target, I take his target away. After shooting several strings without a target, where his visual and mental focus is entirely on the front sight and its relationship with the rear sight, I give him his target back. I tell him to all but ignore it, but that in the back of his mind ensure that it's still back there somewhere, all blurry and dancing around the front sight. That's typically when it all seems to click, and they shoot a decently tight group. The astonished look I get from people when they realize that the easiest way to hit a target that's far away is to basically learn to ignore it and just focus on the gun is priceless It sounds completely counter-intuitive, but when you break it down the technique leverages instinct pretty heavily, its just most people find the results of it to be surprising.

I love these kinds of conversations, it's why I've joined the forum. Thanks very much for all the input

Edited December 8, 2013 by Jshuberg