Calling shots, how to help.

[Twilk73]

Anyone got any good advice or a good video they recommend for learning to call your shots. This is one thing I haven’t learned yet and would like to start working on. I have watched a few videos already but if anyone has anything they highly recommend or verbal advice that’s great. 

[VeilAndrew]

There's one thing that I do that has seemed to help. I'll put a pretty shot up target in front of a new target and shoot doubles into it. The goal is that I can call where my shots went before I walk up and look at the back of my fresh target. It'll help with shot calling and helping you to learn the recoil pattern.

[Twilk73]

41 minutes ago, VeilAndrew said:

There's one thing that I do that has seemed to help. I'll put a pretty shot up target in front of a new target and shoot doubles into it. The goal is that I can call where my shots went before I walk up and look at the back of my fresh target. It'll help with shot calling and helping you to learn the recoil pattern.

Excellent idea. Thanks

[DeepFried]

Thanks for sharing. Definitely going to try that method 

[StefVanHauwe]

 

[StefVanHauwe]

 

[Checkpoint]

On 3/10/2023 at 7:54 AM, VeilAndrew said:

There's one thing that I do that has seemed to help. I'll put a pretty shot up target in front of a new target and shoot doubles into it. The goal is that I can call where my shots went before I walk up and look at the back of my fresh target. It'll help with shot calling and helping you to learn the recoil pattern.

That is a pretty neat idea. Thanks for the tip!

[Npoulson]

I saw a sweet travis tomosie video where he puts a target right next to him, the other key is target focused

ok so target down range target next to him

beep two well placed shots

he then put pasters on the fresh target next to him and compared hits to where he called them

[Alpha_Mike]

On 3/10/2023 at 8:54 AM, VeilAndrew said:

There's one thing that I do that has seemed to help. I'll put a pretty shot up target in front of a new target and shoot doubles into it. The goal is that I can call where my shots went before I walk up and look at the back of my fresh target. It'll help with shot calling and helping you to learn the recoil pattern.

Great idea, definitely stealing lol. I normally have someone stand next to me and block my vision with something after my second shot, call my shots, then go downrange to see if I called them correctly. 

[Twilk73]

14 hours ago, Npoulson said:

I saw a sweet travis tomosie video where he puts a target right next to him, the other key is target focused

ok so target down range target next to him

beep two well placed shots

he then put pasters on the fresh target next to him and compared hits to where he called them

I finally tried this and I found myself to be calling the shots with about 50% accuracy. So I have some work to do. I also thought it was hard to target focus while trying to read my dot. Don’t make sense. I am usually able to call shots that I jerked pretty bad and make up from there. 

[Npoulson]

45 minutes ago, Twilk73 said:

I finally tried this and I found myself to be calling the shots with about 50% accuracy. So I have some work to do. I also thought it was hard to target focus while trying to read my dot. Don’t make sense. I am usually able to call shots that I jerked pretty bad and make up from there. 

This is controversial but try taping the dot it forces you not to have a hard focus

do like this

set ur timer up

no trigger prep

at the beep pull as fast as possible try to have everything done before the end of the beep

everyone slaps the trigger

i know i hear a ton about prep but ive seen every type of shooter slap the trigger its just a thing

the dot drill is very good for trigger control as well

puts a ton of pressure on

with a dot its 10 yards 6 2” circles five shots in under 5 seconds from draw

its a pass or fail

touching the line on dots counts

 very valuable 

i havent done it for a long time but should

when you get to the 5th dot the pressure is crazy

i have never personally passed with irons

[Twilk73]

1 hour ago, Npoulson said:

This is controversial but try taping the dot it forces you not to have a hard focus

do like this

set ur timer up

no trigger prep

at the beep pull as fast as possible try to have everything done before the end of the beep

everyone slaps the trigger

i know i hear a ton about prep but ive seen every type of shooter slap the trigger its just a thing

the dot drill is very good for trigger control as well

puts a ton of pressure on

with a dot its 10 yards 6 2” circles five shots in under 5 seconds from draw

its a pass or fail

touching the line on dots counts

 very valuable 

i havent done it for a long time but should

when you get to the 5th dot the pressure is crazy

i have never personally passed with irons

Thanks for the advice. Will try both the dot drill and the dot occlusion. 

[rpm8300]

In addition to all the great ideas already listed, one drill that may help and is related to calling shots is a dummy round drill.  I have done the call your shot drill and added dummy rounds to get more feedback on what I'm doing.  Set up an half covered IPSC or 2/3 covered USPSA target at 20yds; load 10 rounds with 1 dummy.  Have a buddy load a dummy round or if you are loading your own ammo, load one with a spent primer and no powder that would feel the same as your other rounds.  Put them all in a bag or box and just grab and load them without looking so you won't know where the dummy round is.

You can draw and fire one, draw fire two, or if you are really honing in on the basics, treat it as a bullseye drill and stand with pistol out, perfect grip/stance, and no time limit.  Fire off the 10 rounds and note with pen/paper or just remember where you think the print is.  At some point, you'll hit the dummy round; the mental shift to calling your shots helps you be extra aware of what is going on with your trigger press.  Hopefully, when the hammer/striker falls on the dead round, you'll get even more of a look and feel of what you're doing.  Finish the drill; you may end up changing your press for the rest of remainder of the rounds.

[IVC]

If you're just learning calling shots, I would separate it into two individual steps. First, you have to see the sights as you fire. Second, you have to register what you see and act upon that information (e.g., fire a follow-up in a match). 

 

From my experience, the harder of the two is the initial "seeing of the sights as you fire." Once you train your brain to "take the snapshot" of the sights as you fire, the next step, the processing of the information, is easier to train. This is because after you know what to "see" and "notice," you have all the information you need and the remaining training is about putting it to good use.

 

One can argue it's the same thing, seeing and processing, but it's not really. If you try to mark your target without being sure that you're seeing what you need to see, you might be doing yourself a disservice by trying to "make up" location of the called shot when you don't have the information you need. It's akin to rushing a shot by blind point shooting and expecting that accuracy would come with time, when in reality you need to see and recognize the sights even when point shooting. 

 

A drill that worked really well for me, and which is in one (or more) of the standard training books, is to shoot at the berm without any target. Slow deliberate shots, shots off of a draw, transition and shoot, fast follow-ups, etc., all without any specific reference points. All you're looking at is the sights. You want to train your brain to see what is available out there and at speed at which it happens. You can also add a drill of "registering" in your brain how high the sights went in recoil (this is not part of shot calling, but it helps with forcing your brain to take a mental snapshot of sights on demand). The more you play around with just seeing the sights, the easier will it be in the next step to use that information and correlate it to an actual target to get to the shot calling. 

[99mpower]

always been very difficult to learn, especially with iron sights... 

[Twilk73]

It seems like I can feel when I have a bad shot in a match. I wouldn’t say I’m calling the shot but for the most part I found one way to recognize I messed up. 
 

I’m not sure I’m ready to learn shot calling. It seems mentally demanding and currently I’m still working on a lot of other things. 
 

Like not getting sucked into the dot, having the gun up so I’m ready to shoot when I see the target. Stage planning, moving faster. I’m still not even close to satisfied with my transition speed or splits. I want to learn this technique but I’m not sure I want to spend the mental cost just yet. 
 

In idpa I’m getting way too many penalties randomly in matches over things that should not be happening. I think this is because I’ve absorbed so much in such a short time but I haven’t learned to naturally apply it without thinking it through multiple times before my stage starts. 

[shred]

"calling a non-call" is another aspect to shot calling.  That's noticing when you didn't call a shot either because you were looking somewhere else or not paying attention when you fired. 

 

'Feeling' a bad shot is related to that.  Some people are much better at feeling a bad shot than seeing one-- it depends on your personality I think.

 

You don't usually need inch-precision shot calling, but you will need to know when you just shot a Delta versus an Alpha, so do a bit of shot-calling practice mixed in with other training. 

 

Acceptable Accuracy is a key fundamental.  Working on splits when you don't know about where each shot landed when you fired them is not the best use of your time.

[RedDotsOnly]

Hold yourself accountable and occluded red dot - Be truly honest

[GunBugBit]

I can feel a bad shot.  It happens when my grip isn’t optimal.  When we go up to score, I think oh yeah I remember my lapse in grip when this D happened.

[boatdoc173]

I  can call most shots .  they are somewhere near where I aimed 

 

 due to  a hand reconstruction, my shooting is " accurate   enough" these days.  tend to pull some shots left ("normal  hand--support hand" 1" or  so  and some  pull down and right.(trying to grip too tightly with the injured shooting   hand)  it is  due to inconsistent  grip pressures.  my hands are not reliable   and it is hard to reproduce  just the right  grip with every shot.  it is   what it is.

 

 good luck to those working on this  skill. it  sure  adds  some fun to shooting paper.

 

great thread. a  lot of  good info here

[GunBugBit]

Classic use case for calling a shot:  the Outer Limits stage in Steel Challenge.  We want to leave the first box immediately upon breaking the second shot.  If we wait for audible confirmation of a hit, we burn time.

[Runswithwood1]

I could never accurately call shots until I got a dot haha

[cautery]

Question #1 - Are you able, and do you have your eyes open when the trigger break happens?

Until that answer is "Yes".  You will never be "calling" your shots.

You will be estimating your shots.

It is a sad truth.  I have a terrible time keeping my eyes open.  Takes constant practice.  It is perishable for me.

However, at the extreme other end of the scale, once you have so many (evaluated) rounds downrange that you could not possibly count them all, your body/brain will learn more about where the weapon was when the trigger broke...  You might even call 80% or better without a clear snapshot of the break....  very rare....  akin to the "Zone" in rarity and not even tangentially related.

Have you read Brian's book?

Lately?

If either answer is "No", remedy the situation and then work your way back up from the ground and when you get back to shot calling, I'll bet that you have zero issues with it at all. 

Be well!

[Muricanwerewolf]

Calling your shots is kind of a misleading term for what you should be doing. Like the idea is you're at a competition, you're shooting, and you're thinking while you're doing so "oh yeah that was a good one, no that was bad, bad again shoot, ok good..." Big waste of your mental bandwidth. If you're not good at the basics of marksmanship it also is a big waste of time trying to learn. If you move the gun every time you break a shot because you suck at your trigger press, are you really going to be able to say where that bullet went? No way. Instead, you need to practice your trigger press at home.

 

The secret is in reps, especially in dry fire. You need to practice aligning your sights and learn what good enough looks like, that's step one. If you have a red dot then it's a bit easier, bullets go where the dot is. Find yourself some of those 1/4 size targets and painters tape them to the walls for practicing this. Draw and aim, transition between targets, get an idea of "If i pulled the trigger would my sights be on target?"  Basically you're gonna get good at pointing the gun, you're gonna learn what a good enough sight picture looks like. This really just relates to irons, sometimes your sight picture isn't going to be perfect but because you're indexed on a large or wide open target you're going to be ok with a certain amount of slop in order to be fast, and you'll know this because you've seen it so many times before in practice.

 

So the second exercise and the tricky bit is learning how to pull (I think of it as a press) the trigger fast without moving the gun. This takes time! Thankfully, you don't have to go to the range to do this, just practice pressing that trigger at home and watch if your sights or dot move. If your dot or sights jump, tighten or loosen your grip, move your trigger finger placement, do what you have to do to make the gun move as little as possible when pressing the trigger. Then learn to do it faster and faster. After so many tens of thousands of reps, you're gonna know exactly what if feels like when you press the trigger perfectly. At the match you're gonna see the sights or dot were on target, you're gonna feel that you pressed the trigger just like you've done it in practice. Or maybe it feels funky so you try again. The point is if you do this everything is going to tighten up for you. Your shot calling goes from "was that a miss" to "probably A, keep moving" because you have pulled the trigger so many times in practice that you are unconsciously competent at the two things that you need to do to hit the target.

 

One complication that can arise is you're great at dry fire, but when you live fire you do things differently, because the gun tends to be a bit louder and move around a bit more when there's actually bullets in it. You flinch, you try to muscle down the recoil... The trick for that is to knock it off. Most of us are shooting 9mm, unless you've got flippers for hands your grip strength is fine, focus on your trigger press and let the gun do what it's going to do.

 

Finally, as you get good at these basic skills start incorporating smaller targets, maybe like a tuxedo target, something to mimic steel at 50, have fun with it. If you can feel confident in seeing your sights and in your trigger press in practice your shot calling is going to magically improve.

[Duck_Duckalo]

On 3/10/2023 at 8:54 AM, VeilAndrew said:

There's one thing that I do that has seemed to help. I'll put a pretty shot up target in front of a new target and shoot doubles into it. The goal is that I can call where my shots went before I walk up and look at the back of my fresh target. It'll help with shot calling and helping you to learn the recoil pattern.

In Tim Herron's class, he also gave us a card of dry erase and a marker. Take a shot, look down and mark a rough area on where you think you hit. Repeat for a few shots and inspect. Start at 10 yards and go back 5 as you get faster/more accurate.