Saturday, May 8, 2010

Bullseye Training

Bullseye training is not very sexy or high speed, but the ability to shoot accurately is essential.  Here's a simple marksmanship development set that takes little setup to do and will pay dividends in enhancing your trigger control (but maybe not your self esteem, especially at first).

All strings are fired standing.  Use whatever bullseye target you like, but use the same one all the time so you can keep track of your progress.  For the purposes of this drill set, "slow fire" means no time limit. Load with 5 round magazines, even if your gun holds more than that.  You'll see why below.

15 yards
1) Strong hand only, 5 rounds, slow fire
2) Support hand only, 5 rounds, slow fire
3) Freestyle (2 hands, standing), 5 rounds, slow fire

Check your work, record your score, post a new target.  Repeat at 25 yards.  The goal is to be able to train this exclusively at 25 yards.

This is pretty simple, but here's the catch.  When you press off a bad shot - you should be able to call it, or if you see a shot on target that didn't go where you wanted, stop and remediate.  Unload the pistol, and perform five PERFECT dry fire repetitions on target.  Don't just snap them off and call it good.  Line up the sights and press them off like you were just doing a second ago in live fire.  These reps effectively are to tell your brain/finger - "THIS is what you're supposed to be doing.  Ignore that horrible snatch that gave us the errant shot."  If you get a bad press during dry fire - your gun shakes or your muzzle dips - then start over until you get 5 perfect ones.  Then reload and continue.  Using 5 round mags will help you keep your round count straight.