Freestyle shooting at 25 yds revisited

[Ptrlcop]

I've shot plenty of 97s and 98s freestyle.
I've seen my share of 100s from better shooters with good ammo.

Yep, my personal best with a stock Glock is a 99. It certainly is close. Statistically speaking however, if you shoot enough you will occasionally get some of those high outliers. I just think that you are probably needlessly frustrating yourself if you are a no shit 95 shooter day in day out and can't figure out why you can't get over that plateau with consistency. "with consistency" being the important part. Yes, I have lucked into a 99 but I am more consistently a low 90s shooter most days.

IDK, maybe I need to experiment more with top shelf ammo. I am waiting on a new slide with RMR and KKM barrel to play with now, so I will see how that goes.

I will say that 25yard and out bullseye shooting has taught me more about shooting than anything else. I would even go as far as saying that 25yd pistol shooting has made me a better carbine and precision rifle shooter.

[Failure2Stop]

I am not the kind of guy to spend significantly more dough on "match" pistol ammo than bulk blaster ammo, saving that money for duty ammo instead.

Of the bulk ammo that I have shot, S&B 124gr has been subjectively the best, and if I could find it in stock and within 15% of pre-freakout prices, I would immediately go into significant debt to buy as much as possible.

[JWinTN]

I went to the local indoor range. I wanted to test a couple of ideas, but I think I went mostly to remind myself that I don't like shooting at indoor ranges. The lighting at this one is, well, sub-optimal.

I shot some pretty ratty patterns at 25. They weren't as bad as I expected they would be, but they definitely felt like a regression. For some reason, not being able to make out the top of my front sight in the dark wasn't helpful. Figuring it wasn't my day, I did a few things at closer range so I didn't end up rage quitting. However, toward the end of the session I decided I would run a couple at 25 and speed up the pace, breaking the shot as soon as I reacquired a sight picture, firing once every couple or so seconds. I ended up with better results than I could manage with slow fire:



Now I think I'm just going to start railing them at top speed instead of trying all this slow-fire business.

As an aside, I work for a printing company. Some time back another printing company asked us to create some targets for them. I grabbed my Baby Eagle, handed it to a coworker, and snapped a couple of pics for the target. We've printed a bunch of them. Well, they were for this particular indoor range. I walked in, and people are blowing my coworker to bits.

[hossb7]

I'll preface this post by saying this is some of the best measured shooting I've ever done.




A member on another forum mailed me his drop-in KKM Glock 19 barrel so that I could test it out in my Gen 4.

I didn't shoot too much because there was a pretty bad cross wind of ~5-10mph. The KKM barrel did very well from what I was able to do, though.

I only shot Gold Dots and AE9 for testing, but I didn't take any pictures of the AE9 because the horizontal spread was poor. Also, I reduced my groups from 10 shots to 5 shots. I know 10 is "industry standard" with a rifle and whatnot but with so many points of contact for stability it's more logical. 10 rounds of slow, accurate fire with a handgun for me is mentally draining and takes a lot of stamina. I've found that because of this, 5 rounds is sufficient for testing.

Here are the first 5 rounds of GD's through the KKM barrel at 25 yards/75 feet. 3" - not too shabby:



It's a good group, but it was impacting pretty high on my target. At 25 yards with CAP sights and the KKM barrel, my groups were about a foot high (give or take). If this were my barrel I would consider getting different sights to account for that major shift of POA/POI.

After a quick break zeroing my PA red dot on my M&P15-22 (which is probably the most fun gun I own), I went back to the Glock and decided to push myself out to 50 yards/150 feet (!!). How bad can it be?



Not too bad indeed. A hair over 7" at 50 yards? I'll take that. Considering some of my groups at 25 yards with Freedom Munition were worse than that, I'm not complaining!!

After that I felt like I was in the zone, so I moved back to 25 yards/75 feet and posted this final group with the KKM barrel. 5 rounds in 2.6"



For this group I was holding the top of the sights at the base of the black circle, so it's about 6" high from POA.

At the end of the day I swapped the KKM out for my OEM barrel and shot a final group at 25 yards. My previous best group was 4" with AE9 FMJ, this is slightly under that with GDHP: 3.7"



I think the KKM barrel is a very good purchase. I saw groups of 4-5 inches shrink to sub-3 inches. For $165 I'll take that improvement. I was also very impressed with it's performance at 50 yards; it really makes you rethink how far you COULD make solid hits if you were forced into that situation (how long is an aisle at your local big box store? 100 yards? More? Not that you would ever engage that far, just some food for thought considering some of the environments we're all in during our day-to-day lives.).

[Malamute]

Good post. Its interesting to see the difference in the barrels overall.

Were you using that tape measure to measure your groups?

(Its graduated in tenths of a foot, not inches)

[hossb7]

Good post. Its interesting to see the difference in the barrels overall.

Were you using that tape measure to measure your groups?

(Its graduated in tenths of a foot, not inches)

Thanks, it was pretty cool to see it take up some slack in my abilities.

I just snapped some photos with it for scale. It was a gift from my old boss when I left that job, hence the tenths vs. inches.

I used the software OnTarget calculator to measure the groups.

[JWinTN]

Another day, another bunch of crappy slow-fire groups. They weren't terrible, but nothing to be proud of. Don't know what is going on, other than maybe my eyes are broken. Then I shoot this in 17 seconds—the black on this target is 5":



Is this some kind of known phenomenon? What could be tanking my slow-fire shots that I'm leaving out when going faster?

Geez, this stuff is frustrating. But hey, at least no one pointed a gun at me at the public range today. That was kind of nice.

[JHC]

Another day, another bunch of crappy slow-fire groups. They weren't terrible, but nothing to be proud of. Don't know what is going on, other than maybe my eyes are broken. Then I shoot this in 17 seconds—the black on this target is 5":



Is this some kind of known phenomenon? What could be tanking my slow-fire shots that I'm leaving out when going faster?

Geez, this stuff is frustrating. But hey, at least no one pointed a gun at me at the public range today. That was kind of nice.

Oh we all have our hot hand days and cold days. I shot twice today. Shot well this AM. Afternoon session much worse. But THAT group is quite superb. 17 sec? Nice.

[JWinTN]

Oh we all have our hot hand days and cold days. I shot twice today. Shot well this AM. Afternoon session much worse. But THAT group is quite superb. 17 sec? Nice.

Yeah, I guess there's gonna be times when it just doesn't work out. I just don't get why I would shoot a better group going faster than I would going slow. I'm likely overthinking and just taking too long to break the shot. If I were smart, I'd pay hoss to be a ghost shooter for me and just sign my name on the targets. Sheesh, 7" at 50.

I think I may switch focus to other skills for a while and come back to it.

[Malamute]

Yeah, I guess there's gonna be times when it just doesn't work out. I just don't get why I would shoot a better group going faster than I would going slow. I'm likely overthinking and just taking too long to break the shot. If I were smart, I'd pay hoss to be a ghost shooter for me and just sign my name on the targets. Sheesh, 7" at 50.

I think I may switch focus to other skills for a while and come back to it.

Shooting a target grade 22 pistol can make you feel pretty good.