Let me start out by saying I'm not a competition shooter, never shot a match. I'm not a competition will get you kilt in the streets guy. Just a busy guy who isn't going to chase remote from me matches since I live in commie land.
I've been watching a bunch of videos from Ben Stoeger, Joel Park & Mr. Kim. I like many of the concepts they teach. The Doubles Drill peaked my interest enough that I wanted to give it a try. This past Sunday I was able to make it to the range after working with an hour of sunlight left.
I figured I would go all in and try Target Focus while doing the drill. I put a piece of black tape on the target to focus on. FYI. I shoot Irons. I've never owned a pistol red dot. Some may consider me lucky, I'm over 60 and I can see my irons perfectly and tested 20/15 at a recent eye exam.
I set my target at 7 yards. I started dry working from the holster dry. I deliberately focused on the black tape on the target. Frequently when I presented the pistol (a Gen 5 G17 with Ameriglow Agent sights with the front sight Orange ring around the tritium insert) my dominate eye really wanted to do what it normally does and pick up the sights. It was difficult to try and stay focused on the tape without a focal shift to the sights. I kept after the dry practice until I felt I had a chance going live and staying target focused.
I shot the drill live 2 round pair, pause 2 round pair ... for 8 rounds. On presentation I would detect a flash of orange out of focus (color conformation in the vicinity of the tape and work the trigger. I fought to keep target focus. Where I had the most difficulty was picking up my front sight in recoil. The moving orange sucked me in to the sight. I interspersed dry fire between live fire trying to stay more target focused and I think it helped.
I noticed that if my front sight occluded the tape I shifted to the sight. Hard to focus on something you can't see? I shot a little low due to this trying to see both albeit fuzzy orange.
In the end what did I think? Well the jury is still out on that one. I want to learn from this exercise. I know for a fact I can stay on my sights and shoot much more accurately! At what cost? A couple tenths perhaps. Yes I can see how this can result good enough hits faster than more deliberate aiming. In my mind that is something that is only applicable to a game.
Here is my target. I shot somewhere around 60 - 70 rounds. I had 2 loaded mags and a mostly full box of 50 that I used. I figured that was enough for my 1st whack at this. When I got home I drew a USPSA A-Zone onto my target to outline where my shots conformed scoring wise. I probably could have placed my stencil higher, oh well. The two highest impacts, 2nd shots, I saw those happen the gun hadn't fully returned before I fired #2.