handgun field positions 50-100 yards

[GJM]

I have spent a fair amount of time the last few days shooting at what I consider longer semi-auto handgun distances -- 50-100 yards. Shooting paper and steel. (Side note, I think paper is very helpful so you can see hits if you are having a problem at a particular distance. Same with frequent painting of your steel with white paint, to see your hits.)

I would like to discuss shooting positions. For my group shooting, I have looked for a position more stable than offhand/standing for 50 yards and further out. Here is what I have messed with:

Prone: Leaving aside issues with laying in mud, water, debris, I have problems getting comfortable/seeing my sights clearly in the classic prone as taught by Gunsite, and the like. I also tried the Defoor two hand "golf club" (is that what he calls it?) method. An advantage is it elevates the pistol making it easier to see the sights looking straight ahead, but it seems slow and doesn't control recoil well.

Sitting: Braced kneeling, supporting my arms with the inside of my knees has been my most frequent field position, besides standing, for many years. I have come to find it less than ideal, as it changes how I normally extend my arms, and seems to negatively influence my grip on the pistol. It also makes me wonder if I am looking down at my sights.

My wife uses a quasi kneeling/sitting that is different. She sits on her dominant left side foot, other knee bent, and otherwise her arms are the same as when standing. That hurts my foot/ankle and doesn't work for me.

Kneeling: Today, I started experimenting with what Gunsite called "California kneeling," on both my knees, but modified by rocking back to sit on my feet. This allows me to adjust my height with my feet, and how I sit on them, hold my arms like my normal standing position, and look at my sights the same as standing. It is pretty quick in and out. So far, this is my favorite position.

What are you doing?

[TinMan]

We regularly shoot at 50 and 100 at work, and most folks go for the prone position at 100.

If you have the flexibility for it, the one that seems to work best is to keep your gun vertical and get your strong hand/arm as flat as possible. The bring your head all the way down to your firing shoulder. That keeps your arm in contact with the ground all the way out to your forearm, giving you a lot of stability.

This keeps your grip and sight picture the same as it would be if you were standing.

Of course, if there is any contour in the ground you may lose sight of a low target. It takes a pretty good degree of shoulder extension also, I've had two shoulder surgeries and I start to feel it after awhile.

[Malamute]

GJM, I do it sort of like your wife, sitting on the right heal, toes under the foot, with my left elbow resting on my left knee. Once in a while the foot may be turned under and sit on it that way. The only time I tried the 600 yard plate was kneeling. With a spotter, I made one hit of ten rounds with a g-19. Was able to do 6 for 6 with the K-22 at 300, and 5 for 6 with the 4" 29 @ 300 on a 36"H x 18" w plate kneeling. The back rested with gun between the knees works OK, but requires the backrest for me. Kneeling is simpler and pretty quick to get into position on.

I haven't tried prone, theres enough cactus, sharp rocks, or nasty varmints on the ground in many of the places I've been, prone never occurred to me to try. Seems like it should work. Some think the concussion of magnum loads is more noticeable from prone.

[okie john]

I've done very little work in prone with a handgun--either the brush was too think or there were too many stickers/cacti/snakes/etc. for it to make sense.

When I lived in Oklahoma and Texas years ago, I did a fair amount of longer-range revolver shooting from kneeling and from Elmer Keith's braced sitting position. The Keith position worked well as long as I was kept the cylinder gap in front of my knees, and a backrest definitely helped. Trees were best, and the tire of a pick-up worked well, too. Breath control was vital in the Keith position to keep my heart from pounding and disturbing the sights, and I preferred kneeling for that reason.

But that's just for shooting at targets on a flat range or across a plowed field. When I hunt with a handgun, I still-hunt in thick brush. Visibility often drops to a few inches if I kneel or go prone. As a result, every animal that I've killed with a pistol has been from offhand. Except for one ill-advised shot, most were well within 50 yards, with many inside of 25. I used the Weaver stance until a few years ago and Isosceles since then. My training for hunts consists of working on quick assumption of position followed by a quick trigger press--by October, deer don't tolerate indecisive hunters.

I see two other things in this thread that ring a bell for me. The first is that I try to keep roughly the same upper body position (alignment of eyes, hands, arms, and handgun) that I use for all of my other shooting. The closer I can stay to this, the better I shoot. The second is that I try to eliminate movement below the waist by pressing a hip or part of my rib cage against something solid. This dramatically reduces wobble, lets me preserve my upper body position, and lets me see over intervening brush. California Kneeling would accomplish the same things (except for being able to see over brush) without the need for a tree or a post, so I need to check that out pronto.

I have never had good luck shooting from a rest at any distance, but that's from a lack of knowledge that I mean to correct this winter.

Because of my hunting experience, I feel like I'm more likely to need a long handgun shot across a large parking lot or in some other urban environment than I am when I'm out in the hills. In that case, I'll probably be down behind cover instead of standing out in the open looking like a B-27, so I need to do some work from prone.

Hmmm....a few more things to work on this winter.


Okie John

[JHC]

Elmer Keith pictures show a lot cool reclining options. My fav is a version of sitting, reclining pretty sharply back into a pack, best anchored against a tree or something. The hands and pistol sandwiched between the knees with feet outboard, wider than the knees.

Knees pressing in around the back of the hands/wrists. This puts the sights further way from the eyes than any other offhand position. I think that makes the sights and target look even better for precision. I have the sense that precise sight alignment is improved as the front seems to fill the rear notch even more as that rear notch seems smaller further from the eyes.

I've shot some 3-4" groups at 50 yards like that with N frame revolvers and my 1911.

Technically . . . ;) . . . your toes may be out beyond your muzzle. So don't screw up and shoot a toe off. I was in an outlaw 3 gun match that had a timer stop when you knocked down three 8" plates with your pistol at 60 yards. I tried to use this but that got "No Go'd" because of the feet relative to the muzzle. I caught a break on that stage anyway since a richochet from knocking down an earlier popper took down one of my 60 yard plates.

[Wayne Dobbs]

How about African style shooting sticks? And I've found that the braced back sitting position has worked best for me. The thoughts of maintaining consistency with the upper body attitude in alternative positions is valid in my experience.

As for results, I've killed about 15 Texas whitetails in the past several years with a revolver, all from a sitting position with a front rest (ground bow blinds). All were one shot affairs with ranges ~25 yards, so not germane to this discussion.

[GJM]

All, thanks for the suggestions.

I was practicing the classic prone as described by Tinman inside, and it works with a good surface and targets that are at my level or lower. Not so well on wet, brushy surfaces and with targets above me. Out on the tundra, we don't have a lot of trees to lean against, making the classic back braced sitting less practical. Will be continuing to try to refine my variation of California kneeling, sitting back on my feet.

[Chuck Haggard]

The double kneeling, what Pat Rogers calls the Monica, is only of use for people who have knees that still work perfectly. I am unable to use that style of kneeling at all.

Some of the best handgun shooting I have ever pulled off has been from a back rested sitting with my knees applying inward pressure on either my wrists or forearms.

[Jay Cunningham]

I've experimented with both long range and position pistol shooting recently, and I've come to the following conclusions:

I don't find traditional positions such as prone or sitting or kneeling (positions which provide a strong base for rifles) helpful for my long range pistol shooting. I've found that the best thing for me is a perfect iso stance with my normal grip.

As an aside, a friend of mine who assists me during classes suggested a braced support hand technique which he saw at a PPC match. This is simply bracing the back of the support hand off of something - naturally said something needs to be actually available to brace off of. This did seem to give beneficial results.

[GJM]

Jay, I wonder is this is influenced partly by external conditions and body shape.

I am 6-1, 165 pounds, and find California kneeling to be more stable than when standing upright. I just was shooting 25-100 yards in driving rain with 20-30 mph wind, and the kneeling definitely helped me with stability in that rain.

As an aside, I continue to be convinced that in relative terms, while both are necessary, trigger press is more important than perfect sight alignment for this kind of shooting. Chasing perfect sight alignment can cause you to start, stop and start your press, as opposed to focusing on press and looking for acceptable sight picture which works out better for me.

[Jay Cunningham]

Jay, I wonder is this is influenced partly by external conditions and body shape.

I would say everything is influenced by that.



I am 6-1, 165 pounds, and find California kneeling to be more stable than when standing upright. I just was shooting 25-100 yards in driving rain with 20-30 mph wind, and the kneeling definitely helped me with stability in that rain.

As an aside, I continue to be convinced that in relative terms, while both are necessary, trigger press is more important than perfect sight alignment for this kind of shooting. Chasing perfect sight alignment can cause you to start, stop and start your press, as opposed to focusing on press and looking for acceptable sight picture which works out better for me.

I agree with you regarding the sights and trigger. I think the single greatest detriment to long-range accuracy is thinking that a long, slow "surprise break" is beneficial. One the sights are on - they're on - it's time to commit to the trigger in short order, otherwise you'll wind up mentally talking yourself out of a good shot.

Of course besides the technique, people fail to build up their knowledge base learning how their gun hits (and how they hit with their gun - a separate issue) at different ranges and with different types of ammo. This can cause all kinds of frustration as well.

[GJM]

Jay, excellent points on your gun and your ammo.

We really needed paper to sort this out. With my wife's G34, she can hold right on at 25, in the 40-70 yard range she needs to hold at the bottom of an 8 inch plate, and then back to mid target beyond 75. Not sure what part of this is her pistol, her sights, her ammo or her eyes. Definitely helpful to get very familiar with YOUR pistol.

That same G34 shoots PMC and Aguila POA/POI but 115 Lawmen several inches right. Lawmen and PMC shoot great in my G17, to the same POI. Lawmen is a great load for my 17 at 50 yards and beyond. This level of detail is just noise out to 20 or 25 yards, but at the longer distances very significant.

Yesterday, at one point I was consistently hitting the 8 inch at 70 yards with the G17, when the target was so grayish, I could hardly see it. Then I painted it bright white, and my hit ratio went down. I think it is because I started getting hung up with sight alignment, instead of just focusing on trigger. The trigger control issue translates directly to the carbine for us. We were just shooting the AR pistols at 100, and offhand rolling the trigger smoothly also trumped having red dot being perfectly in the center of the 8 inch plate.

[GJM]

Question on using the sights as the distance increases. I got to a point today, where I needed to hold at the top of the 8 inch plate. Obviously that causes the front sight to obscure much of the target. I recall elevating the front sight in the notch many years ago, and think some of the six-guns had front sights set up with marks for elevating at distance. By elevating the HD front sight in the notch, it at allowed me to hold at the bottom of the target, so as not to obscure it.

Thoughts on this?

[Chuck Haggard]

I used to make longer shots with my .357s by holding the top or bottom edge of the red ramp on the front sight even with the top of the rear sight blade, this allowed me to get a good sight picture that compensated for long range, without obscuring the target. I'm sure a guy could figure out something similar with a 9mm pistol.

[Malamute]

Holding some front sight up above the rear is how I've been most successful in shooting at distance. Covering up the target isn't going to be easy to get the precision you need for distance.

The red ramps on Smith revolver sights work good for reference points. Its more trial and error and learning by doing as to where to hold the rear in relation to the front. With the g-19, I think I'm holding the rear at about 1/3 of the way down the dot on the front sight for the 300 yard plate (current one is about 24", the old one was about 18"). That's one handed, for two hands, I need a little more dot, since the gun doesn't move as much when fired two handed. That's with WWB. For the hollow point stuff I tried, it needed a little more front sight, they arent quite as aerodynamic as the fmj loads are apparently. On closer ranges, its just a shade of front held up for me. The difference between 200 and 300 is pretty large compared to the 0 to 200 difference. 45 autos require quite a lot of sight compared to the 9mm or anything in that velocity range.

My g-19 sights aren't perfectly centered for windage, I'm also holding the 300 yard plate about 1/3 of the way from the left side of the blade instead of perfectly centered. It seems ok up close so I haven't messed with it.

The usual response when going shooting with people and shooting at the plate is "what, are you crazy?" then "holy kittens!". Then I explain how I'm holding the sights, encourage them to try it, and they start walking them in. One friend had a variety of guns, including some of the pocket size glocks. It took more shots, but we hit the plate with all of them after a mag or two. You do have to really pay attention to sight alignment and trigger squeeze. Most are all over the place at first, then settle down and get them in tighter when they see the dust fly from the misses.

[LSP552]

Question on using the sights as the distance increases. I got to a point today, where I needed to hold at the top of the 8 inch plate. Obviously that causes the front sight to obscure much of the target. I recall elevating the front sight in the notch many years ago, and think some of the six-guns had front sights set up with marks for elevating at distance. By elevating the HD front sight in the notch, it at allowed me to hold at the bottom of the target, so as not to obscure it.

Thoughts on this?

Thats the only way to hit small targets at distance. Without elevating the front sight, you have a sight picture that obscures the target. Elevating the front sight allows you to be more precise and learning how much elevation you need is pretty simple.

Ken

[okie john]

Question on using the sights as the distance increases. I got to a point today, where I needed to hold at the top of the 8 inch plate. Obviously that causes the front sight to obscure much of the target. I recall elevating the front sight in the notch many years ago, and think some of the six-guns had front sights set up with marks for elevating at distance. By elevating the HD front sight in the notch, it at allowed me to hold at the bottom of the target, so as not to obscure it.

Thoughts on this?

My experiences mirror those of Malamute, LSP552, and Chuck Haggard. You learn pretty quickly how much front sight to hold up at various distances, and the red outline in Smith revolvers of old is ideal for this.

Elmer Keith and Ed McGivern marked their front sights with horizontal bars for long-range shooting. (The the taller front sights normally found on revolvers in those days is one of the main reasons that Keith preferred them to autos.) The bars were not set for any specific distance, but were an aide to holding up a consistent amount of sight. Back in the day, I had no problem keeping most of a magazine from a Ruger 22 or an old Browning Hi-Power on a plastic 5-gallon bucket at nearly 200 yards. I've also been able to hit E-Type silhouettes at 200 and 300 meters with a Beretta M-9 and NATO ball using the same method.

Zero starts to matter a LOT for this kind of work. You need to be dead on for windage, so adjustable sights really earn their keep. I zero my G17 to hit 1" high at 25 yards, which puts it 1" low at 50. Then I can hold on the chin of an IPSC target at 100 and hit the chest with a hot 115- or 124-grain load, or hold for the forehead and hit the chest with 147. Impact at more probable self-defense ranges is still workable, so +1" at 25 yards ends up being a very useful every-day zero.

With HD sights, the first useful increment of front sight will probably be the distance from the top of the ball to the top of the front sight. This corresponds to the distance from the top of the blade to the top of the insert on a Smith revolver with a red insert. That should get you out to 150 yards or so depending on your gun and load. The 9mm and the 22 LR both have about the same trajectory, which is a lot flatter than you'd think.


Okie John

[Mr_White]

Wish I still had the opportunity to shoot at extended distances. I would love to try this 'shooting out of the notch'/elevated front sight thing. I don't doubt that way is better, but I have been able to hit head sized targets at 140 yards, using standard 'equal height, equal light' sight alignment with a little holdover. It does partially obscure the target, but shooting with both eyes open still allows me some awareness of the target position.

[Desertrat]

I have not tried shooting much farther than 50 yards with the Glocks or the 1911's. I do know that at some point you
definitely are way above target line with the front sight. Targets are actually blocked.

[GJM]

I have not tried shooting much farther than 50 yards with the Glocks or the 1911's. I do know that at some point you
definitely are way above target line with the front sight. Targets are actually blocked.

Think you might be surprised in the 40-75 yard range with a 9mm Glock, how high POI is with many sight arrangements.

[Savage Hands]

I have not tried shooting much farther than 50 yards with the Glocks or the 1911's. I do know that at some point you
definitely are way above target line with the front sight. Targets are actually blocked.

Typical premium 9mm only drops around 8 inches @100 yards according to some manufacturers.

[Chuck Haggard]

Typical premium 9mm only drops around 8 inches @100 yards according to some manufacturers.

If that. I've done quite a bit of shooting on steel out to the 150 with 9mm, it's not that tough to pull off.

[Clusterfrack]

Wish I still had the opportunity to shoot at extended distances. I would love to try this 'shooting out of the notch'/elevated front sight thing. I don't doubt that way is better, but I have been able to hit head sized targets at 140 yards, using standard 'equal height, equal light' sight alignment with a little holdover. It does partially obscure the target, but shooting with both eyes open still allows me some awareness of the target position.

Drop me an email sometime if you want to do some long range pistol. I have a secret spot that's around 40 min from home. Good for rifle too. Distances out to 900 yds.

[Mr_White]

Drop me an email sometime if you want to do some long range pistol. I have a secret spot that's around 40 min from home. Good for rifle too. Distances out to 900 yds.

Thanks, I sure will. That would be awesome!