Accuracy Diagnosis/Target Selection

[lwt16]

Your 10 yard 1.75 inch square group led me to deduce that.

See those low/left shots? Trigger press.

Snap caps randomly loaded. Also, skip the B8s for now. Go to the dollar store and buy the smallest post it sticky notes they have. Buy a black marker. Put you a dot in the center of that little note OR....a staple in the middle. Shoot at the 3/5 until you can make that dot/staple go away. Put a bunch of these sticky notes up so if you eliminate the dot/staple, move to the next one while you are in the groove. Do this with 2-3 snap caps in your mags......random....like load them the night before or load up several mags and mix them up to where you can't remember which one has the dud at shot 3 or five or whatever.

No speed in this.....matter of fact....take a lot of time focusing on the press. Speed comes later.

PM me your address. I'll send you 10 B8 repair centers. For later......when you get your press smoothed out.

Regards.

[Gio]

See those low/left shots? Trigger press.

Snap caps randomly loaded.

Respectfully disagree with these suggestions.

In my opinion, that group on a 1.75" square at 10 yards is pretty good and does not lead me to believe you have a major issue with your fundamentals. There would be a lot more fliers outside the group if there were inconsistencies in your technique. You may actually have an issue with the POI/POA of your sights or how you're observing them on target.

Ball and dummy drills are a pet peeve of mine. They are absolutely useless for anyone except shooters who have a major flinch and don't know they are flinching. For anyone else it is detrimental to progress, because it will show a subconscious post-ignition push. You can quickly separate post ignition push from a flinch if you are shooting a tight group at 10 yards on a ball and dummy drill but perceive a major dip/flinch on the dummy rounds. If you had a real flinch, you would see your hits all over the place on the target. If an instructor throws an entire class or group on a ball and dummy drill they are doing a major disservice to any shooters who don't fit this category.

There are two types of trigger press techniques: slowly/steadily increasing pressure until the shot breaks (i.e. for a bullseye target or shooting one of those 1.75" squares) or slapping/jerking the trigger (useful for action pistol and defensive shooting drills)

You can't focus on the slow/steady trigger press and ever see a significant increase in your speed. They are two completely different skill sets. If you want to shoot slowly and accurately, focus on mastering the first one and forget about time as suggested. If you want to shoot quickly but still accurately enough (i.e. ~90% -0/A zone hits) on action pistol targets like IDPA, USPSA, etc you have to learn to press/jerk/slap the trigger as fast as you can without disturbing the sights or while mitigating the effect of your imperfect trigger press with your offhand grip and locked wrists. My favorite drill to practice this is to aim for a small target like a 2" circle at 5-7 yards, set a shot timer on a random delay, and press the trigger as fast as possible when the timer goes off. You should be in the .15-.20 range, which is the limit of human reaction time. If the reaction time is slower than that then you are pressing the trigger too slow.

On the distance shooting on the B8, my guess is you are not accepting the natural wobble of the sights as you perceive them moving on the target and are trying to make the shot happen NOW when the sights cross the center of the B8. On the more open targets with less defined scoring areas you are able to ignore the wobble and execute the same fundamentals you are using at the 10 yard target. The solution here for bullseye style shooting is to mentally separate the movement of your sights on the target from your trigger press and work the trigger with steadily increasing pressure without trying to pause or speed up your trigger press based on what the sights are doing.

[GJM]

The Rogers School does ball and dummy drills differently — they alternate ball and dummy so you know which is the dummy and which is the live round. Do a perfect press dry and follow it with a live round.

[Clusterfrack]

@Gio —spot on. I recommend working on other shooting skills. Your accuracy is just fine, and will improve as you develop your other skills.

[okie john]

First of all, welcome to PF. If you keep asking smart questions, then you'll improve very quickly.

The rule of thumb is that an accurate pistol with accurate ammo in the hands of an accurate shooter should group into 1” for every 10 yards of distance, so I’d like to see something more like 1” at 10 yards. The 92 is an accurate design and an example with only 7k rounds on it shouldn’t have mechanical problems so I’ll focus on other issues.

• You’re mixing technique by combining DA and SA shots. I know you’ll have to shoot DA and SA on da streetz, but for now pick one and focus on it until you get a benchmark and you can begin to identify where other things becomes an issue.
• Ammo selection. Have you tested loads? Did you use the load that this pistol shoots best or whatever you had on hand that day? It makes a difference, and it really shows up as distance increases. (For details on how to shoot for pure accuracy, see post 37 here: https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....evisited/page4)
• You’re zeroed for elevation. The group superimposed on the B8 is has five hits above the horizontal centerline and five below. IF you can repeat that on demand, then you’re zeroed for elevation at that distance. Bullet drop increases with distance, and if you don’t know your zero then you won’t know how much drop to expect. Zero at 25 yards, then check POI at shorter and longer ranges. A hot 124-grain 9mm load can be 3-5 inches low at 50 from a 25-yard zero and a 147 will drop about twice that. Inside of 25 yards, POI will be a bit high but not as much higher as you’d think.
• You're not zeroed for windage. That target has seven hits right of the vertical center line and three to the left. This will become more evident at longer range and less evident at closer range. Consider drifting your rear sight AFTER you complete your ammo tests, as different loads can have different points of impact.

You're on the edge of one of the biggest rabbit holes in the world. You can't see the bottom because there isn't one.

You might as well jump in with the rest of us.


Okie John

[Caballoflaco]

SIGHT Images by craig stuard, on Flickr
.

There is a reason that sight picture #1 is often the preferred sight picture for folks who are bulls-eye/ NRA high-power shooters. It’s easier for most folks to center their front sight on the bottom rounded edge of the target rather than holding in the middle. The next time you shoot b8’s you might want to try shooting a group or two with that hold (not worrying about scoring rings) just to see if it makes a difference in group size.

Note: I’m not advocating changing sites to achieve a 6:00 hold (even if your groups are better than with a center hold) it’s more of an experiment just to see how your mind works when interpreting the relationship of sites to target.

Comments about ammo here are spot on too. I once showed up at a small local class with some aluminum blazer 115 gr and couldn’t shoot better than 6-8” at twenty yards. I was pretty frustrated with myself at the end of the day because I had been shooting considerably better than that, but I try not to blame equipment first so I just assumed I’d had a bad day shooting.

The next time I was at the range I had a couple boxes of the blazer and was shooting up some old carry ammo. I was able to consistently shoot 3” ish groups with the gold dots and still could not do better than 8” with the blazer because my glock hated that lot of that ammo.

[Gio]

The rule of thumb is that an accurate pistol with accurate ammo in the hands of an accurate shooter should group into 1” for every 10 yards of distance, so I’d like to see something more like 1” at 10 yards. The 92 is an accurate design and an example with only 7k rounds on it shouldn’t have mechanical problems so I’ll focus on other issues. [/LIST]

Holding a 1” at 10 yards standing unsupported is beyond a rule of thumb... Maybe off a sandbag rest. If there was a technique issue with the shooting we’d see a lot of fliers, not just the 1 high flyer out of the whole group.

[Clusterfrack]

I recommend against investing in diminishing returns in accuracy at the cost of developing other critical shooting skills.

Unless you are a bullseye shooter. Otherwise, work on other things like recoil management, target transitions, non-threat partial targets, draws, reloads, etc.

[spence]

I recommend against investing in diminishing returns in accuracy at the cost of developing other critical shooting skills.

Unless you are a bullseye shooter. Otherwise, work on other things like recoil management, target transitions, non-threat partial targets, draws, reloads, etc.

Before I get the chance to go to the range for another extended trip (200-300 rounds is typical when I have more time/ammo/ambition, and things are rolling well, not getting fatigued, etc), I'll have to stop and take some notes out of this thread with me. There's some good info here.

As I've progressed through the last year or so of going from essentially just blasting ammo with no real plan, to actually learning to run a pistol and be accurate, I've taken a few notes about it. One being there's a huge difference between shooting precise, and practical/gaming marksmanship. It was also a huge revelation to learn that learning to shoot precise starts at 3-7 yards, not 10-25.

Among various other things, one takeaway I'm taking is if/when shooting for groups, run the trigger in either DA or SA. There's other places to run them simultaneously.

To the last comment specifically, I'm with you. I shot a bunch of untimed drills to get some precision down until I got a shot timer. It was good for me at that point, and getting to start running on a timer came about the right time, I think. The other skills you speak of are in what I'm working on a lot. It's progressive, especially when I have a bare facility so I've got to come up with the stuff to do these things myself.

As for ammo. This gun has been largely not picky, as far as I can tell. It's certainly accurate enough in a practical sense. I do have several loads that I tend to prefer, and buy by the case. That depends on what supplier I'm buying from, what they have in stock, and price. My M9 has primarily eaten
UMC 115 gr FMJ. While many don't like it, I've gotten along very well with it.
Fiocchi 115 gr FMJ
S&B 115 or 124 gr FMJ
Geco 115 or 124 gr FMJ - The case of 115 I'm about to finish out has been the first case of it that I've had, but it's been good so far.

I've also run some
Aguila 115 gr
Magtech 115 and 124
Winchester NATO 124
Federal Champion 115
10 Ring 115 (that stuff was NASTY, but it was surprisingly accurate)

They've all run well, and at least the four loads I prefer to buy at the top don't seem to have any serious accuracy issues.

[spence]

Here's a couple other reference targets from the last few weeks.

11/24 Bill Drill, two runs. 3.22 and 3.18 seconds


11/13 Bill Wilson 5x5. 24.82


11/20 Dot Torture @ 3 yds


11/21 Slow fire @ 70 yards, using Geco 115 gr. Point of aim was right at the neck line.


11/8 60 yard slow fire. Black pasties are from my PX4 compact, if I remember right, it was the first trip it made out. Dropped a couple rounds with it, but I'm still impressed what that little 3.3" barrel does. Circled rounds are out of the M9. Believe it was Geco 115, as well. Point of aim also at the neck line.


I have no idea why my blank dot torture sheet attached, and I can't figure out how to make it go away.