Shooting the dot with a target focus

[GJM]

So we know that you should shoot a red dot on a pistol with a target focus — the hard part is understanding exactly what that means, and how you can figure out whether you are doing it. On day one of a recent Stoeger class, I asked Ben how to know whether you are shooting with a true target focus. His answer was short — cover the forward lens of your optic with black tape and shoot drills. If you see the dot on your target, you are shooting with a target focus. Here is an example of that.







Shooting with a target focus is a core skill of how Ben shoots. You look at a spot on the target and let your eyes bring the dot to the spot. As you fire a shot, you control recoil by letting your eyes guide the dot back to your aiming spot, you fire again and then your eyes move to the next aiming spot and you repeat the process.

It might be worthwhile taping over your front lens and doing a practice session or two and see what you observe.

[DMCutter]

Isn't that essentially the original Armston OEG?

[HCM]

Isn't that essentially the original Armston OEG?

Yeah, and the "Bindon aiming concept" but it's just a drill.

[DMCutter]

Over on the Sig forum people are forever kvetching about crap on their red dots from the LCI but my take has always been that you don't have to see through it unless you're shooting at something small/far away and using it like a scope is missing the point. Because, well, BAC.

[HCM]

Over on the Sig forum people are forever kvetching about crap on their red dots from the LCI but my take has always been that you don't have to see through it unless you're shooting at something small/far away and using it like a scope is missing the point. Because, well, BAC.

You can make it work, but it's not optimal.

[GJM]

Over on the Sig forum people are forever kvetching about crap on their red dots from the LCI but my take has always been that you don't have to see through it unless you're shooting at something small/far away and using it like a scope is missing the point. Because, well, BAC.

I thought shooting at something small/far away was the whole point of a red dot on a pistol!

[Eyesquared]

Ben Stoeger recommended me this in a video review he did. It has helped me and I'm going to periodically revisit this in dry fire. I will also add that I typically catch myself shifting vision to the dot when I perceive the shooting to be "hard", like a long distance partial, small piece of steel, or when I am shooting SHO/WHO. To a lesser extent I have also seen it while shooting on the move (more so on partials).

So if you try it in dry fire and go "well, I kept a perfect target focus," try some of the above and see if it holds up.

[YVK]

The idea of this is to be sure you're target focused and not pulling your eyes to your dot. I was initially confused but then I thought about eye physiology and it makes sense. I've been doing it live and dry for a couple of weeks now. I don't love that I have only my weak eye (literally, my left eye is much worse than right) to pick a spot on the target, but overall it works.

30 min ago during my dry fire practice I came up with a complimentary drill. I was practicing index on target transitions which I sometimes do alternating dot on and dot off reps. I realized that with the dot off you can only focus on the target. So this trains not only how it feels to present and transition the gun purely on proprioception clues and without the dot guidance, but it also trains how it "feels" to be 100% focused.

I typically catch myself shifting vision to the dot when I perceive the shooting to be "hard", like a long distance partial, small piece of steel

I listened to a podcast with Sailer recently where he said he was doing that last year on hard shoots. He said he was working on eliminating it this year.
My reaction was slightly different. If I won every area match that I had entered and then the Nationals, maybe pulling my eyes to the dot on hard shots wasn't something I'd be worried about...

[Eyesquared]

The idea of this is to be sure you're target focused and not pulling your eyes to your dot. I was initially confused but then I thought about eye physiology and it makes sense. I've been doing it live and dry for a couple of weeks now. I don't love that I have only my weak eye (literally, my left eye is much worse than right) to pick a spot on the target, but overall it works.

30 min ago during my dry fire practice I came up with a complimentary drill. I was practicing index on target transitions which I sometimes do alternating dot on and dot off reps. I realized that with the dot off you can only focus on the target. So this trains not only how it feels to present and transition the gun purely on proprioception clues and without the dot guidance, but it also trains how it "feels" to be 100% focused.



I listened to a podcast with Sailer recently where he said he was doing that last year on hard shoots. He said he was working on eliminating it this year.
My reaction was slightly different. If I won every area match that I had entered and then the Nationals, maybe pulling my eyes to the dot on hard shots wasn't something I'd be worried about...

I also listened to that podcast and got the impression from some of his phrasing that Christian Sailer is definitely paying attention to what Ben has been saying in this area, which I found very interesting.

I think the issue it causes when you stare at the dot is more of a transition issue, if that makes any sense. When I catch myself staring at the dot I usually have a big overtransition. If I'm not careful it manifests paradoxically in matches where I will wildly over transition onto a 15 yard tuxedo target, but I will have more precise and controlled transitions on 7 yard open targets. I think in theory someone really well drilled in target transitions could get acceptable results tracking the dot on hard shots, but I think at my level it'll be more effective to work both target focus and precise transitions simultaneously rather than focus on doing one.

On the other hand I am really hard pressed to think of any advantage to having the hard focus on the dot. As I understand it, even in the bullseye world the preferred method is to use a target focus with the RDS, therefore I think the sense of security I get from the dot focus on hard shots is really a false sense of security.

[Erick Gelhaus]

<snip> It might be worthwhile taping over your front lens and doing a practice session or two and see what you observe.

Good info, as usual, GJM.

Oddly enough, this does appear to be in the lesson plans for Gunsite's pistol mounted optics classes.