OP, in case you missed it, I would carefully read (or reread) post #5.
OP, in case you missed it, I would carefully read (or reread) post #5.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
The problem is not the movement that happens in that tiny .003 seconds but the movement you don't realize you're making at the same time you're squeezing the trigger. What seems instantaneous to the shooter or an observer is actually plenty of time to move the gun off target. If you could place a 5000 FPS slow motion camera downrange you'd be able to watch the muzzle wonder off target as the trigger is pulled.
Think about how much a tiny sight adjustment moves the point of impact on target and then realize that you are moving the gun orders of magnitude more in the time from beginning to press the trigger back to actual primer ignition.
There are two different ball and dummy drills you can do to work through this.
First is the one Les already mentioned. Load a magazine 50/50 so that you know whether a round will be live or a dummy. This gives you the mental focus of "I know this is not a live round so I'll do it without flinch" to teach yourself what a proper trigger pull is like.
The other is to randomly insert a few dummies into a mag and do whatever drills you normally do. You won't know when the dummies will come. This will show you in glaringly painful detail just how bad you are jerking the gun. Whether you're doing Dot Torture, a Bill Drill or something else you can see where you're jerking the gun and hopefully correct that habit.
Do both of those drills slow fire before moving to rapid fire drills.
A couple things - You have to not blink when firing for this to have the most benefit. That means doing the drills to eliminate blinking like firing into the berm (no target) while observing the gun and sight and consciously keeping your eyes open.
If I jerk the gun during dummy drills I do 5 perfect trigger presses before I resume.
Thanks for the input everyone. I got back to the range today and things went better. On Okie John's recommendation I kept it to 150 rounds. I have been having great dry fire sessions since the OP.
I did various slow fire marksmanship stuff. I was most happy with a dot torture at 3 yds
My SHO needs work, but my other groups were the tightest I have ever shot at this range despite a wobbly first dot.
I was able to concentrate on front sight and able to call several shots in the rear of the session. I was also able to see muzzle sparks well.
This is a walk back which I cleaned to 10 yards.
I think my issue that started the OP was likely shooting more rounds than I could tolerate in too short a time. I got a little shell shocked and started blinking/flinching almost certainly.
With a couple days off and a calm mindset everything got a lot better.