1st match. AIWB Lim Minor.

[tyrusasmith]

Nobody out there doing good is front sight focused for much of a match. 15 yard partial yes, but for most stuff you can just look through your sights. Would probably make a good thread topic.

I'm a total USPSA scrub. but I tend to agree with this. On the stages I see through my sights instead of looking at them I'm far faster. Oddly, the accuracy and As seem about the same either way. If it's equal accuracy but one is faster then there is a clearly better approach.

-Cory

I should have clarified. I'm not looking for the serrations on the sights, but I was basically point shooting off of index the entire match. That got me 6 misses and 3 no shoots.

All I saw was a fiber dot and the target, I didn't even see the rear sight at all, nor where the dot was in relation to the notch.

My practice now is making sure I at least see the dot in the notch, and hopefully get it lined up a little better.

[HopetonBrown]

My practice now is making sure I at least see the dot in the notch, and hopefully get it lined up a little better.

Has anyone ever done the sight alignment demo in front of you?

Stand 5-7 yards from an IPSC/IDPA target, and push the front sight all the way to the right so that you have a single light bar on the left, fire a round, push it all the way to the left, press a shot, bury the front post in the notch to where your fiber is at the bottom of the notch, then again at the top of the notch?

If you haven't seen it or tried it yourself it's quite illuminating how much sight alignment error you can have and still get hits.

Edited to add a vid from EL

https://youtu.be/LrdEhBxX3xo

[tyrusasmith]

Has anyone ever done the sight alignment demo in front of you?

Stand 5-7 yards from an IPSC/IDPA target, and push the front sight all the way to the right so that you have a single light bar on the left, fire a round, push it all the way to the left, press a shot, bury the front post in the notch to where your fiber is at the bottom of the notch, then again at the top of the notch?

If you haven't seen it or tried it yourself it's quite illuminating how much sight alignment error you can have and still get hits.

Edited to add a vid from EL

https://youtu.be/LrdEhBxX3xo

Yes, I was introduced to that in Gabe White's class. I was shooting with Trijicon HD XR sights and the front post and rear notch widths were well matched. I was able to get A's as long as the dot was wholly in the u notch (rather than perfectly centered).

In this match I had about 2 hours of dryfire and 250 rounds on a new set of Dawson P320 competition sights mounted on my P229.

The Dawsons have a much smaller dot than the Trijicon sights, the dot is very near the top of the front post, and the notch is much deeper on the rear. Supposedly this is the preferred setup of many competition shooters so they have less obstruction of the targets.

It seems that my engrained " put the dot in the middle of the notch" mindset that I acquired from the Trijicons didn't work for the Dawsons. The Dawsons require the equal height approach which puts the dot much closer to the top of the rear notch.

The change in aiming technique might be part to blame, but I know I didn't recall seeing the rear notch the whole match. I'm going to guess I was centering the fiber in the rear notch by instinct.

[HopetonBrown]

I was shooting with Trijicon HD XR sights and the front post and rear notch widths were well matched. I was able to get A's as long as the dot was wholly in the u notch (rather than perfectly centered).

The Dawsons have a much smaller dot than the Trijicon sights, the dot is very near the top of the front post, and the notch is much deeper on the rear. Supposedly this is the preferred setup of many competition shooters so they have less obstruction of the targets.

It seems that my engrained " put the dot in the middle of the notch" mindset that I acquired from the Trijicons didn't work for the Dawsons.

It's the same technique across all iron sights.

The HD XR are 122/169, the Dawson competition are 100/135, so there's actually more slop in the Trijicons.

Maybe try the demo yourself to see how much sight misalignment you can get away with.

My personal experience (YMMV) is it's not really a lot about sight alignment but how well I can press the trigger without pushing the gun off target.

[tyrusasmith]

It's the same technique across all iron sights.

The HD XR are 122/169, the Dawson competition are 100/135, so there's actually more slop in the Trijicons.

Maybe try the demo yourself to see how much sight misalignment you can get away with.

By introduced, I meant I was shown the concept, we did it, and I do it occasionally in practice, especially with new sights.

While I know the concept is the same across all sights, my experience with these 2 in particular sights has made me change my aiming technique.

With the Trijicons, if the full dot is anywhere in the notch, it seems like it was good to go. Especially on the vertical axis. My goal was to put the dot right in the middle of the notch. Vertical and horizontal

On the Dawsons, if you put the dot in the middle vertically, C zone all day long. I have to now put the dot at the top of the notch.

In the picture below you can see the "goal" I was going for on the Trijicons, that doesn't work on the Dawsons. The asterisks are what I was doing in the last match, although I can't even confirm that I saw the rear sight. In practice, I was able to recreate the low misses/ no shoots and better understand what was going on.

[Mr_White]

Nobody out there doing good is front sight focused for much of a match. 15 yard partial yes, but for most stuff you can just look through your sights. Would probably make a good thread topic.

Has anyone ever done the sight alignment demo in front of you?

Stand 5-7 yards from an IPSC/IDPA target, and push the front sight all the way to the right so that you have a single light bar on the left, fire a round, push it all the way to the left, press a shot, bury the front post in the notch to where your fiber is at the bottom of the notch, then again at the top of the notch?

If you haven't seen it or tried it yourself it's quite illuminating how much sight alignment error you can have and still get hits.

Edited to add a vid from EL

https://youtu.be/LrdEhBxX3xo

I quoted a couple of posts but there was a lot more worth discussing.

First, although I absolutely agree that target focused shooting is extremely prevalent in USPSA and can be done extremely effectively, it is not accurate that no one doing well shoots much of a match front sight focused. I guess that depends on what you mean by doing well. I am certainly in the minority, but I shoot ALL shots that are not from a retention or compressed position, front sight focused. I have won numerous local Limited matches that way, one Major (just a Section match, but still a Major), as well as various other good finishes. If you meant national champions and contenders, that's definitely not me and I haven't been doing much with USPSA the last couple years. I'm not deep in right now. It's also been a big part of every non-USPSA shooting accomplishment I've been fortunate enough to succeed in.

Second, I completely agree with the importance of understanding acceptable sight alignment, and the relative effects of sight errors vs. trigger errors. That is critical. However, it is a long recognized error to shoot a fiber optic like it's a red dot sight (that is, put the dot on the target and press, never mind the rear sight.) While there are plenty of close shots where that may work, it's not even close to sufficient for the totality of shots one will face in a match. When a person has a hard time finding the discipline to shoot the top edges and light bars and instead gets sucked into shooting the FO like red dot, it is often recommended that they spend some time with all black sights. With all black sights, there's not much to use but the top edges and light bars.

ETA: I believe that is the root problem Steve Anderson attempts to address with his prescription to "throw your fiber in the river."

[HopetonBrown]

First, although I absolutely agree that target focused shooting is extremely prevalent in USPSA and can be done extremely effectively, it is not accurate that no one doing well shoots much of a match front sight focused. I guess that depends on what you mean by doing well. I am certainly in the minority, but I shoot ALL shots that are not from a retention or compressed position, front sight focused.

Just so we are clear with definitions, when OP said front sight focus, I am assuming he means technique no. 3, and when I say look through sights, I'm referring to technique no. 2.

Edited to add: I originally typed 1 when I meant 3.



https://youtu.be/mDf_aOHXFrw

[Mr_White]

Just so we are clear with definitions, when OP said front sight focus, I am assuming he means technique no. 1, and when I say look through sights, I'm referring to technique no. 2.



https://youtu.be/mDf_aOHXFrw

Hmmmmmm - using the methods presented in the video as references, technique 1 is target focused shooting, technique 2 is neither target nor front sight focused, and technique 3 is front sight focused shooting.

All three are highly viable and are used by shooters far better and worse than myself. Ignoring compressed and retention positions where I'm not getting the gun to full extension, I use technique 3 exclusively.

I don't know whether Matt was using targets at different distances, but if they were at the same distance, I think there is a confounding element of the demonstration in the video. The radically different amounts of time spent firing each shot appears to me to include a lot of difference in trigger manipulation. There may be something I am missing, and I really like Matt a lot and think he's a great shooter. This is all for the purpose of discussion and I mean no criticism of him.

To say that front sight focused shooting is necessarily slower seems to me as untrue as if one were to say that target focused shooting can't produce A-zone hits at 25 yards. Both are examples of things that are conventionally true as generalities, but the capabilities of individual practitioners may not shake out the same way, especially if they put in a lot of work developing skill using an aiming method that suits them.

[AKDoug]

Hmmmmmm - using the methods presented in the video as references, technique 1 is target focused shooting, technique 2 is neither target nor front sight focused, and technique 3 is front sight focused shooting.

All three are highly viable and are used by shooters far better and worse than myself. Ignoring compressed and retention positions where I'm not getting the gun to full extension, I use technique 3 exclusively.

I don't know whether Matt was using targets at different distances, but if they were at the same distance, I think there is a confounding element of the demonstration in the video. The radically different amounts of time spent firing each shot appears to me to include a lot of difference in trigger manipulation. There may be something I am missing, and I really like Matt a lot and think he's a great shooter. This is all for the purpose of discussion and I mean no criticism of him.

To say that front sight focused shooting is necessarily slower seems to me as untrue as if one were to say that target focused shooting can't produce A-zone hits at 25 yards. Both are examples of things that are conventionally true as generalities, but the capabilities of individual practitioners may not shake out the same way, especially if they put in a lot of work developing skill using an aiming method that suits them.

Methods of aiming constantly come up in all types of firearms and archery target disciplines. I was a fairly high level archer (state champion, but never did well on the national level) in a division that used sights. Most sighted bows use a peep sight on the string, a pin or other aiming device on the actual bow, that you aligned just like a peep sighted rifle. Just like a pistol sight, some people aimed focusing on the pin and had a fuzzy target, some aimed by staring at the bullseye and didn't focus on the sight at all, some spent their time with a fuzzy target and made sure their front sight was perfectly centered in their rear peep circle. Like you mention, people won major competitions using all three methods. When people stared at the bullseye and allowed the rest of the shot just happen, we called them sub-conscious aimers. In archery I was a sub-conscious aimer. Accuracy levels required at 20m to be in the running in most competitions required putting all 60 of your arrows in about a 2" circle over the course of fire. You simply couldn't miss that to be competitive. People asked me all the time how I aimed, and when I said I focused on the X and just let the rest happen they wouldn't believe me.

I am well aware that action pistol shooting isn't the same as bullseye pistol or target archery, but I do believe that the human brain has the capability to aim subconsciously and quickly if we don't mess with it. For my personal pistol shooting on action pistol type events, I am target focused and allow my subconscious do the aiming and pressing of the trigger. I suck, though, so I am well aware that I don't know anything and would be open to trying a different method. A decade of archery competition makes it difficult to change, though.

[GJM]

I think your shooting looks great — you move well and have great recoil control.

I would experiment with a bit more patience, not sure whether it is sights, trigger or both, to get your hits where you want them to be. Bet that patience costs you little in time.