Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Handgun accuracy?

Yup certainly all of it is important.

Hitting thrown objects or moving targets using sustained lead IMO, firing a single projectile, Ive still had the best results by making the sights the primary focus and the moving target the periphery, long gun or handgun.

Same for shotgunning using both sustained and follow through leads. I always make the bead the focus. Just what works for me.

I should note how bad shotgun triggers can be, but I think its universally understood!

Well said...

Keep it coming guys......lots of good info.

I'm shooting between 30 and 50 rounds a day and slowly but surely improving.

The hardest part for me is still trigger control but I'm working on it.
I'm starting to understand why so many say it's so important. It clearly is.

I find the front sight / trigger control argument interesting because you can't have one without the other. You can't hit when the sight moves from where you want to place your shot, and you can't keep the sight on the target with poor trigger control. So I say both are equally important and impossible to separate.

One of the best ways I've found to improve my handgun shooting is dryfiring. You remove the distraction of the recoil, noise and the action cycling and you can clearly see where your sights are pointed when the sear breaks. I'd suggest for one week stopping your live fire practice and dry fire for 50-100 times a day. Treat each and every trigger break with full concentration. When you find your fatigued and can non longer concentrate on the trigger break, stop your session for the day as you only want to practice quality trigger breaks. I predict you'll be pleasantly surprised by when you return to live firing the following week.

If you want the ultimate handgun trainer, get a quality air pistol. It's just like dryfiring with no noise, recoil or action movement to distract you.

No disagreement here, they certainly go hand in hand. In my experience more people have trouble learning proper trigger control.

Obviously both of those, along with all the other fundamentals, are important. They aren't impossible to separate though, sight alignment and trigger control are different skills that can be practiced separately. My disagreement is with those saying focus on the front sight comes above all else, which is hogwash and bad advice for a new shooter who needs to develop all of the fundamentals correctly.

Also as I already said above, arguing against focus on the front sight does not mean I don't use sight alignment. I shoot much better focusing on the target, especially small or hard to see targets in field conditions; that doesn't mean I don't align the sights. The sights don't have to be in focus to verify alignment. That goes for rifle, pistol, or shotgun; I shoot them all the same way, regardless whether they have beads, irons, or optics.

I just don't see how one separates concentrating on the front sight and trigger control. I know my trigger control is off when I see the front sight moving with the trigger break. I can tell when my trigger control is improving because the front sight doesn't move when the trigger breaks.

I'm not going to argue about what is the best advice or bad advice, I can only relate to what has worked for me. People learn differently and have different weaknesses, so taking a dogmatic approach to helping someone out might not be the best approach as what is holding him or her back might not be what you think is holding them back.

If you can separate steering a car and working the gas pedal, you should be able to separate sight alignment and trigger control. Of course they go together, but they are different operations; the point being that you can do one right but get the other wrong. If you can't use good trigger control without concentrating on the front sight, the trigger control probably needs more work.

When I teach someone to shoot, we work on the fundamentals individually at first - trigger control, sight alignment, grip, stance, eye dominance, etc. Then we move on to working everything together, but knowing how to do the fundamentals properly first helps them to identify what they're doing right and what they need to improve.

As a side note, the comments in this thread are a good illustration why some people's shooting improves so much when they use a red dot sight and realize they can focus on the target.

The whole 'focus on the sights/target' thing is an individual journey in itself. From youth to about age 32, I had 20/10 or 20/15 vision depending on who checked it. By 39 I was ready for glasses. Optometrists who are not pistoleros tend to over-correct and my first one (a trap shooter himself) did just that. I could see scoring rings way out there but my sights were a blur. I finally found an eye doc who shot pistols & things got better fast. And oddly, my vision w/o glasses has improves and I rarely wear them anymore; almost never when I shoot a pistol.

I acquire a sight picture as the pistol comes into my line of sight. If I'm not pressed for time I check for equal light on either side of the front sight and make adjustments to correct that and insure they're level across the top. I then place that sight picture on my aiming point and take up any slack in the trigger. When the sight picture is as good as it's going to be I think 'dry-fire' and increase pressure on the trigger while watching the sights.

I'm just relating the process, not suggesting it's the best way for anyone else.

A better analogy would be separating steering the car from looking at the road to see where you are going.

An even better example would be to actually go out and shoot. Deviate your sights. Intentionally misalign then and get a clean trigger press. All the way back to 25 yards you can misalign your sights and still get good hits.

I think someone mentioned this already but maybe defining the necessary accuracy for Charlie's purpose would help the discussion. Defensive shooting and making good hits fast out to 15 or 20 yards on a paper plate size target is one thing, head shooting a squirrel at 40 yards is another.

Best training advice I've read here so far. I've trained with a Feinwerkbau and later, a Steyr air pistol daily, when I couldn't shoot live ammo. My 50 yd slow-fire scores improved dramatically over the course of several months of practice. The dry-fire idea is also spot-on and what the USAMU does daily, whether shooting live ammo or not. Good stuff.

I've learned from 30 years of shooting bullseye as well as standard, air and free pistol that sight alignment is critical at 50 yards (or meters). At 25 yards/meters it reverses, and trigger control and cadence become critically important. For instance, shooting 230 grain hardball rapid fire in a service pistol match teaches you to accept less than perfect sight alignment in order to break the shot without hesitation. You still see the sights (and are intensely focused on them), but you must break the shot when the pistol comes down out of recoil without pausing to gain perfect sight alignment. You see the sights, but accept less than perfect alignment in order to break the shot on time (5 shots, 10 sec).
Bob

I would agree.

I hardly ever shoot a handgun under 25 yards. Most of the time its 30-40.

I don't have any big plans on winning a world championship in any of the various handgun disciplines any time soon GC....grin.....just trying to improve my skills enough to do a little small game hunting . If I can get to where I can take the occasional Cottontail at 10-20yrds I'll be happy..

There's no precise amount, it's just "whatever works for YOUR eyes". And you're right, it helps a LOT, both with accuracy and speed, too. (I was an IPSC shooter for a long time, speed was important to that end, but good practice habits help).

With a .22 like the OP is using, I'd see how far out I could hit a 20gauge hull regularly. That takes good trigger control, which along with sight alignment, makes the shooter. If you have both of those things down, all is yours.

Fixed it for ya!

Take it from an old handgun hunter- you need as much accuracy as a guy shooting indoor bullseye on a 50' range. Your targets will blend in with the undergrowth or be partially obscured by it. You'll essentially be shooting at the head and sometimes only an eye. I'd hammer the fundamentals until you can reliably center the end of a coke can at the farthest distance you intend to shoot.

Hunting with any handgun is a splendid pass time and the preparation involved is an excellent means of mastering it.

PS- I'll second Ratsmacker on the shotgun hulls.

With ammo it likes your 22/45 should be mechanically capable of 1" groups at 25yds. Getting your sight picture, down, trigger control and being consistent with those shot to shot should get your offhand groups down to 2" at 25 yds and likely quicker than you think. Clay pigeons on the 50 yd berm should be your goal, and no reason you can't get there.

The dry fire practice not only re-enforces proper sight picture and trigger break, it will strengthen your trigger finger and ability to hold the gun steady. Most people don't think of shooting a handgun as physically demanding, but if you're not shooting regularly your muscles aren't used to performing those tasks and you need to build up those muscles.

One thing not touched on is the ability to analyze what is causing your groups to be poor. You should know exactly where the gun is pointed at the time the gun fires. This takes a surprising amount of concentration but is critical. You should be able to tell if you missed to the right because either the gun was pointed to the right when you fired, or that your trigger pull moved the gun to the right. If you're shooting low you should be able to tell the shot went low because that's where the gun was pointed, or that you pulled it low due to a flinch.

I developed a handgun flinch years ago when I was young and foolish and figured if I'd planned to shoot a box of ammo or two through my 44 mag during my shooting session, by golly I was going to burn through that box even if I started flinching at 30 rounds. One of the worst things you can do, and I've been fighting that flinch off and on ever since. Lots of quality dry firing is a surefire cure, and helps your accuracy.