Sight Picture

Now that you understand that sight alignment is simply centering the front sight in the rear sight; we’re now going to talk about sight picture, which is taking that perfect sight alignment and aiming it at a target.  As we found with Sight Alignment (The Third Habit of Highly Effective Shooters) – Sight Picture is also not as simple as point and shoot.  There are a few things you need to keep in mind if you plan on walking away on a two-way range.

Center Mass Group

Before we get started, I need to talk about some more old school advice that many shooters, including myself, were taught and needs to be corrected.  I’m talking about a center mass hold verses a six o’clock (a.k.a lollipop or pumpkin-on-a-post) hold.  I thought the six o’clock went out with the mullet, but I’ll still find students on the range practicing this ancient technique.  If you’re using a six o’clock hold, I’m going to give you three reasons why you need to change your evil ways to become a highly effective shooter.  If you’re afraid of change, please skip this part.  If not, continue on and feel free to impress your friends with this newfound knowledge.

No Protractor Needed

The first reason is speed of accurate shot placement.  If you are bringing your weapon up on target, you’ll need to take an extra second to figure out where you need to hold so your rounds land in the center of the intended target area (Center Mass Group).  How about we skip this extra step and just aim center mass from the get-go?  Rapid target acquisition is your friend when shooting; whether it’s in a competition, the battle field or late at night when an intruder enters your life.  Do you need to learn and practice mechanical holds?  Of course!  But don’t let it be your starting point.

How Big You Reckon That Pumpkin is?

I’m not sure why someone would practice different holds for different shaped targets, but  some people have told me that the six o’clock hold is only used for bulls-eye type targets.  Fair enough if all you’re doing is shooting bulls-eye targets.  The problem would then become, how big the diameter of the circle is and what distance are you shooting from.  I sometimes exaggerate things to try to figure out if something will work or how it works.  Let me give you an example (fig 1):  Let’s assume you shoot with a six o’clock hold.  You go to the range after work to do some shooting, but the only target you had in the back of your car is one that’s a 300 foot diameter dot…and we’ll say you’re going to shoot from a distance of 10 yards.  After you load up and get that target set up with the help of a near-by crane, you step up to the line and try to decide which hold is better.  For the first magazine you decide to use the center hold.  The crane is still available so you get hoisted up to the center of the target, call the line hot and then unload the entire magazine in 3.4 seconds concentrating on sight alignment while merely pointing in the general vicinity of the center of the target.  Not the best shooting you’ve ever done, but all shots are within 12 inches of the center of the target.  After you get lowered down, you reload and try out the 6 o’clock hold, the one you were taught in boot camp in 1922.  You take your time because you’re on solid ground now and fire the whole magazine really concentrating on the fundamentals of marksmanship (You’ve got to shoot good to prove this is the best way!).  Although you’ve got a tighter shot group (because you weren’t up on a crane), the shots are a little low compared to the other group.  You break out your tape measure and discover that there is a 149 foot, 10 inch difference in the two groups.  To decide which one is closer to the center, you hop on your ATV and ride back about half a mile.  From this vantage point you can see that the groups shot using the center hold are much closer to the center (DAMN YOU!) than the six o’clock hold group.  You now wonder if the distance you shot from would have similar effects (they will) so you start setting up the range…when a hurricane comes out of nowhere and rips down your target…I guess you may never know.

fig 1

The Eye’s Have It

The final reason I put away my six o’clock hold with my walkman has to do with how your eye works.  In The Third Habit of Highly Effective Shooters I talked about the importance of front sight focus.  I’m going to assume you read that (if not, do it now) and that you’re a good student and already practicing this important point.  When you use the six o’clock hold and focus on the front sight, the target becomes blurry and this is where the problem lies (fig 2).  The six o’clock hold might have a leg to stand on IF the target were not blurry.  But the target IS blurry and therefore your eye can’t find the exact bottom of that pumpkin and each time you shoot, your shots are going to move around as your eye tries to figure it out.  The eye is an amazing thing and one of its traits is the ability to find the center of anything.  This is why the center hold wins again.  Although the target is blurry, it’s still round and your eye can still find the center of it!  This is true no matter what shape the target is and your eye can do it before you even think about pressing the trigger.

fig 2

OK, I’m Convinced, So what is Sight Picture?

Proper sight picture is when you take a PERFECTLY ALIGNED sight and place it on a target.  The thing to remember is that sight picture only has to be on the target (anywhere on the target) to score a hit, while sight alignment needs to be perfect or you risk missing the target completely.  I guess that makes it hard for me to get you to continue reading this article now that I’ve down-played its importance, but keep reading because like I said in the beginning, there’s more to it than point and shoot…Really!

The reason sight alignment is more important than sight picture is explained in detail in The Third Habit of Highly Effective Shooters when I talk about the difference between angular and parallel shift errors.  To recap, imagine that you’re shooting at an eight inch circle and that the circle is at the end of an eight inch diameter tube.  I’m sure they could set something like this on Top SHOT, so it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine.  If it is, please see figure 3 below.  If your sight alignment is right, you can fire anywhere into that tube as long as you’re pointing somewhere at the target and you’ll hit the target.  Whereas if your sight alignment is off, just a little, you’re likely to miss the target completely, even if your front sight is pointed directly at the center of the target.

Figure 3

Many shooters don’t understand this part of marksmanship and spend all their effort worried about a little wobble, rather than ensuring their sights are properly aligned.  That little wobble will move you around the target, but how big is your wobble area?  If you’re shooting an eight inch target, you’ve got eight inches to wobble!  NOTE: If your wobble is eight inches, please clear and safe your weapon and go see your doctor.  Unless you’re trying to shoot gnats at 25 yards, don’t worry too much about your wobble and concentrate on what’s important.

It All Comes Down to This 

All the things we do in the fundamentals of marksmanship, all come down to having proper sight alignment and sight picture when the round goes off.  It’s really the only thing that matters in marksmanship:

• Body Position:  This is only important because it allows you to hold proper sight alignment.
• Grip:  You need to grip the gun correctly so you can maintain sight alignment.
• Breathing:  You breathe to relax with a handgun so you can focus on the sights and you shoot during your natural respiratory pause with a rifle so your sight picture is the same with each shot.
• Trigger control:  Think about it; the only reason you need to control the trigger is so you don’t disturb the sights.  If the gun was in a vise, you could slap that trigger till the cows came home and it wouldn’t change where the round went.
• Follow-through:  Once again, this is just to preserve the sight alignment.

And the fundamentals of marksmanship are just the beginning.  The only reason we need to have the same cheek-weld, eye relief, head tilt or anything else we do when firing a gun is all done in the quest to establish and maintain sight picture and sight alignment long enough to fire a shot without disrupting either one.

But I Don’t Use My Back-Up Sights…What About Optics?

You’re killing me here!  The only thing I call “back-up sights” are the ones in my gun bag that I can put on if something happens to the sights on my gun.  Iron sights need to be thought of as a tool in your toolbox.  If you run a red-dot on your long gun and you’re shooting out past 50 yards, the right tool for that job is not your red-dot, it’s those things you’ve been calling back-ups.  It’s the same reason you shouldn’t call your non-shooting hand your “weak” hand, it’s just doing something else, but still important.  It’s important that you learn how to shoot with your iron sights first before using optics anyway; it will make you a better marksman.

Sight picture with optics is more important than sight alignment because you get your sight alignment done when you sight in your gun.  After you sight in, the only thing you need to worry about is your sight picture and this is made easier by the way optics are designed.  What optics do is put the reticle (or dot) on the same focal plane as the target so you just need to put it where you want to hit, and hold it there until the shot breaks.  There’s a lot more that goes into doing that well, so I’ll save that for another time.  One thing I will point out is that red-dot optics should be put at arm’s length on your rifle.  They were originally designed for pistols, so they work best at that distance from your eyes.  Doing this also helps you to have a wider field of view when acquiring targets and shooting.  If it’s too close to your eye, it will be like trying to assess the battle field while looking through a toilet paper tube.

Let me know if this helps you next time you’re at the range or even better if you’re taking out bad-guys and protecting our country.  Make sure you sign up via RSS to get our blogs delivered to your favorite reader or have our mailchimp deliver them directly to your inbox.  The next article in this series will cover breathing…and you thought you knew how to do it…