Back in the game - targets posted

**msquaredserver** · November 28th, 2009, 05:30 PM

About a week or so ago I posted about wanting trigger lightening on my M&P40, because it seemed a bit heavy to me. After being told that it was fine at the weight it was set at (about 6 lbs), I started questioning a few things about how I was shooting.

When I first started off I was awful. Could barely put my rounds on the paper. After my first 100 rounds I talked to a friend and he gave me the best advice I ever got for shooting - "Let the recoil surprise you." The next time I went out, I saw immediate improvement. I had been pushing down anticipating that recoil, and this immediately improved my shots. I have gotten kind of complacent in the past couple months and my skills have gone downhill. Today, I got fed up with this and really focused on how I was shooting, and realized I was getting sloppy.

I saw how my grip was loose. I wasn't holding on right and I wasn't only pushing the trigger left with the tip of my finger, I was actually pushing the entire gun left with my entire finger. My stance was weak and lax and I wasn't practicing good breath control.

Attached to this post are two targets I just shot this afternoon and I'm pretty happy with. The lesson I learned from today and I hope someone else may learn from is that shooting skill really doesn't stem from your equipment (to a degree of course) but it really hinges more on you as a shooter. I tried to blame my decline in skills on my gun's "heavy" trigger pull when it turns out my gun is more than capable of shooting well if I just focus on the core skills required for accurate target shooting.

A little about the targets. They were shot at the Lackawanna SGL with Blazer aluminum shells (.40 S&W obviously). The groupings were about 4 1/2" ignoring the outliers, and 5-6" with the outliers.

**PisnNapalm** · November 28th, 2009, 05:55 PM

Take the NRA Basic Pistol class. You won't be disappointed. I had some experience with pistols prior to taking it and I still learned alot. Particularily when it came to my stance and grip.

**msquaredserver** · November 28th, 2009, 06:06 PM

Yeah, I've heard the class is good. I'm considering it, I met someone that teaches it and it sounds like something I'll spend for over the holidays.

**YBNORMAL** · November 29th, 2009, 05:59 AM

Originally Posted by msquaredserver

Attached to this post are two targets I just shot this afternoon and I'm pretty happy with. The lesson I learned from today and I hope someone else may learn from is that shooting skill really doesn't stem from your equipment (to a degree of course) but it really hinges more on you as a shooter. I tried to blame my decline in skills on my gun's "heavy" trigger pull when it turns out my gun is more than capable of shooting well if I just focus on the core skills required for accurate target shooting.

Duh.......

JK

**msquaredserver** · November 29th, 2009, 05:46 PM

Haha I know. Seems simple enough, but it slipped my mind so I figured I would post about it and see if it might help someone else stuck in that stupid rut