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Sight Picture

Without a doubt, this should be listed as Shooting Problem No 1 as there is no more important lesson to learn in shooting handguns.
What is Sight Picture? It is exactly how you see the world through your sights, how the sights are aligned and their relationship to the target behind them.

The average handgun has about 250mm between the front sight and the rear sight (often less but for ease of mathematics!). If you are shooting at 25M that means that any misalignment of sights is magnified at least 100 times (often more like 150 times). This means that if your sights are only 1mm out of alignment, a shot aimed at the centre of the target, probably won’t even be in the black!
Let me say that again. Just 1mm error on the sights can mean right out of the black area of the target (in any direction!).

The ideal ‘sight picture’ is shown above. This is showing ‘six o’clock’ aim, (see another sheet regarding sighting alternatives). You will note the target is a blur in the distance and the sights are nice and sharp. That is the way you should see things. Your eyes should never leave the sights to go for that ‘perfect’ spot on the target. The sights should be level across the top and the front sight should be central in the gap of the rear sight. You may even need ‘shooting glasses’ to achieve this sharp focus on the sights.
Olympic standard shooters know that you cannot focus on both the target and the sights at the same time. In fact even if you try and shift your focus between the two, you will end up letting the sights drift out of perfect alignment while you are searching for that ‘perfect’ spot on the target. You will think you have found the perfect spot and quickly ‘jerk’ off the shot and go wide. It’s a difficult concept to accept but it is possible to accurately pick the centre of even a blank sheet of paper and put all your shots in a very small group with absolutely nothing to aim at. You are ‘forced’ to bring your focus back to your sights and just ‘approximate’ the centre of the blank sheet. You will be amazed how accurately you can guess it every time. That’s what the Olympic shooters do. They pick a general area (generally) below the black, judge the centre line and continue squeezing sights while ever they stay in that general area. The sights are adjusted so that aiming quite low like this they are actually wandering around the 9 and 10 rings of the target. Their ‘average’ of more 10’s and 9’s gives them better scores than anybody who tries to shift their focus between target and sights.
Ask your Range Officer how a particular gun is sighted, see the sheet on Sighting Alternatives and act accordingly. In reality, it doesn’t matter where the gun is sighted provided you shoot the smallest group possible.

Safe Shooting.

© SSPC (Vic) 2006

Last modified: 09.12.08 by mike