Shooting hard-left with pistols

[Awoke]

I am constantly shooting hard left with my pistols. They are both poly semi autos. At first I though that maybe the sights were out, but I asked an experienced shooter to try them and they sights are on.
So I know it has to do with my technique.

There is a wheel chart that suggests that I am either anticipating recoil or I am tightening my fingers at the last second.


http://wmporter.com/targets/correction_chart.jpg

I do my best to aviod both of these things, and I always make sure my sight picture is perfect before squeezing the trigger, but there is no getting around it: I am doing something wrong.

At 20 yards, am shooting consistently left of center by about 2 to 4 inches. Sometimes the groupings are a little higher. Once in a while they are lower (indicative of recoil anticipation) but almost always to the left.

Any suggestions?

[Gaillo]

Awoke,
Load a magazine with half snap-caps, and half live ammunition... In a random way so you don't know what order they are in. Watch the front site, and when you hit a snap-cap, you'll be able to see what deflection you are introducing to the frame of the handgun. This will give you clues as to which muscles are tensing, so you can begin to alter your grip, etc.

[Heimdhal]

Gaillo is 100% right. One of the best ways to cure these types of things is the use of snap caps. Bring a friend to the range or find some one at the range the team up with and do ball and dummy drills (using snap caps) having said friend load your mag so you remain unawares. Or load a few mags in a varrying way and randomly pick a mag. Allow yourself to be fooled, don try to anticipate the snap cap or count for it, or it wont work.

Also, dry fire, dry fire, dry fire.

And make sure you're not cross eye dominant as well ;)

It could very well be that you are in fact squeezing your fingers too much. THis is called sympathetic finger movement, where all your fingers want to move as your trigger finger moves (try it now, hold your hand out and move just one finger, I betcha the rest move a little too). THe best way to cure this is...yep, ball and dummy and a shit load of dry fire! Make sure you are using just the very top pad of your finger when you squeeze the trigger.

;)

[Dogman]

Awoke,
Load a magazine with half snap-caps, and half live ammunition... In a random way so you don't know what order they are in. Watch the front site, and when you hit a snap-cap, you'll be able to see what deflection you are introducing to the frame of the handgun. This will give you clues as to which muscles are tensing, so you can begin to alter your grip, etc.



Have someone else load the mags, with a live on on top so you will not know the sequence! ;D

[Tronn]

check the crowning on the muzzle, shoot right & left handed and compare

[Awoke]

I will pick up some snap caps. I just thought they were a rip-off, at $19 for a pack of 5.
Especially because I need a couple different calibers.

Thanks for the tips though. I will let you know how this progresses.

[Awoke]

Well I haven't had a chance to use the snap caps yet, but I bought some.
I have been out shooting a few times since my original post, and I have been really focused on all the magpul techniques, especially follow through, trigger reset and sight picture re-aquiring after each shot.

Because I am focused on re-aquisition of my sight picture after each shot, I am noticing that the pistols are kicking to the left when I shoot. I am shooting right handed, using both hands with a proper grip (At least, I know that I am using proper positioning)
Even when I go 100% with each hand, the guns are still kicking left instead of straight back/upwards. I will be bringing the snapcaps out next time I shoot to see what kind of unknown anticipation I am putting into each trigger pull, but that doesn't change the fact that the pistols are recoiling hard left.

Thoughts?

Also, I think I am going to try a different approach. I think I am going to move up and shoot at 5 yards until I am consistent, then move back a yard or two, and continue shooting there till I am consistent, and so on. Right now I am shooting at 20 yards and missing the paper too much for my liking.

[SLV^GLD]

The confusing part is that you can get a buddy to shoot it straight. I have a friend who swore his sights were off but every time he handed me the weapon (a wilson 1911) I would surprise even myself by putting the round right into the bulls-eye. Boy, that pissed him off. He eventually (after a couple weeks) quit shooting that gun and moved to a different one which he consistently shoots just fine. This leads me to believe the grip and/or grip angle were just not compatible with his technique.

If your gun is kicking tot he left and the ejection port is on the right (typical) you may be limp wristing the thing on the follow through or you may need to have the gun adjusted. Another buddy of mine had a Glock .45 that kicked left like crazy when fired no matter how you held it and it eventually came apart. After Glock serviced the pistol back into working order the thing cycled like a well oiled machine with all of the recoil going directly straight back into the wrist like it should.

See if your straight shooting friend notices the left kick and also compare your grip to his.

BTW, I just tried moving my trigger finger in free air and not a twitch was registered anywhere else on my hand. I'm not sure if I trained it to that behavior or if it is the way my hand works but I'd say if you can't do that then you have some work to do.

[Awoke]

That will prove to be a problem. I have damage on both middle knuckles on both hands, where the knuckle flesh is fused to the tendon that wraps over the top of the knuckle, from years of martial arts training and fighting.

When I move my trigger finger, the middle finger moves with it, albeit just very slightly. There is no training I can do to correct that, because it is actual physical damage.

[SilverMagnet]

Sounds like anticipation in the shot to me. I had this same problem but since I am a left handed shooter, it always came out hard right on the paper. After much frustration I began to study different grips and stances as well as consciously observing my breathing and focusing on the trigger stage in the trigger pull.

What I came up with as a consistent formula for always getting center paper shots was to hold both hands together instead of teacupping. My posture adjustment was to lean slighty forward with the weight residing on the opposite leg of the trigger hand. (left hand/right leg - right hand/left leg) Pulling the trigger very slightly until I could feel the second stage of the trigger pull right before the hammer dropped. And exhaling during the final trigger pull at about midway into my breath exhalation.

This totally eliminated the anticipation and provided a more stable and consistent grouping on every handgun that I have tried since. Hope this helps.

[SLV^GLD]

This past Thanksgiving weekend I was breaking in a new .22 Buckmark and I was having to adjust to the contoured grips on it. At one point I realized I was allowing the gun to recoil to the left when shooting right handed. Thinking back to this thread I discovered that the grip adjustment required to stop the leftwards movement was to tighten up the grip being held by the ring and pinkie fingers without changing anything else. It seems these 2 fingers are responsible for translating muzzle yaw into rearwards recoil. My initial issue was propagated by the unfamiliar grips because the contours forced fingers apart that wanted to be tight next to one another.

[Awoke]

Well, I had time to get out onto the range and do some shooting exercises. I brought snap caps, and had some friends load my clips for me. Sure enough, as much as I thought I was not anticipating/compensating for recoil, I was.

I would have a small dip in the muzzle when the snap caps came into the chamber. I caught myself compensating a bunch of times. After shooting that day, I have realized that this is going to take a lot of concentrated practice to stop myself from compensating, because even half way through the day I was still anticipating the recoil.

I have to admit that it's frustrating, to shoot all day and still see myself making the same mistakes after hours of trying not to.
But I will never give up. I'm way too stubborn for that. lol.

[SLV^GLD]

It is highly beneficial to train with only snap caps while placing a coin on top of the muzzle. You should be able to dry fire the gun repeatedly without disturbing the coin. This exercise can only be run on certain weapons because many require the action to be cycled in order to charge the hammer; even so called DAO pistols like the LCP. A true DAO pistol can be used for this exercise, however. If you train this exercise often enough you train your muscles to remain rigid while only the trigger finger moves. This muscle memory will greatly decrease anticipation/flinching when firing live ammunition. Finally, when you do move up to live rounds start with a low recoil caliber such as .22 and make the distance something difficult so that you are really focusing on accurate shooting that requires fine gun control. This further reinforces the muscles to remain steady during trigger pulls with the expectation of some recoil. If you go straight to firing off .45s your brain is going to go straight back to flinching. Once you feel you have the hang of it, run through a magazine of the caliber of your choice with snap caps like you're doing now and I guarantee you will see marked improvement.

As you have alluded to, identifying the problem and focusing on correcting it is half the battle.

[Awoke]

If I was to try that technique, I would have to place the coin behind the front sight on top of the slide, but I can see how it would be helpful.
Thanks.

[Sparky]

Do you have the same result when you shoot a .22, which has very little recoil?

[Awoke]

No. I shoot .22 with deadly accuracy.

[solid]

That will prove to be a problem. I have damage on both middle knuckles on both hands, where the knuckle flesh is fused to the tendon that wraps over the top of the knuckle, from years of martial arts training and fighting.

When I move my trigger finger, the middle finger moves with it, albeit just very slightly. There is no training I can do to correct that, because it is actual physical damage.


The coin balancing tip is a great one, however if your middle finger squeezes with your trigger finger, this is most likely the cause of your shots going left, imo. You may have to experiment with placing your trigger finger slightly to the right to compensate for this. Try gripping the gun less actually. A mistake a lot of folks make is gripping the gun too tight.

Also, do you have this damage on both hands? If you do not, you could try shooting with your non-dominant hand to test your grip while firing.

[Awoke]

Unfortunately, both hands have that damage.

[TheNocturnalEgyptian]

Most people would probably disagree with this, but I use both my pointer finger or my middle finger as trigger fingers, interchangeably and situationally. I find I can fan the trigger more easily with the middle finger, and my control and strength seems to be a little higher with the middle finger since the pointer finger is steadying the entire stock. This is not advantageous for all recoils, but it is for some.

It's a bad habit I picked up from paintballing as a teenager, but for me, the absolute fastest way to fan a semi-auto trigger is with the middle finger, plus, if not fanning, you have the added stability of holding the stock with the pointer finger.

[IHS]

^^^I have heard that this technique works for some people.

Adapt and overcome...


IHS

[kregener]

Sounds like you are left eye dominant...

[Horn]

Make sure you are using just the very top pad of your finger when you squeeze the trigger.

;)


That happens alot to me when switching from rifle to pistol.

Pistol always makes you wanna wrap your finger all the way down to the middle knuckle...

Good advice there, most other things fall inline after that is corrected.