How's my shooting and how can I improve?

Shot 4 groups today including this one:

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I don't know what happened with that flier, but I am not happy about it. lol
 
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Lots of great advice here from highly experienced handgun enthusiasts other than myself.

At some time in the future grimreefer, your shooting skills will improve to the point where you strongly will believe your ammunition is circumspect, for any dramatic improvement regarding target results. Especially once you first experiment at 50 yard/meter handgun shooting practice.

Ergo, you will have to open your wallet and spend more money on higher quality 22 LR ammunition for smaller groups at longer ranges.

my 2 bits only

Cheers!
 
snooze98k said:
Shooting good, its time to drop bullseye and pickup a double alpha while on the run! Get into ipsc and you'll wonder why you did benchrest for so long!
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I'm definitely considering it. I think it would require more time though...right now I can only get out to the range for a couple hours max. Not to mention having to be social, which I'm not fond of, and purchasing a new gun (which I'm fond of, but my wife not so much). :p
 
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I'm not sure what kind of ammo you are using but if it's average quality ammo, buy a box or 2 of good high quality ammo and see what happens.
Also, the advice of "pull the trigger and it should surprise you when the gun goes off" is truly bad advice. You should know the trigger on your firearm intimately to the point that you know EXACTLY when it's going to break. This is one of the reasons why dry fire practice is so important, muscle memory is critical to any type of shooting or sport for that matter.
Another piece of excellent advice was getting good training. Eliminating bad habits before they start will accelerate your learning curve in a big way.
Starting with a .22 lr is smart too. This is the advice nobody wants to follow when buying their first handgun but it's good advice.
You seem to be doing great so far
 
Thanks, I will try a box of target ammo and see if there's any improvement. I'm wondering if I should sell my .22 and upgrade to a PPQ 9mm or even the Q5 Match. I feel like I'm kinda platauing on the type of shooting I am doing and maybe time to move up. I used to go through 200-250 rounds in a range session (was very glad to be shooting .22lr at this point), but now I'm down to 50-100 rounds.
 
grimreefer said:
Thanks, I will try a box of target ammo and see if there's any improvement. I'm wondering if I should sell my .22 and upgrade to a PPQ 9mm or even the Q5 Match. I feel like I'm kinda platauing on the type of shooting I am doing and maybe time to move up. I used to go through 200-250 rounds in a range session (was very glad to be shooting .22lr at this point), but now I'm down to 50-100 rounds.
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That's normal when you get over just slinging lead to actually hitting something you shoot at ..:)
 
grimreefer said:
Thanks, I will try a box of target ammo and see if there's any improvement. I'm wondering if I should sell my .22 and upgrade to a PPQ 9mm or even the Q5 Match. I feel like I'm kinda platauing on the type of shooting I am doing and maybe time to move up. I used to go through 200-250 rounds in a range session (was very glad to be shooting .22lr at this point), but now I'm down to 50-100 rounds.
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Keep the .22 they are always nice to have around.
 
Magellann said:
Keep the .22 they are always nice to have around.
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Yeah I asked the wife what she thought about trading in for a 9mm version of the PPQ and she wants to keep the .22 for now. She doesn't get out to the range a quarter of the times I do so she still wants some volume of lead down range. After she's reasonably proficient I think it might be traded in or sold.
 
I bought a nice laser/light combo for my camp gun (Sub2000). I was really interested in seeing how steady I am actually holding my pistol so I put it on there. I can hold about a 4" pattern at 20 yards. So I think this pretty closely matches my average group size and some of my smaller groups could just be luck. Tried playing with stance and grip, but could not get any more steady than that. Am I at the limit of my physical ability? Or are there ways to develop more steady hands?
 
For pistols, no one can completely hold it steady. Use your movement to your advantage to steer the pistol to your aimpoint at the moment your trigger breaks without jerking/snatching the trigger while your do. It's called trigger control. Always make sure sights are properly aligned.

Like landing a small, or for that matter any size plane, corrections are always need to touch down at the right part of the runway at the right time with the wind variable and changing directions.

Some shooters like using a circular pattern with the apex at the point of aim, others might use figure 8 pattern.
 
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it's never about holding the pistol still, but while focusing on your sight alignment, you need to feel the rhythm of its movement in relation to your breathing to know the right moment to fire. and during this whole process, you actually will continuously and evenly squeeze the trigger until it breaks. easy to say than done, but it can be done over time with practice. the common mistake is to snap to trigger in an attempt to fire a round at the moment the sight seemingly lined up perfectly which results in what is commonly known as "trigger jerk".
 
I kinda plateaued with target accuracy, then I started working with my rifles for a while. Back to the pistol now but focusing on speed, target transitions, acquisition, and moving a bit. Today I was mainly doing a bit of a drill, bringing the gun up and putting two rounds on the closest target, and then three on the far target (18y) as fast as I could:

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Trying to maintain the trigger reset and press firing rapidly is challenging but I think it's setting in.

A good guy at the range the other day let me try out his Sig P226 Enhanced Elite. The trigger in SA was quite amazing. I think that was the first 9mm pistol I've shot, and my accuracy seemed about as good as what I'm doing with my .22. Didn't really notice the extra recoil at all either....I just remember having more fun....
 
First of all, I believe for non-sporting handgun like Walther PPQ .22lr you are doing really great. If you want to improve more - read this: http://www.bullseyepistol.com/chapter0.htm
Al least twice. Once now, second time after some practice. I am using a lot from that book. But I am still worse than you are (in shooting).

And yes, you need to find some Bulls Eye shooters in your club. I am still looking around for them in mine too..

Good luck!
 
denlion said:
First of all, I believe for non-sporting handgun like Walther PPQ .22lr you are doing really great. If you want to improve more - read this: http://www.bullseyepistol.com/chapter0.htm
Al least twice. Once now, second time after some practice. I am using a lot from that book. But I am still worse than you are (in shooting).

And yes, you need to find some Bulls Eye shooters in your club. I am still looking around for them in mine too..

Good luck!
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Bulls Eye shooting is only part of the ability to use a pistol and only one niche in shooting sports. The techniques and equipment used by that discipline have little application elsewhere. It's the same in most shooting sports, specific gear and specific techniques designed to achieve the best performance in that discipline. IPSC guns make poor Bulls Eye guns and Bulls Eye guns make crappy IPSC guns. There's not much cross over. That said, the basics remain, and if you can do the basics, regardless of what's in your hand, you're well on your way. The rest occurs between your ears, and that's the hard part.
 
denlion said:
First of all, I believe for non-sporting handgun like Walther PPQ .22lr you are doing really great. If you want to improve more - read this: http://www.bullseyepistol.com/chapter0.htm
Al least twice. Once now, second time after some practice. I am using a lot from that book. But I am still worse than you are (in shooting).

And yes, you need to find some Bulls Eye shooters in your club. I am still looking around for them in mine too..

Good luck!
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Thanks! Wow that link has some very detailed info. You are right that I will need to read it at least twice. I think my ultimate goal is to become very proficient with a semi-auto pistol in most every way including target, but not really looking to master bullseye shooting in particular. Nevertheless, that looks to be a really good resource and I will learn what I can from it.

diopter said:
http://www.odcmp.org/0314/ACliniconFundamentals.pdf

http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2015/02/brian-gunny-zins-explains-bullseye-pistol-fundamentals/
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Thanks very much, I gave it a read. :)
 
The one good thing about bulls eye shooting of a handgun is the use of one hand only, through out.
If you have the time to master it, the action shooting discipline can only benefit as you are most often using a two handed hold in this other discipline.
Also distant shooting is a cinch with an accurate pistol. (50 meter)
Myself I often shoot at 50 with the occasional 100 meter experiment.
 
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