Sunday, May 18, 2025

Using Your Natural Point of Aim To Improve Accuracy

 "Friendly Advice and the NPOA"--The Shooting Wire. Advice on using your natural point of aim:

    What is that? In rough terms, it’s “addressing the ball,” it’s “settling on the mound” and “stepping up to the plate.” When you are involved in “sustained fire” (for bullseye, that’s timed and rapid fire), where do the sights go after recoil? And can you predict it? 

    Natural point of aim. When you take a shooting position and get the okay for dry practice and aiming in, you’ll aim in on the target, await the natural respiratory pause, then close your eyes. When you open your eyes, where are the sights – relative to the target? If they’re generally where you left them, you’ve found your natural point of aim.

    If not, you don’t move the gun, your hands, arms, torso – you adjust with your feet. Careful, a little movement goes a long way. Once you accomplish that – the sights are “on” when you open your eyes -- you made it. You’ve achieved skeletal support so you don’t have to use muscular tension to hold the gun on the middle of the target. It’s a good thing to have, but it’s fleeting.

    It’s something you will have to reacquire. As near as I can recall, it’s explained this way --

    If you simply aim in at a target without everything being in place consistently and accurately time after time, you’ll find yourself “muscling” the gun onto the target. That’s not a good plan. While sights confirm the location in which the muzzle is directed, holding them there and having them fall back into the bull shot-after-shot is difficult.

    If it’s a situation where guns have to be holstered or benched, and I can’t aim the gun in dry, I’ll use my thumb to “aim in.” It’s a coarse reference, but I’ve used it with some success.

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