鉄砲道 — teppoudo

Shooters who come to IPSC from other accuracy focussed disciplines always look for the perfect sight picture.

Calling the shot with a perfect sight picture is indeed an important skill, however at speed, a perfect sight picture is rarely possible or necessary. Movement also complicates the process of getting a perfect sight picture.

In IPSC, given the size of the A zone, the range of sight pictures that would yield an acceptable shot (A zone hit) on the target is relatively large. The important thing to remember is that you only need to hit the A zone, not the actual A .

The question of the acceptable sight picture for a given target then comes up and becomes a critical part of calling the shot.

If you break a shot on the edge of the A zone with perfect alignment, will it be an A zone hit? What about if you break a shot with a centered sight picture and the front sight all the way to the left in the rear sight notch? What about the same mis-alignment at 10 yards and 20 yards? How about 50 yards?

The answers to the questions above are critical to developing the skills of calling shots at speed.

In order to learn the skills it is critical to experiment with slow fire using intentional mis-alignment, to learn the implications of breaking a shot with an imperfect sight picture at various distances. This will help develop the skill of calling the shot. As the skills improve, increase the speed and eventually it will become second nature.

The important thing to remember is that it is critical to know where a shot actually went, even if it didn’t go where you wanted it to go.

Everything we need to know can be learned by reading the sights at the instant that the shot breaks. We need to make sure we call every shot in practice, so that it becomes second nature to know exactly where every shot went, even if we didn’t see a perfect sight picture.