All you have to do is say “sight picture” to a shooter and immediately they will have a picture in their mind of what they see when they pull the trigger on their favorite gun or bow. We’ve asked people all across this country (and some from other countries) what their sight picture was when they pulled the trigger.
Man, have we gotten some crazy definitions. Some of them even made sense, at least to the person describing it.
Talk to pistol shooters and they’ll mention the space between the outside edges of the front sight and the inside edges of the back sight being the same. Ask rifle shooters and they’ll talk about the crosshairs moving in a small circle, a figure eight, or even in the shape of a Valentine’s heart, and as they move across the bullseye, the trigger should break.
Talk to archers and you’ll get a few different answers as far as what they see. But they will all talk about knowing the exact distance to the target and choosing the right pin to shoot off of.
Talk to a shotgunner and… well, you might as well pull up a chair, because you’re gonna be there for a while.
Why? The rifle, pistol, and bow shooter are shooting targets that are still. Everything must line up perfectly and then the trigger must be pulled ever-so-smoothly for things to happen that create enlarged self-esteems and egos. The poor shotgunner, however, must shoot a target that is moving, requiring them to look at the target where it is and actually shoot where it’s going to be.
A couple of months ago we talked at length about how what we see when shooting a shotgun is a perception due to the delay in the timing of information from different parts of the retina to the motor center. We also mentioned the dreaded RPD, which was an outcome of trying to find the perfect “lead picture.”
At the end of that article, we promised we would show you what we called sight pictures and what they looked like because we use the phrase “sight picture” when we teach, but not referring to the gap between the bird and the muzzle.
Well, here goes.
There is a gap between the muzzle and the bird when we pull the trigger. Some of you can see what you describe as the lead in terms of feet or inches, or even units that look like pennies, dimes, fingers, grapes, apples, Volkswagens, Suburbans, and school buses. Or it looks like “a lot,” “a bunch,” “a whole lot” or “a whole bunch”!
Regardless of how you describe it, you’ll eventually come to the same scientific decision that we have: what you see is a perception, not reality. And almost everyone sees or perceives it differently. Sometimes the same person sees it differently on the same course on different days… poor guy!
The other thing that keeps being proven to us over and over is that anyone north of the age of 45 will begin to have a very difficult time seeing or perceiving the same way as a 25-year-old, especially if you have not seen the thousands of targets break over the end of the gun that they have.
Here’s what we’ve learned about sight pictures – and whether you look for exact leads or not, this will benefit all of you:
First, let’s agree that on the majority of targets we shoot, the gun must be either to the left or the right of the target, and the shooter’s eyes must be focused on the target. This creates a situation where the target and the gun cannot share the same space because the gun must be ahead of the target to hit it.
We know it sounds like double-talk, but we’re trying to create pictures with words here. Many times when we have asked students and shooters whether they were looking beside the barrel or across the barrel, they gave us the deer in the headlights look. In fact, it’s something that many experienced shooters haven’t even pondered. If the gun is ahead of the bird and you’re focused on the bird, then you will either be looking down the side of the gun or across the muzzles of the gun.
We took pictures of Bev Benzing and Max McCart at a recent clinic. Bev is left-handed and Max is right-handed. When Bev is shooting a target coming from her right with the gun mounted ahead of the bird, she is looking down the right side of her gun at the target. But Max, when putting the muzzles in front of the same target, must look across the rib of his gun to see the target. When Bev is shooting a target from her left with the muzzles in front of the target, she must look at the target across the rib of her gun. And Max, on the same target with the muzzles in front, will be looking down the left side of his barrel to see the target.
Come on, admit it. Most of you have never even thought about the difference in the “sight picture” between a target from the left or the right, have you? This is why the picture is so confusing from the right for right-handers and from the left for left-handers, and why so many of those targets are missed behind.
The eyes want an unobstructed view of the target, so when shooting targets from the left with the muzzles in front of the target, a right-handed person has a clear view of the target. When shooting a target from the right as the gun mounts in front, the right-handed shooter must focus on the target across the barrel. And until you’ve seen this picture enough and gotten accustomed to it, you will experience “Phokkus Interruptus” as you mount.
The beginning shooter is confused visually because they’re trying to focus on the bird and look down the barrel and get the barrel ahead of the bird. Because they are looking down the gun with both eyes and trying to see the bird in their periphery, they see one gun but two birds, and only one exists. Many shooters and instructors misdiagnose this as cross-dominance.
The other day, a shooter who called Gil talked about his eye problems. “Every now and then without warning, my left eye will just go off on its own and I see double,” he said. Gil asked if it happened when he was driving or walking, or when reading a book or on the computer. No, he said. Just when he was shooting skeet.
Now, this guy is legally on the street, successful enough to afford to shoot a 40-cent bullet at a 45-cent target over and over just to see if he can hit more than his buddy, and he really thinks he has a spastic left eye that, now and then – and only when he’s shooting a shotgun – goes off on a tangential stroll and makes him see double!
Well, go figure!
Once the beginning shooter stops looking down the gun, they begin to see the lead picture when the bird is on the two-eyed side of the gun (left-to-right for righties and right-to-left for lefties). Things are good as long as the bird is coming from one direction. When it comes from the other direction, as the lead increases, so does the confusion, because they don’t know they are supposed to be looking across the gun. When they do, the gun gets in the way, and “Phokkus Interuptus” occurs.
The confusion occurs in the non-shooting eye (remember the tangential stroll). And instead of accepting and looking past the confusion, they put tape on their glasses, close an eye, or try the futile wink-as-you-pull-the-trigger technique. Eventually, this becomes their Waterloo. And all because they don’t understand binocular vision and the fact that they must look across the barrels on some targets.
