#Fridayfundamentals

Last week, I shot the IDPA Match at my gun club. Oddly enough, the shot I was happiest with the whole day was one I missed.

The lighting in one bay illuminated the smoke and cloudiness of each shot during the shooting. This added to the difficulty of transitioning between targets and immediately establishing a sight picture.

When I transitioned to the far left target, my view was still obscured by the smoke from the previous shot.

But at the moment the shot fired, the smoke had cleared and I had a decent view of my sight picture in relation to the target. I called it low and moved on.

When the targets were scored, sure enough there it was, low in the -3 Zone.

Calling that shot correctly during a challenging stage was the single best aspect of the match to me. It occurred to me later that in competition we only fire one, two, or three shots per target. Because of that, we have the opportunity to evaluate our shot calling for most of our shots. It’s an advantage competitive shooting has that never occurred to me before.

Shot calling with iron sights is an important skill to work on. When you can do it, it means you’re seeing your sight alignment and its relation to the target at the moment of the shot. That is sight picture in the moment and leads to good marksmanship.