Putting bullets where you want them to go is a good thing. It gives you warm fuzzies and positive reinforcement. Where you get the lessons, though, are the bad shots.\u00a0 However, it\u2019s only a lesson if you figure out what you did wrong, with a view toward keeping it from happening the next time.<\/p>\n
I was reminded of that last week, when I was out of town teaching a class.\u00a0 On the last day of the 40-hour course, the students shoot a police-type qualification. The staff shoots it first as a pace-setter, so the students can see what\u2019s expected of them, and in what time-frames. I was on my second magazine at the fifteen yard line when I realized that my gun hand was relaxing its grip on the Springfield Armory 1911 Range Officer pistol I was demonstrating with. I started to tighten the grasp, but forgot that my trigger finger was already moving, and actually saw the front sight twitch to the right as the pistol bucked and the .45 slug went downrange. The other 59 shots all went where they needed to, but that one landed \u201cone scoring ring too far,\u201d and cost me a point. The deal I make with my students is that if they tie me, they get an autographed dollar, and if they beat my score, they get an autographed five that says right on it, \u201cYou beat me at my own game.\u201d\u00a0 Two of the staff and three of the students shot perfect scores, and one more from each group tied me. That single disconnect between brain, grasping hand, and trigger finger had cost me $27.<\/p>\n
On the street, it could have cost me incalculably more.\u00a0 As we say in the trade, we sweat in training so we don\u2019t bleed when we do it for real.\u00a0 Lesson learned. It\u2019s the second time this year that I\u2019ve shot sub-100% on a pace-setter qual. Next time I\u2019ll try harder to (a) not relax the grasp in the first place, and (b) not continue applying trigger pressure while I\u2019m re-adjusting my hold.<\/p>\n
From the range to the hunting field to the street, have you <\/em>ever had a bad shot that cost you something? Were you able to diagnose it and learn from it?\u00a0 Share here, for the thought-provoking good of all\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Putting bullets where you want them to go is a good thing. It gives you warm fuzzies and positive reinforcement. Where you get the lessons, though, are the bad shots.\u00a0 However, it\u2019s only a lesson if you figure out what you did wrong, with a view toward keeping it from happening the next time. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-training"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}