Most pistols are designed to shoot within 50 yards and in action shooting competitions you could see anything from 3 yards, all the way out to 50, so it’s absolutely critical to know where your gun is hitting at each distance.
I’m going to show you a little routine that I go through to make sure I am zeroed for a match. I’ve setup an NRA D1 target with a black center at about ten yards to start this exercise out.
I’m using a sand bag here to make sure I have a solid foundation for every shot and I’m just going to shoot three rounds on this target.
These are my first three hits on the target. I’m very happy with them, they’re a little high from center and that’s to be expected at close range. We’re only at ten yards and things are going to change. The point of this exercise is to figure out where are sights are hitting at each distance.
We’re going to move the target back to 15 yards, shoot another good three shots and see where we are hitting from there.
I’m very happy with this target,15 yards is the happy medium. You may find some targets as close as five yards, or at 20 yards in a stage, but the average distance is about 15 yards. You want to make sure your zero is at point of aim point, point of impact at 15.
Let’s move it back to 25. Here is my group at 25 yards. it’s already shifted a little high and that’s ok, because I am going to know at this distance my gun shoots high. I’m going to need to bring my sight picture down a little bit. And that group is going to drop all right here in the ten ring.
Let’s move back to 50. I’m very happy with this 50 yard group it’s still high, I’m going to need to hold my sights down much lower in order to hit the center of this target in a competition. Now different ammo is going to group differently so I make sure, I check this with my match ammo, and I do this exercise before every match.
