Eliminating "Flyers" by Edwin C. Hall

The following was excerpted by a member from a reply to the Bullseye List by me (Ed Hall) in response to his post complaining about throwing "flyers". If I could be so bold, I'd like to try a (long distance) email analysis and suggested experiment, based on your post. I usually say to ignore an occasional flyer, but it would seem that yours are more than occasional. Since you show an improvement when you work with the dot to tube, it suggests to me that you are not quite set up well with your grip and trigger finger placement. By watching the dot to tube you are able to correct on the fly, errors that may be appearing as you progress through your shot(s). This will work, but is much less efficient (and easy) than if you have everything working in line from the start, so that gross correction isn't necessary. The experiment part I'd like to suggest, will involve doing some work at home without ammo. I won't call it dry firing, because you won't actually be dropping the hammer. So leave the ammo behind and take your gun(s) to a room with a wall you can put a small bullseye on at a comfortable height, and follow these steps. For safety, again check that there is no ammunition around and that the gun(s) is (are) not loaded. Establish your natural point of aim in your standard manner with the bullseye you have on the wall. Relax for a few seconds. Something like a shooting bench would be beneficial here. Perhaps a table or stand. Without correcting any error, bring the gun up to eye level and evaluate the sights. If they are not aligned, study them to see what it would take to align them. Make some corrections and repeat this step until the sights are pretty well aligned whenever your raise the gun. Bring the gun up as you did in the last step and close your eyes for a slow count of five. Without moving anything, open your eyes and see if anything has drifted. Are the sights still aligned? Are you still in your aiming area? If you answered, "Yes!" to both questions, move on. If not, see what has to be done to make it pretty close. Next we're going to start getting into the trigger application. We've spent time getting everything we could lined up in the most natural, comfortable and repeatable way. Now all we have to do is find the way to bring the trigger straight back. With the hammer forward, raise the gun to the area you were working with before, and close your eyes for a five count. Open them and verify that everything stayed pretty well aligned. Close your eyes again and put some pressure on the trigger. Hold that pressure and open your eyes. Is everything still aligned? If not, release the trigger and see if alignment returns. If everything looked good, you can move to the next step. If not, try to position your finger a little different or perhaps change the way you're moving it. This may take some effort, but you should be able to find the "correct" position that gives you minimum disturbance to your alignment. This is a continuation of the last step, but instead of working with a single trigger manipulation, do some pull/release work at a steady pace and look to make sure the gun is staying pretty still. Especially note if it starts swaying with the rhythm of the pull. Again, you may need to make some adjustments. Once you've established your manner to get the best trigger manipulation with the least misalignment, try it at the range. You may find a zero adjustment necessary. That's OK. You should be interested in groups first, placement later. This series was originally written for and appeared in The Marksman, the monthly newsletter of the Twelfth Precinct Pistol Club, Inc., located in Harwood, Maryland. Back to Articles