all right this week we want to talk about how to read shot groups we want to
talk about some of the mistakes people make when zeroing more specifically we
want to focus on site alignment all right now this this first shot group
here all right three bullets like to circle them all right now see how the
height wise height wise that's a good shot group these rifles are capable of
you know you should be able to cover that shot group with a dime height wise
that's that's a tight shot group that shooter did good on their elevation
however this bullets way out here now according to what the drill sergeants
put out in basic training if you have a wide shot group like that
obviously that's your trigger squeeze you jerk that bullet you jerk that gun
off to the side with your trigger squeeze they would say if it was up and
down it was your breathing if it was side to side that was your trigger
squeeze I honestly that 99% of times that's not the case at all what the what
the problem is is that front sight of the of the rifle they're not centering
it perfect in that rear sight aperture when they look through it this front
sight has got to be perfect in the center of it that's proper sight
alignment what they're doing is are getting a
proper sight picture same thing drill sergeant said they're lining up the sights half-ass but
then they're putting that front sight post perfect in the center of the target
any movement of the head left to right they don't see it because they're
focused more on the target they're focused more on having that front sight in the
middle of the target and what happens is they're sliding their head left and
right and their windage is off so 99% chance this isn't the shooter jerking
their trigger left or right it's they don't have their head perfectly aligning
that rear sight aperture with that front sight post it's the left or to the right
and that's what's giving us our targets with a spread left-to-right that's what
the mistake is site alignment if you then take the shooter and say hey this
time I want you to focus on having that front sight post perfectly centered in
that circle left to right I guarantee you this shot group will tighten up all
right now let's go to the next target all right so this shooter here has made a
different mistake but very very similar reasons if you look width of this shot
group it's only about as wide as a dime little wider than a dime but height wise
this thing's atrocious I mean that the things big as a house so is does he have
a shot out barrel no according to according to my drill sergeant
that's his breathing raising and lowering the gun so they the shooter
needs to hold his breath I guarantee you that shooter was not breathing enough to
make that thing jump up and down that much
again what he's doing wrong is sight alignment he's taking that rear sight
and he doesn't have the front sight perfectly centered he's got it either
too low or too high too low or too high and that's getting that spread that
that's what that is if you go back and then have the shooter focus on centering
that sight post I guarantee you we can tighten up that shot group I'm going to
show you how right over here all right so this shooter had the same problem
you'll notice a shot group vertically right with my drill sergeant would tell you
that's his breathing all right now we can roughly tell where the center of
that shot group is so we gave them the corrections down five left twelve we had
them shoot another shot group but this time I asked the shooter actually
squatted down there I might say look this time instead of focusing so much on
the target I want you to focus on lining up your sights first line them up make
sure that that front sight is right in the middle of that rear sight aperture
focus on that look how much this shot group tightened up you can't I can't
shoot that today my eyes are so bad I couldn't shoot that good
that's an awesome shot group and all it took was getting with the shooter and
saying hey this time I want you to focus on proper sight alignment that
how important proper site alignment is you the instructor you come down in the
range they've been zeroing for an hour and a half already they still don't have
the weapons zeroed we've all seen it shot groups all over the place first
correction right nine down five down to right nine they've got all the
corrections and this guy has just been jumping all over the place
all over the place but if you look at the actual size of the shot groups some
of them that's actually not a bad shot group that's not a bad shot group so why
is it this guy keeps jumping all over the paper are they moving their sights
in the wrong direction not necessarily that's what we're going
to do is we're going to take this same shooter and we're going to have them
we're going to put up a clean target form so we don't have all this chaos
here so we can easily see bullets and we're going to have them shoot three
more shot groups except this time I'm going to have them actually get their
head off the gun get up come back down shoot that second shot group get up not
go anywhere then we have him get back down and shoot that third shot group and
we're not going to change the sights at all not at all alright so what we did
was we had the shooter get back behind their gun
we had him shoot a shot group we got don't touch the site we came down we
marked it we had him shoot another shot group
don't touch the site came down and marked it had him shoot a third shot
group we came down and marked it why did they move why did they move their
shooting good shot groups those great shot groups why did those shot groups
move even though we didn't touch any sites on the gun it's because the
shooter every time they took that their head off that cheek wall of that gun
they got up when they got down behind it again they didn't finalize and
make sure they had perfect sight alignment if you can beat that into
their head that is the importance of sight alignment and it applies to
pistols it applies to shotguns it applies the
sniper rifles if you have to have the sights aligned if you are going to be
able to hit any targets at distance if you just view have your sights perfectly
aligned perfectly aligned and you put them anywhere on the target you're going
to hit the target but if your sights aren't aligned
and you'd put one of those sites perfect in the middle of the target who
knows where that bullets got to go primary focus needs to be on site
alignment and that's the focus and why I want it beat home with this video
make your shooters focus on site alignment and you will make them a
better precision shooter if you have any questions or comments or ideas for other
videos be sure to leave them below