Visual Anomalies and Shooting Plateaus

We each do 8-10 scheduled consults each week, and without exception, 95 percent of the shooters tell us they have plateaued and don’t know how to get better.

Our first question to them is “Do you feel hurried when you’re shooting? Or do you feel like you’re chasing the targets?”

Almost all of them immediately say “Yes, how’d you know?”

The next question we ask them is how long they’ve been shooting pull away. We still don’t know why, but their answer to this question is always “I’m right-handed but left-eye dominant.”

Well, upon further discussion, we find they are mounting the gun looking down the barrel and at the target as they insert the muzzles. This is a very confusing picture with two eyes. Then are trying to push out to the lead, which causes all kinds of visual anomalies. None of these are good, and all of them involve the muzzle being inserted on the target – not ahead of the target in the periphery!

Almost none of the shooters know what the shot is going to look like before they call “pull.” This means they are unable to rely on existing long-term knowledge about how to execute the shot.

As a result, the shot is processed almost entirely in working memory at a conscious level, leading to inconsistencies and variations in their performances.