We recently talked about the commonly misunderstood aphorism “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” Today, we will look at another basic truth, “See what you need to see.”
I first learned about this concept from Greg Hamilton, way back in the last century. He not only explained it, but recommended a couple of books that touched on the subject. Brian Enos wrote a book called Practical Shooting, and J. Michael Plaxco wrote Shooting from Within. Both are must reads in my opinion, and back when they were originally published, they were some of the best info available. They will still take you very far.
“See what you need to see” is not a complex issue. It is a simple statement that acts as both a cue for your practice, as well as a guide for how much confirmation you need to make a given shot. That’s it.
The way you learn how much you need to see in order to make a given shot, is to practice. What kind of a sight movie can you get away with and still hit what you are aiming at? Said another way, how little do you need to see and still hit? The only way to discover this is to go to the range and experiment with your sights and target.
One common and very simplistic way this has been taught over the years, is to have shooters aim at the head box of a target at close range, say 5 yards. Aim dead center with a perfect sight picture and punch a hole. Then hold your front sight all the way up in the notch (or your dot all the way at the top of the window), and punch another hole. Then push the front sight all the way to the left and punch a hole. then to the right, and then down. If you have good trigger control, you will be rewarded with 5 holes inside the head box, one in the center and 4 near the outer limits of the box.
The point of this drill is to show you that as long as your front sight is somewhere in your rear sight, you will still hit. If your dot is in the window, you will hit. Obviously, this only applies to a target the size of the head you are shooting at at the distance you are shooting. So, you need to experiment in this way with different targets at different distances. If this sounds a little boring, you are right. It’s one reason so few people shoot really well, and fewer still understand what “see what you need to see” means.
If this doesn’t sound like work, but rather like a useful and enjoyable way to spend your time, then you are likely a shooting enthusiast, as opposed to just being a gun enthusiast. Congratulations! Now go out and learn what you need to see in order to hit what you are trying to hit.
