TargetTalk

With iron sights, which gives the best sight picture, center mass, or 6 o'clock hold?

I was shooting 6-o'clock for the past year, and switched to center mass 2 weeks ago. I'll try it for a few months before deciding. So far, my results are a bit lower, but it should get back up once I get used to it.

What's better? It depends... In slow fire, I tend to prefer 6-o'clock as it's easier for me to get a precise alignment against a white background. In sustained fire however, I was wasting precious time trying to perfectly align my sights at the bottom of the bull after recoil.

Shooting center mass, I find it more difficult to achieve the same accuracy in slow fire, but sustained fire comes more naturally as it lets me focus on sight alignment instead of aiming. (i.e. alignment of the front sight in the rear blade, as opposed to where I'm pointing on the target).

One day I'll try a deep sub-6 hold.

XLshtur,

Not trying to be sarcastic here, but just use whichever one provides a good sight picture. Do try both methods. Then use

whichever one allows you to focus the best on the front sight. If both work equally well, use the one which gives you the

better scores. Back when shooting with iron sights, I always used the 6 o'clock hold through all stages of the match. Even

with much younger eyes, a center hold allowed both of the sights to get "lost" in the bull as all 3 of these objects were of

the same color. With the 6 o'clock method, there was good contrast between the sights and the white section of the

target paper. An excellent sight picture was the result. "desben" mentioned that a 6 o"clock hold in sustained fire resulted

in time wasted trying to perfectly align the sights at the bottom of the bull after recoil. I can understand the point being

raised here. Initially, I had the same problem. But over time and with experience, I learned that perfect sight alignment,

perfectly positioned at the bottom of the bull, was not necessary to achieve good scores in the Timed and Rapid Fire stages.

Here, the clock is ticking, so one must learn to accept what they are seeing within the number of seconds provided. One

final thought. Championships have been won by shooters using either hold.