Boyd Allen
Active member
If you are driven to distraction by this sort of discussion, you might want to pass on by.
Years back, a high master high power shooter told me that there is a phenomenon that can take place when you look too long at a sight picture. He said that it is like the image gets "burned into your retina" (figure of speech, I am sure) so that if your sight picture changes you do not see it, you see the "burned in" image. He told me that there are strategies to prevent this, such as momentarily looking away into the distance and the coming back to the sights, realigning and finishing the shot. I mentioned this to another fellow, that I knew at the time that had done well at the state and national levels in CF pistol silhouette, and he told me that for the best results that shots needed to be made within a 20 second time frame. I believed both of these fellows, but was at somewhat of a loss as to how to explain this to others in a way that would not seem like some sort of highly suspect shooter voodoo....until I happened to be watching tonight's episode of Perception (TV show).
It seems that the concept that is central to this particular story is "change blindness".
https://www.google.com/search?q=cha...t&rls=com.yahoo:en-US:official&client=firefox
It turns out that this is not shooter voodoo after all.
The question is, could this be something that could affect benchrest shooters? Back in the day, I did a little experiment with a rifle that was outfitted with an aperture sight. I shot groups, from the bench, using a front rest and rear sandbag, intentionally spending an inordinately long time staring at the sight picture for each shot, and a second group shooting as soon as I was confident in the sight picture. There was an noticeable difference in favor of the group that I shot more quickly. I know that there were a lot of uncontrolled variables, but the conditions seemed relatively mild and steady, and the rifle was a 30-06 that was loaded with heavy match bullets, and I was shooting at 100 yards.
Comments? Experiences? Ridicule ;-)?
Years back, a high master high power shooter told me that there is a phenomenon that can take place when you look too long at a sight picture. He said that it is like the image gets "burned into your retina" (figure of speech, I am sure) so that if your sight picture changes you do not see it, you see the "burned in" image. He told me that there are strategies to prevent this, such as momentarily looking away into the distance and the coming back to the sights, realigning and finishing the shot. I mentioned this to another fellow, that I knew at the time that had done well at the state and national levels in CF pistol silhouette, and he told me that for the best results that shots needed to be made within a 20 second time frame. I believed both of these fellows, but was at somewhat of a loss as to how to explain this to others in a way that would not seem like some sort of highly suspect shooter voodoo....until I happened to be watching tonight's episode of Perception (TV show).
It seems that the concept that is central to this particular story is "change blindness".
https://www.google.com/search?q=cha...t&rls=com.yahoo:en-US:official&client=firefox
It turns out that this is not shooter voodoo after all.
The question is, could this be something that could affect benchrest shooters? Back in the day, I did a little experiment with a rifle that was outfitted with an aperture sight. I shot groups, from the bench, using a front rest and rear sandbag, intentionally spending an inordinately long time staring at the sight picture for each shot, and a second group shooting as soon as I was confident in the sight picture. There was an noticeable difference in favor of the group that I shot more quickly. I know that there were a lot of uncontrolled variables, but the conditions seemed relatively mild and steady, and the rifle was a 30-06 that was loaded with heavy match bullets, and I was shooting at 100 yards.
Comments? Experiences? Ridicule ;-)?
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