How to Sight In a Hand Gun in 3 Shots

How to Sight In a Hand Gun in 3 Shots

 

Getting your hand gun to shoot to point of aim in 3 shots is nowhere near as difficult as it would seem. You have probably been to the range and seen many pistol shooters shooting to all 4 corners of the target just to get on the paper and go through 2-3 boxes of ammo trying to get their gun sights properly adjusted so that the bullet hits at the point they are aiming at. This is frustrating, time consuming, expensive, and totally unnecessary. If your gun has fixed sights, needless to say, you simply need to find out where your gun is shooting at a given range, and mentally input the offset when you need to hit a target. In other words, if you know the gun shoots 3 inches high and to the left at 50ft. you need to aim three inches low and to the right. In today’s world, with the exception of revolvers (generally speaking) and self-defense pistols where the sights are fixed, this may be the case, but with guns that have optics, sighting in precisely is relatively easy.

The ideal tool for getting your gun to shoot to point of aim is the Hyskore 30018 Parallax Pistol Sighting Rest https://hyskore.com/products/30018-parallax-sighting-rest/. There is absolutely no magic in the way this device works. It is simple trigonometry, geometry, and physics. The key point is that it works and it works effectively 100% of the time.

The first steps you need to do are easy. For this example we will be using a semi-automatic pistol with an optical device, which can be a scope with cross hairs, or some type of LED or laser pistol sighting device. We are going to take this one step further, because it’s a good example, and assume you’re a bullseye shooter, shooting for example, a Ruger Mark II with a Bushnell Trophy Red Dot Scope at a range of 50 feet. 50 feet, as you may know, is the standard range for indoor bullseye shooting, and therefore getting the gun and sights calibrated for this distance makes perfect sense. If you engage in some other type of shooting competition and the distance is greater or less, it is simply a matter of following through on the exercise at that range. Now that we have that out of the way, it is time to get things set up and into motion. The first thing you need is a solid stable shooting bench on which you can put the Hyskore rest, and then you need some type of target support that you can place 50ft away from the muzzle. The first thing to do, of course, is make sure your gun is unloaded, the action is open, and there is nothing in the chamber. Move down range and set the target. A good target to use is one of the sight and see variety, because they allow you to instantly recognize where the bullet impacts, although at 50ft. assuming you’re using a spotting scope, it may not make any difference. Therefore, targets specifically designed for sighting in, such as the ones that can be downloaded from the Hyskore website would be perfect. https://hyskore.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/30018_Target_8.5×11.pdf https://hyskore.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/30022_Target_11x17.pdf

Now that the target is set, get behind the bench, put on your OSHA approved ear and ANSI rated eye protection, load the gun with 3 cartridges, set it into the V notch of the rest for support, very carefully take aim at the dead center of the target, and fire a 3 shot group. Now unload the gun, clear the action, go down range, and mark the center of the group. Ideally a bright orange target plaster ½”-3/4” diameter is the item to use for this. When this is done go back to the bench, and with the gun still unloaded, put the gun in the rest and clamp the butt into the vise end of the rest with the muzzle facing down range, look through the sight. Without a doubt it’s going to be aimed somewhere other than the middle of the target. Now you need to manipulate the rest – not the adjustments on the sight. Use the elevation adjustment on the V notch of the rest to move the sight picture to the correct elevation aligned with the center of the target. Then by moving the rest left to right, get the reticle dead centered on the original point of aim. You are now looking at exactly the sight picture you had when you fired your 3 shots. Remove the caps on the scope and using a small screw driver, coin, etc. turn the elevation adjustments on the scope until the reticle is now at the same exact height as your group. Then use the windage adjustment on the scope to move the reticle to the dead center, in other words, the marker you placed at the center of the group. While you are adjusting the sight do not move the gun or the rest. What you have done is sight in the gun. The point of impact and point of aim are now coincidental and your gun is sighted in at that range.

Keep in mind, nothing is perfect, and you can reasonably expect you need to slightly fine tune your sight. This is because even under the absolute best of circumstances, the inherent repeatability of the gun and the repeatability of the ammunition is such that successive bullets never go through the same hole no matter how steady the gun in held. Not only that, shooting off hand or even from a rest bag, you will probably grip the gun and operate the trigger in a slightly different manner than when you sighted in. This is something everybody knows. This is why guns that can shoot a small group i.e. have exceptional repeatability, are prized above guns that throw bullets all over the place. Since hand guns by their very nature have barrels that are not long enough to properly stabilize the bullet, short sight radii, and ammunition that may vary slightly, you come to the conclusion that getting a hand gun to run every bullet through the same hole at 50ft. is almost impossible.