Sight Picture Image above - PC: NRA Women

When shooting a pistol most people point the gun in the direction they are looking and expect to hit their target. If only it was that easy. With experience, shooters soon learn that they have to familiarize themselves with navigating around sight picture and sight alignment.

Once we align our sights together, you have to place the sights on the target and that is called a sight picture. Sight picture and Sight alignment are the two of most important elements to shooting and are often overlooked or misunderstood by newer shooters.

Sight Picture

Sight picture is what our eyes see around our gun when our sights are aligned and aimed at a target. If done correctly, we can expect our shot to hit the target accurately.

To help you figure out sight picture we have to understand eye dominance first. Your dominant eye usually corresponds to your dominant hand. The exception to this are people referred to be cross-eyed dominant - meaning your dominant eye is opposite your dominant hand. To determine your dominant eye, you can try a test like the Miles test.

• Extend your arms in front of you with your palms facing away.
• Bring your hands together, forming a small hole (kind of like a diamond) by crossing the thumbs and forefingers.
• Choose a small object about 15-20 feet away from you. With both eyes open, focus on the object as you look through the small hole.
• Close one eye and then try the other. When you close one eye, the object will be stationary. When you close the other eye, the object should disappear from the hole or jump to one side.
• If the object does not move when you close one eye, then that eye is dominant. The eye that sees the object and does not move is the dominant eye.

This is important because if we are aligning your sights with our non-dominant eye, the shot can easily impact the target off to the side of wherever we are aiming. Once you start practice off or weak hand shooting this becomes very useful information so you know how to properly aim regardless of which hand you’re using to pull the trigger.

Once you are able to clearly see and focus on your front sights placed on the target, it’s important to know the different types of sight picture holds. Different guns are designed with different sight pictures in mind so it is important to utilize the proper sight picture - something done through a lot of training and trial and error. Put the time in and it will be worth it, promise!

Center-Mass Hold

Center-Mass hold is when we center our front sight directly in the center of the target. The front sight is directly over where we intend to hit the target.

Combat Hold

Combat Hold is by far the most popular sight picture hold. We position the front sight higher up on the target’s center which covers the 12 o’clock position. This is an excellent sight picture for quick target acquisition.

6 O’Clock Hold

6 o’clock hold is positioned directly underneath the center of a target at you guessed it - 6 o’clock. Check this hold out below to get an idea on how it works:

All Holds PC: Red Dot Shooters

Sight Alignment

Pistols usually come equipped with iron sights and they may be shaped differently however, the function does not change. Sight alignment is the way you position your front and rear sights on your gun and if it is done correctly your sight alignment should not change no matter what sights you use on your pistol or rifle.

To accurately engage your target sights need to be aligned properly. The front post needs to sit evenly in the center of your rear sight. If our front sight is above each notch on your rear sight, that means we are shooting high and we’ll end up shooting above our target. Conversely, if our front sight is low, we’ll expect to shoot below our target. It's important that our front and rear sights are lined up horizontally and vertically to accurately hit our target.

So it might sound like sight alignment and sight picture are fairly similar but remember that they are not the same and training both is very important. It’s imperative to work on sight alignment as well as training your eyes to recognize and utilize sight picture.

If a beginning shooter is learning these techniques it may take some time to shoot with both eyes open so try just shooting with your dominant eye open to reduce double vision. While it will be important to be situationally aware with both eyes open eventually just learn the basics first and then grow from there.