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Posted: 11/11/2006 5:42:48 AM EDT
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hope this is the right forum. I have a Stag 16" with coll stock. When I am shooting, where does my eye need to be in relation to the rear sight? Rght now, I am positioning my head pretty close to the rear sight(the charging handle is under the tip of my nose). I am not sure if this is a proper position as occasionally while shooting, the charging handle hits my nose due to recoil.hanx P. Smith |
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The nose to charging handle technique is the correct one to use, to help keep your sight picture the same during each shot. Keep doing what your doing. ETA: Go HERE and down load FM 23-9 (2.8MB PDF). It covers all the info you could possibly need!  |
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The emphasis should be on developing and maintaining a natural postion that can be held with no neck or muscle strain. The FM references trying to touch the nose clsoe to the charging handle as a ball park means of getting your head into a similar fore and aft position as you change from one shooting position to another. It is under no circumstances saying that that you should set yourself up to get popped in the nose due to recoil on every shot. In cold temps that can get painful even with a light recoiling rifle and in general can lead to the shooter anticipating the shot and/or flinching. In short, for most shooters touching the nose to the charging handle is counter productive. Practically speaking, not all people are built the same and what may work for one shooter may not work for another. Again, as a general rule you want to focus on consistency in acheiving a stock weld and that is best acheived through a natural and relaxed position - not on striving to touch your nose to the charging handle. From a practical standpoint, as long as you center the front sight in the middle of the rear aperture, your eye will by neccesity be directly aligned with the front and rear sights, and that in combination with the experience of how the stock feels along your face and the relaxation of the muscles in your neck makes a much more effective means of obtaining a consistent stock weld than relying on nose position which establishes nothing more than the fore and aft orientation of your head. |
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Do not TRY and center the front sight in the rear. By this I mean, if you look through the rear peep, at the front post, your eye will naturally center the two. The peep should appear fuzzy and the front post, crystal clear. The target itself, fuzzy-ish. Putting your nose on the charging handle is a great reference point for position shooting. It's the reason I shoot 40's now instead of 35's at range qual's. I would get sloppy and yeah, still Expert, but not Hawkeye. As stated above, whatever you end up doing is immaterial, so long as it's the same every time. No one can say anything YOU do is wrong (including hanging upside down....did it to prove a point) if the results show on paper. Rich |
Thousands of hours of experience that I have training people on the AR platform has shown me that NTCH is a great way to start out. As you say, it takes care of fore/aft positioning, which is 1/3 the battle. Removing that from the equation at the beginning makes it a lot better for new shooters. It's true that a natural and relaxe position is essential, but that's why it's called training. You can train yourself to have a natural and relaxed NTCH position. No one starts out perfectly, and what feels "relaxed and natural" to a new shooter is usually totally ineffective. Consitency leads to relaxed/natural, not the other way around. (However, that doesn't mean that everyone needs to physically touch the CH with their nose, obviously.) |
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+1 on nose to charging handle. Since you have a collapsible stock, then you can adjust the legth of pull to where you don't have any neck strain. As others have said, you want to make sure that you get the same cheekweld on the weapon each time. My Aimpoint is spoiling me because I don't have to worry about proper sight alignment. I have to build up a iron sight training rifle to get back to the fundamentals. |
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Nose to handel distance won't ever change, and doing everything with the utmost consistency is the cause/definition of accuracy. If you are concerned that you might develop a flinch or bruised nose, you could try wearing the same hat the same way and line it up with the top of the rear sight. |
Pinocchio might have a problem??? |
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