 Let's chat about something today that is one of the biggest reasons that people miss targets. That is trigger press. Gently pressing the trigger when the time comes. If you can master this one thing, you're going to be a great shot. You're going to be better than almost anyone else at the range, unless there's some competitive shooters there. They might be ahead of you a little bit, but they're going to be really good if you can master this. The idea of the gentle trigger press. This is the solution to almost every miss that you have. Almost always, if you've been doing some shooting in an experienced shooter, you're going to line up the rear sight and the front sight. You're going to have your side alignment. That'll be no problem there. You're not going to have really a problem putting the front sight on the target. That's not that big of a deal. The problem is going to come when you are ready for the recoil and you anticipate it and you make some action that moves the gun away from aiming right at the target. Really, hitting a target, shooting a gun is pretty simple. You have this tube right here. You line up the tube with the target and as long as the gun shoots and you don't move it off of the target, you're going to hit. Here's what happens. By the way, this is a yellow gun. You might have noticed this. It's a plastic-y rubbery thingy. That's why I'm pointing it at you. Please forgive me. As I'm pointing the gun at you, by the way right now, as I'm aiming, am I right eye or left eye downward? What do you think? Can you tell? Check out the video that's in the link below and you'll be able to tell a little bit better if you can't go ready. Back to the point. Here I am aiming the gun and I'm ready to fire. As I start to press the trigger, I know right when I get to that point that it's going to go bang and pop up, I know that's going to happen. I'm not frightened of it, but it's going to scare me. When that happens, what am I likely to do? I know it's going to kick up into the right for a right-handed shooter, so what I'm going to do is as I'm pressing right when I get to that point that it breaks, I'm going to shove low left. Of course, I exaggerated. I might just be that much right as I press the trigger. If I'm doing this, guess where the bullet's going to go? Yep, low left. If you look at a target, you go to the range, look at your targets, I'm betting that if they are right-handed shooters, 80, 90% of the holes are in the left-hand quadrant of the target and they are in the lower left-hand. The vast majority of those 80% will be in the lower left. So how do we fix this? I gave you a hint at the beginning. Trigger press. Slow, gentle trigger press. If you press so that it surprises you when the gun fires and you don't know when to shove it low left, that gives you a big benefit. You'll probably hit the target if you can surprise yourself. Imagine if I had a remote control. You're aiming the gun here and I have the remote control. You're aiming perfectly and I press the button to make the gun fire. You're going to hit it dead center every time. You don't know when to shove it away from the target. Only your brain working against you can tell you when to shove it away from the target, which is not what you want to do. So you have to fool your own brain by not knowing right when it's going to happen. Now, of course, after you shoot a lot and you do this properly, the professional shooters, they've developed enough good habits that they can press gently. They have that muscle memory and they're not going to shove the gun away as much. However, even the folks that are really good, if you get kind of excited and carried away with something, you're more likely to shove it down. So always remember that gentle press. A trick that I like to do is putting a piece of chapstick, not a piece of chapstick, a tube of chapstick, on a table, just like this. And then you're going to notice I put my fist down right beside it and I'm going to slowly press the chapstick back ever so slowly. I'm not going to knock it over. I want it to choose, give it a mind of its own, I want it to choose when it's going to fall. And when it falls, that is kind of indicating a surprise break. If I knock it over, that's me jerking the trigger or slapping and you're doing something like that. If it falls on its own like this, that means I'm doing the right trick. So when you're on the phone on that boring telephone conversation with somebody, bring your chapstick out, put it on the desk and just do that repeatedly. If you do that pressing the chapstick over exercise 20, 30, 40 times a day, every day, I'll bet you in a year or two you'll be a really good trigger presser. That's what we want to be to hit the target. Thanks for checking out this tip. Give it a try. See if it works. Leave a comment. Let me know if it doesn't, if it's not helpful. And otherwise, look forward to seeing you on the range. This is Shepherd Humphries with the Jackson Hole Shooting Experience.