The girls were VERY proud of themselves. What was a great surprise to me was that they were able to make hold adjustments so easily. My usual steps in shooting at 100 yards involve putting up the B-8C target that I use as an aim point at the top of the target frame, then taking 5 or 10 warmup shots, seeing how low and right the hits are, then placing the "for record" target over the holes, then go back and start shooting some good groups, hopefully on the target sheet.
On Thursday, we each took 10 shots, we went and looked, and everyone was hitting very low or off the target frame. I didn't have a frame extension so I just told them to hold with the dot just above the frame but with the dot aligned vertically with the black bull. With the .45, I had to hold nearly 2 bullsye's high. We all got our second set of shots on the target frame. Next we adjusted to the left about 8" and tried it again. This worked fine for Allyson and I but messed April up, she hit straight below her aim point.
What was great about this experiment was to see how consistent a group we could all get without a perfectly aligned and overlapped aim point, like one would have when centering the red dot directly over the B-8C target bullseye, which is what I generally try to do. I shouldn't really be surprised, as that is exactly what I had to do at 200 yards the first time I tried it--hold maybe 8" below the aim point instead of right on it. The difference shows up in the group size. I was able to shoot a 7" group at 100 yards with the 97 on Thursday evening holding "high and left" of the aim point, whereas I would have expected maybe 4" holding right on the black bullseye. Just has to do with the precision of the hold. The fact that each girl could hold on an imaginary spot relative to the original hold point bullseye was a pleasant surprise to me.
April was able to put essentially every shot exactly where they should have been on every sequence. Allyson and I struggled at times. April absolutely has the most nearly perfect trigger pull control of any shooter I've ever worked with. I hope she has time and the desire to shoot a few bullseye matches with me next year, if she is here.
Joe