Can marksmanship be a natural skill ?

[Guest 731david]

This weekend marked the 2nd range trip for my 16yr old son. I must admit he puts me to shame with his marksmanship. If not careful my groups are always center & left. He on the other hand seems to be a natural with any firearm (long or handgun) we took the 9mm, 40 & 357sig. Different calibers did'nt effect his groups or make of gun( H&K, Sig & M&P) it was pretty much center mass groupings @ 7+ yards. Been trying to encourage my 2 girls to go with us, I just hope I can walk out of the range without the brown bag over my head because the 3 of them put it on the old man

[R1100R]

When I was a Drill Sergeant I had female trainee's who had never fired a weapon shoot expert all the time.

[Mike.357]

certainly it can be a natural skill.

Some people have better eye/hand coordination than others.

[Dolomite_supafly]

I think there must be something to it.

My wife shoots skeet informally and does pretty well. Out of 25 she will hit probably 22 on a good run but normally does a little worse. Our son, who was 17 at the time, walked out and said he would like to give it a try. He had never shot skeet before, never touched that gun before and was never really interested in shooting. After missing his first shot he went on a string in which he only missed on other shot out of 25. My wife kind of looked around a bit amazed as my son handed her the shotgun saying it isn't all that hard. He went back inside, thinking nothing of how well he just shot.

Dolomite

[chemprof]

Since the references are to kids with little/no experience, I'm wondering if there is a video game connection????? Maybe I'll dust off the Nintendo 64 and Rainbow Six, then go to the range and see what happens.

[Guest db99wj]

They also don't think about it. Get them to analyze what they are doing and they will be all over the place in no time with the rest of us!

[Il Duce]

youll need the 360 with call of duty mw2 for that lol

[Guest jackdm3]

They also don't think about it. Get them to over-analyze what they are doing and they will be all over the place in no time with the rest of us!

FTFY

[Defender]

I think its like leadership. Most anybody can be trained to do it, but there are some people who just come built that way. When I was in the USAF, I remember they taught that everyone could learn to shoot effectively, but like was already mentioned here, there were some people who did it perfectly the first time they picked up a firearm, and could continue that perfection.

[Guest Sgt. Joe]

I think that just like anything else in this world that some folks can in fact just be natural shooters.

I dont really consider myself to be one of those but I had never fired a weapon in my life until joining the Army. But then I went on to never qualify anything other than Expert with the M-16?

Even after being out of the service and not even touching a rifle for a bit over 18 years I was handed one at Ft. Bragg before we went to Iraq. I zeroed the thing with only one correction and went on to shoot Expert that day also. It was a miserable raining and very cold day and of 126 who went to the range that day only 22 even qualified at all. There were only two of us that qualified expert that day. The fact that so few even qualified was blamed on the horrible weather but when they all went back to re-fire only 4 were able to shoot expert.

So maybe with that particular weapon I am a natural.

This did not however translate to handguns, I was quite happy when I started shooting them in that I was much better than I thought I would be, I am not though as good as I would like to be nor anywhere even close to as good as some of the people I see at the range. Some days I shoot pretty well and feel good about it, others I do so bad that I leave thinking that I should just sell all my guns.

I seem to end up at my store when they are conducting the permit class quite often and I have seen several people of all ages who said they had never fired any gun ever before go on to shoot "Lights Out" during the class, and I mean ONE big hole. So Yea I do think it comes natural to some folks.

Now if I could ever get as good with my pistols as I was with that M-16 I would be thrilled:D

[Guest Glock23ForMe]

Honestly, if you think about it, too, someone that hasn't shot before and puts them right in the middle of the target has no bad habits. I think that's the biggest thing. If you shoot once a week you're gonna have some bad habits, probably that can keep you off every once in a while. Someone that never shoots, never develops these "shortcuts" or things we do to save time or worry about where we are hitting.