The pistol correction chart: why you shoot low and left

The pistol correction chart is a target divided into wedges, each labelled with a fault, that claims to tell you what went wrong from where your stray shots land. It was drawn for a right-handed shooter holding the pistol in one hand.

Printed versions differ, with six to ten wedges by Aegis Academy’s count, but they mix much the same faults. The table follows Edmund Abel’s article of 1962, the source Karl Rehn of KR Training traced the chart to. Clock positions are as you face the target.

Read it by where shots string out from the middle, not by a single hole. Seven of Abel’s eight example targets show two shots in the bull and the rest strung out in one direction.

Abel wrote that his targets were for a right-handed shooter, and that reversing them from left to right gives the errors of a left-hander. The NRA’s manual The Basics of Pistol Shooting says the same, according to a 4-H fact sheet whose chart supplements it: left-handers show a mirror image.

So a left-handed shooter reads the table’s second column. High stays high and low stays low; left and right change places. The right-hander’s jerk wedge, low left, is low right for you.

Karl Rehn of KR Training traced the chart to an article in the NRA’s magazine American Rifleman of May 1962: “Pistol Targets ‘Talk’”, by T/Sgt Edmund Abel of the US Air Force. Rehn found it as a worn reprint inside a copy of the 1971 US Army Pistol Marksmanship Guide, and his research shows the NRA offered it as a reprint for many years.

Rehn does not claim it is the first chart: if it was not the original influence, he writes, it reflects the conventional wisdom of its day. Abel linked eight errors to parts of a bullseye target, and Rehn notes that he assumed one-handed shooting in the classic bullseye style.

Abel also set his conditions: the pistol zeroed, the sight alignment and sight picture correct as the trigger was squeezed, and wind, light, faulty ammunition and faulty equipment ruled out. If you shoot one-handed slow fire at a bullseye card, such as the ISSF 10 m air pistol, the ISSF 25 m precision pistol or the NRA B-6, you are the shooter he wrote for.

For a right-handed shooter, low and left is the chart’s wedge for a jerked trigger, and here it has support. One sign of jerking, says the pistol training guide of the US Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU), is shots off to the side that you did not call there: chiefly to the left and down for right-handers. To call a shot is to say where it went from where the sights were as it broke.

A jerk is more than the finger, though: the same guide says it usually comes with tense arm and shoulder muscles, a hand that suddenly tightens on the grip, and a press that is not straight back. The 4-H fact sheet gives two faults for low and to the side away from your shooting hand: jerking or snatching the trigger, and squeezing with the whole hand as you press.

First check the chart’s own conditions: if your holes form a tight group low and left, not a string from the middle, look at the zero and your sight picture (see the last section). Left-handed, low and left is the mirror of the right-hander’s low right: the wedge for tightening the grip as you squeeze. For the press itself, see Trigger control.

Each direction below is for a right-handed shooter; left-handed, swap left and right. Each is a place to start looking, nothing more.

• High right or high left: the chart blames anticipation, the pistol pushed up into a recoil that has not come yet. The USAMU guide says anticipation usually heels the shot to about one o’clock. For high left, Abel and the 4-H sheet also name letting the trigger finger go as the shot fires. Shots simply high, with no string: check your sight picture first.
• Left: too much finger on the trigger, so that it presses at an angle. The 4-H sheet likewise blames the finger’s placement and a press that is not straight back.
• Right: the thumb pushing on the frame. With two hands, the 4-H sheet adds the support hand pushing.
• Low right: the grip tightening as the shot goes. The 4-H sheet adds a tightening forearm.
• Straight low: the wrist pushed down against the recoil, or relaxing too soon. The 4-H sheet adds relaxing the shoulder as you fire.

The directions are not invented: the USAMU guide puts a jerk left and down and anticipation at about one o’clock, much as Abel did. The folklore is reading the chart backwards, one wedge for one fault.

Rehn, a pistol instructor for more than 30 years, writes that struggling shooters often make more than one error and are rarely consistent enough to put their bad shots in one neat slice. He folds seven of Abel’s eight errors into two: fingers other than the trigger finger moving, and the arms pushing or pulling on the pistol before the shot breaks.

Aegis Academy, a US training school, calls such charts probably the most misused tool in training: they show trends, not single shots, more than one error is usually at work, and a coach should watch you, not your holes. The 4-H fact sheet goes further for beginners: do not point out their errors, but teach good form.

And the chart holds only if its conditions do: the pistol zeroed, and the sight alignment and sight picture right as the shot breaks. A newer shooter may still be learning the second.

A wedge tells you where to look. These tell you what happened.

• Call every shot. The USAMU guide bases the call on where the front sight sat in the rear sight as the shot broke, then compares the hole with the call, and calls it a pattern when the same error shows on more than one shot. If call and hole disagree, something may have moved the pistol as it fired; if every shot misses its call the same way, suspect the zero (see the last section). If they agree and the shot is still poor, look earlier, at the aim or the hold.
• Shoot ball and dummy. It is the test Abel recommends: a coach loads, sometimes a live round and sometimes a dummy, without telling you. When it clicks on a dummy, there is no recoil to hide the movement, and you see it. The USAMU guide calls ball-and-dummy and dry-fire training of great benefit, and the 4-H sheet recommends both for most of these faults. Rehn prefers a known order: a live round, then a dummy, bang then click.
• Keep it safe. Shoot ball and dummy on a range, under its rules and ideally with a coach, using inert dummy rounds made for the calibre. Keep the muzzle downrange through every click, and keep the dummies apart from live rounds afterwards. Dry fire only with the pistol unloaded and checked, the ammunition out of the room and the muzzle in a safe direction, and only if the maker’s manual says your pistol may be dry fired.
• Change one thing at a time, and give it several groups before you judge it.
• Have someone watch your hand. The USAMU guide calls an experienced coach the easiest way to correct jerking in a young shooter, since a coach sees errors the shooter misses.
• Try an air pistol. The 4-H sheet recommends air pistols for correcting form: quiet, relatively free of recoil, and extremely sensitive to form faults.

For each card you scan, Shooter shows where the shots landed and how big the group is, which is what you compare before and after a change. What the pattern means is for you, and a coach, to judge.

A tight group in the wrong place is not what the chart describes. The USAMU guide’s rule: if the group is not centred, the pistol is not zeroed, or the position or grip is wrong; if you are sure of the zero, check position and grip before the next string.

The guide also warns against moving the sights after one shot, which can be off through the shooter’s own errors, and against aiming off with adjustable sights: adjust them until the group centres. How to find a group’s centre and move it is in Reading your shot groups; where on the bull to hold is in Sight picture.

The zero can also change. The guide lists sights loosened by recoil, bent or damaged, changes in light, and a zero for timed and rapid fire that may differ from slow fire. Fixed sights are harder to correct: the guide changes their height with a file, by trial and error or with an armourer’s help, and moves the rear sight sideways with a sight mover or a punch.

Is there a printable pistol correction chart?

Printed versions are widely shared, with six to ten wedges by Aegis Academy’s count. The table above has all of Abel’s for either hand: shoot your usual card, read it against the table, and then test what it suggests by calling your shots and shooting ball and dummy.

Does the chart work for left-handed shooters?

Only mirrored. Abel drew his for a right-handed shooter and said that reversing it from left to right gives a left-hander’s errors; the NRA’s Basics of Pistol Shooting, as a 4-H fact sheet reports, says left-handers show a mirror image. Use the table’s left-handed column.

Why do I shoot low left with a Glock?

The chart blames the shooter, not the make: for a right-hander, low left is its jerking wedge whatever the pistol. Two hands add room for more faults, though the 4-H fact sheet notes these often mimic the ones the NRA’s manual illustrates. Rehn files the jerk under other fingers moving. For a modern two-handed grip he points to a firing-hand thumb pushing down, or all the firing-hand fingers tightening as the trigger moves; many shooters, he adds, do not grip hard enough with the support hand. Check the zero first, then call your shots.

Is there a rifle correction chart?

For prone rifle, at least one exists. The Ham and Petersham Rifle and Pistol Club in London publishes a prone error diagnosis chart with a rifle shooter’s own causes, such as a sling too tight or too loose, canting and the elbows, and it warns that it can only be a guide, with often several possible reasons. Do not read a rifle group by the pistol chart: that was drawn for a pistol fired with one hand, which Aegis Academy notes makes these errors bigger. For any rifle, read the group’s size and centre: see Reading your shot groups.