Hi,
Now you guys got me curious!
As a civilian, I was taught "stop" as Karl mentioned, by an old timer of unknown military experience. He did have a history of high level competition shooting, though, so I imagine he'd rubbed elbows with a few military shooters even if he wasn't one.
So I went surfing, and found everybody's in agreement with "Breathe, relax, aim", but then things go in different directions. "Slack", "stop", and "sight" were all mentioned on a couple of Marine forums. And another forum talking about Olympic shooters has it as "Breathe, relax, aim, squeeze, shot." Interesting.
It seems everybody's headed for the same place, but the inter-workings of "aim" meaning to attain the alignment of the sights while ignoring the target, and "slack, stop or sight" meaning to maintain that alignment as the target is added to complete the sight picture, just use different terms to say pretty much the same thing.
As for the Olympians, I got to watch some of the air rifle shooters shoot practice during the '84 LA Olympics, and they used a VERY exaggerated follow thru, just standing there "taking it all in" as it were, after the shot. So that may explain their slightly different take on both "s" sections. Unlike most sources which teach the shot should come somewhat as a "surprise" (for lack of a better term) during the squeeze process, the Olympic commentary indicated one should know exactly when it's going to happen. I dunno if that's really the case, but the guys I saw made a nervous wreck out of me just watching. They kept putting shot after shot thru the same hole (10m range), so they must have been doing something right... at least for their purposes? They'd probably all be dead on a battlefield in no time, though!
We return the range to the Marines now...
Rick C
