Close, Medium, Far: Manage Your Sight Picture for Max Accuracy

Winchester's Becky Yackley explains how your pistol sight picture should change when the distance to the target does.

posted on June 29, 2022
** When you buy products through the links on our site, we may earn a commission that supports NRA's mission to protect, preserve and defend the Second Amendment. **

Becky Yackley is many things: champion competitive shooter, hunter, writer, Winchester brand ambassador, mother and expert mentor. She's been helping women of all skill levels achieve on the firing line for years, and she's happy to share her secrets. Top among those secrets is the fact that your sight picture—meaning the way that your handgun's sights relate to one another and to the target—needs to change just a little depending on how far away you are from your target.

In this video from Winchester Ammunition, Yackley will shoot from three distances: one that's nearly close enough to touch, one further back and one a full 150 feet away. These various distances are called "target presentations," and that's relevant both for competitive shooters and for self-defenders. At very close ranges, as Yackley notes, your sight picture is really secondary to what you need to do, which is essentially treat the gun as if it were your index finger, point, and then shoot. (Hence the term "point shooting.")

Further back, the sight picture becomes increasingly important, because the margin for error becomes narrower. Once you've retreated to 15 yards, it becomes important to align the sights side to side and top to bottom before squeezing the trigger. So what does that look like in practice? Let Yackley walk you through the steps of close, medium and far and you'll start to get the (sight) picture.

Latest

Rose Womens Festival Las Vegas
Rose Womens Festival Las Vegas

Road Trip: ROSE by SIG Sauer Women's Festival in Las Vegas

Created exclusively for women, this first-of-its-kind festival brings together the energy of a weekend in Vegas with hands-on experiences, education, training, and an incredible community.

5 Wild Game Recipes for Your Labor Day Picnic

Picnics are all about finger foods and meat on the grill, so check out these wild game recipes to use up last season’s meat and make room in the freezer for fall.

Splash Hit: Women’s Fishing Gear Roundup

Don't let these picks for our favorite made-for-women gear be the ones that got away!

Horning in on the Action: A Successful First Plains Game Hunt

From Ruger's "Horns of Africa" series, watch as Abbey Clary embarks on her first African hunting adventure.

In Defense of the Sub-Gauge Shotgun for Home Defense

A 20-gauge (or even smaller gauge) makes a lot of sense for home defense if a shotgun is your firearm of choice.

The Armed Citizen® Reload September 4, 2026

A bus stop turned out to be a dead-end street for this armed perpetrator.

Women's Interests



Get the best of NRA Women delivered to your inbox.