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Does your Sig shoot low?

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88K views 152 replies 99 participants last post by  Dumbdumb 
#1 · (Edited)
There seem to be a lot of these posts, and I feel like the responses are not always as precise as they could be, or the advice is good but pieced out over the thread, so I wanted to try and create a post that might get stickied.

Here is a picture of my "Sig" shooting low.


When I first bought the pistol it was worse. Generally hitting at the very bottom or below the paper. As it turns out, my sight picture was wrong.

POINT 1: The vast majority of Sigs use a "combat sight" picture. This means that the dot on your front sight post should cover your intended target.

If you are using a Center Hold
or Six O'Clock Hold Sight picture
, you will hit low.

These are incorrect sight pictures for a Sig (from the factory). They may have worked fine with whatever pistol or rifle you have/had/tried once and liked, but it is not the sight picture Sig intends for their pistols and will not work on a stock Sig.
I don't intended to debate the merits of it, just know this is how Sigs are setup from the factory. Sigs from the factory are set up to use a combat sight picture at 10 yards. Closer or farther than that and the ballistics won't match up. Once I understood what the sight picture was supposed to look like, I got "on the paper", but was still well below where I should have been. See above.



This is the same pistol, shot from a cheap plastic bench rest I purchased to test what I felt I already knew.

POINT 2: Your trigger work might not be as awesome as you had hoped. (mine sure wasn't) I have a tendency (like many people) to anticipate recoil and yank the pistol down, resulting in low shots. Perfect trigger pull is actually not common, it takes practice. If you haven't shot much before, or haven't shot much recently/for awhile, get or borrow a bench. You can purchase a bench online for about one third of what a new set of sights cost (or half of what one sight costs). Shooting from a bench will help give you a good idea how much your trigger pull is affecting your results and should be recommended by anyone before you start looking at purchasing a new set of sight(s). The below is an excellent starting point. It shows some of the many mistakes a right handed shooter can make and the error in shot placement that results.




"But my friend's P22# has #X and #X sights on it and he does fine with it! And so do I! My P22# came from the factory with #X-2 and #X-1 sights on it. Some idiot at the factory just grabbed random sights out of a bin and Sig did it wrong."

POINT 3: Sig puts particular sights on particular models/batches at the factory purposefully. Just because your new pistol doesn't match what you saw on the internet, doesn't mean it's wrong. The pistol above with the just fine bench results came with a #6 front and #6 rear sight (it happens to be a P229 Legion). A quick Google will garner for you that a P229 in 9mm should come with a #6 front and #8 rear. Or maybe a #8 front and a #8 rear, depending on the post that you find.

The fact is that Sig batch tests and picks a combo that works for the test pistols from that batch. It's likely not a perfect system. The test pistols could be poorly chosen and not representative of the rest of the batch, or the pistol you bought might not be representative of the rest of the batch. You can call Sig, give them your serial number (on recent models) and they can pull up what batch it was in and what sight combo was chosen for that batch. However, until you bench shoot it (or develop/insure perfect trigger pull) you won't know if that combo works for your pistol. I should note here that I hear customer service is hit and miss. Some people have not had luck with Sig reps. The one I spoke to was nice a easily pulled up the required info. He also offered to take the pistol back in and have them "accuracy test" it to check it. I opted to buy a bench rest myself and save the mailing time. If I had found the sights were not correct, I would politely send the pistol back to Sig and expect them to get the right sights on it (for free).


Caveats to all this mess:
If you bought a used Sig, anything is possible. On a newer used pistol, you can call Sig and see what they put on at the factory. On an older model that doesn't seem to match POA with POI, lots is possible, but bench shooting will give you a better place to start from (and end your testing with). There are good and bad posts and articles out there about sight heights and how to make adjustments. This one I found particularly informative. If you are going to pay $60 (or more) to start swapping the sights on your pistol, make sure you understand the sight heights and what you expect the swap to do. There are people out there who can give you great or poor advice, but your best bet is to make sure you understand the information yourself before you change anything.
 
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#45 ·
I actually sort of allude to that in the trigger pull section, but it isn't well defined. I added a chart and an additonal line or two to clarify. To be clear, I am not just trying to address sight picture. The post is an attempt to list the many things that may contribute to the "shooting low" issues that many newer shooters seem to have. My particular problem was dual (as I think it is with most folks who are new to shooting AND to Sig), I had the wrong sight picture and was yanking down.
 
#44 ·
At typical combat pistol shooting distances, gravity has little time to make a measurable difference in POA vs POI (point of aim/impact). Yet bullet weight and speed obviously do. In the same gun, with the same slide and sights (say a P229 with 40 and 357 barrel) the lighter and faster 357 Sig bullet will shoot lower.

The reason for this is that upon ignition two things happen at the same time. The bullet heads down the barrel and the slide starts moving to the rear as the breach end of the barrel starts to cam downward. This camming down of the barrel rear serves to delay unlock, so chamber pressure has a chance to drop before spent case extraction. It has the same effect as would raising the muzzle end of the barrel. Since the slower bullet, stays in the barrel longer, this barrel tilt has more of an effect on its point of impact than it would on a faster bullet, as the barrel breach is still camming down at bullet exit.

This phenomenon is the reason SIG uses different sights as standard on the 9mm and 357 guns vs the slower 40.
 
#46 ·
.
Does your Sig shoot low?
.

All the time - when I aim low.

I know, you've all been waiting for it...
 
#49 ·
I had a new P series pistol shoot consistently 4 to 6 inches low across several shooters and loads, called Sig CS and learned the numbering system for their sights, sent the slide to Sig and had CS replace the #6 rear sight for a #8, problem solved, cost of the new sight included labor, I found Sig CS very helpful and informative
 
#50 ·
For me, I shoot mostly 1911 pistols with adjustable sights and using the lollipop sight picture. shot this way for the first 30 years of shooting. When I got my first Sig, I may have cursed Sig up and down about shooting low and I was frustrated. I thought it stupid you had to cover the target, I mean, how could I hit what I couldn't see. After being educated on the Combat sight picture, it makes sense as to why it is used. But,that said, at 25 yards my P220ST 45 shoots dead on and my P320c 45 shoots 1" lower and both have #6 and #8 sights.
 
#53 ·
I bought a new p226 nice gun but using the combat sight hold it shoots low i know it might be me but that is the way i shoot I don’t understand why sig quit selling the #9and 10 height sights. Seems like it would be good to be able tune the sights for the way a person shoots.I have seen this complaint in numerous forums about guns shooting low i just don’t understand why they quit selling them. I don’t want to put aftermarket sights on my gun when all i need is a #9 or 10 rear sight. If anyone knows a logical reason why they quit selling these sight please let me know
 
#56 ·
New Member here but not to Sigs. I have 3 pistols and a rifle. All this talk on sight picture raises a question which has come up around the campfire a few times.
In a defensive situation, (less than 7 yds), how important do you feel the rear sight is?
Do you train at this distance? Point shooting or sights?
 
#60 ·
(I will preface this post by admitting I can be an idiot from time to time)

I spent the day at the range with my 3 P239s today - I realized awhile back that two of them always shot low - well of course they shot where I aimed them... but for some reason with the same ammo and the same shooter (me) at the same distance. One was perfect, well close enough - slightly low and to the right 1" or so... at 7 yards (21'). The others were at least 4" low at the same distance.

I could not remember which ones shot low, so went thru 200 rounds, wrote the serial numbers on each target so I knew which gun went with each target. And rotated thru the group twice, I mixed them up as to not get used to shooting one gun more than the other.

One is a SAS Gen 2 - One is a new one I bought a few years back and rarely ever shot, and one I picked up at a pawn shop used. Of course the one from the pawn shop was the one that I could shoot the best.

In the end - the two I had bought new, that I consistently shot low with had #8 rear, #6 Front.

The pawn shop gun had #8 rear, #8 Front. Not sure if it came that way of if the previous owner swapped them.

I just ordered three SIG SAUER Tritium Fiber Optic Front #8... I am hoping they all aim the same after I am finished.

I also have a P229 - it is a tack driver - but that has an adjustable rear sight that I have adjusted to its max. And a P938, which is perfect as well...

So not sure why the two P239s ar setup that way.

Ooh, and one of the reasons I am an idiot in this case - After I placed the order, I went looking for my sight tool. I found it, and in the box with my sight tool was a new set of #8 and #8 night sights, still in the bag. I must have figured this out years ago, and forgot. :)
 
#61 ·
switching from a rifle to a handgun i have had to adjust to this exact issue, first few days I was shooting low and could not understand it, this was my same issue and im workng on it now to adjst my vison
 
#62 ·
No. It doesn’t shoot low at all. In fact my Scorpion P220 is the most accurate pistol I own. I can consistently hit a steel pie plate at 50m with no sight picture adjustment. It’s hands down the best pistol I own. I’ve never heard of this low hitting shots problem. Training, I believe, plays a huge part in how accurate a person is with their firearms. Watch YouTube videos, dry fire train, take a shooting course. Any of these will make you a better shooter if you train properly. Just my .02
 
#63 ·
The pistol is always blamed. Everyone here knows its the shooter 99.9 % of the time. Try telling that to most shooters tho lol. They say, I been shooting since I was a kid, 30-40, years blah blah, thats the things you hear. . So I have a friend who has a line of creds a mile long which I wont even bother mentioning. So what he does is set up video and he loads the shooters mags. randomly there is a snap cap or 2 maybe even 3 on higher cap mags. BAM proofs in the pudding. The look on their faces when watching the replay as the snap cap hits. Such an awesome way to distinguish bad technique. Ive seen many a shooter that has changed sights, did this did that all because they cant look inward FIRST. No problem can be corrected before its identified.
COACH: You struck out 3 times today...
PLAYER: Yeah somethings wrong with the bat, its defective Coach.
 
#64 ·
Agreed with everything you just said. I’ve been shooting with a buddy like that. He was squawking about how his sights were off on his 1911 and he wasn’t hitting any targets at all. I asked if I could try it and proceeded to hit a target with every round. The look of disbelief on his face haha. He was one of those “I’ve been shooting my whole life” kinda guys.
 
#67 ·
I have a new 226 with the standard 3 dot sights , i have tried to do the combat hold covering the target with the front sight and it hits about 3” low at 15 yards. My problem is all my other pistols are set for center hold (combat hold to me is like trying to land an airplane without being able to see the runway) and my problem is that sig discontinued making anything but the #6 and #8 sights. So i guess if you shoot differently your Out of luck.
I’m not knocking Sig it is a fine firearm i just don’t understand why i had to buy Springfield XD sights to acquire the proper sight picture for me. I have read this complaint On many different forums ,that is where i learned about using the XD sight. This is a fine Pistol i just wish sig would make the full array of sight they used to.
 
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