Or Olympic archery:
Even pool players are extremely still in their motion:
Lars shoots a different style, which is basically "draw and loose" with very little "aiming". The aiming done in that situation is to basically "look at what you want to hit".
Here's a Smarter Every Day episode that shows some of that. You see Byron Ferguson there already putting the arrow on but there's no aiming. When the mint is thrown in the air, he just looks at the mint and instinctively aims and shoots it in mid air.
https://youtu.be/Q8Yp9SjCU5E?t=225
I recommend the whole episode.
Also Legendary Howard Hill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36R7cLzPNuw
It's amazing how well this works if you don't need to hit a mint and no worries of shooting a person and even without exactly spined arrows and with just a stick and a string for a bow. Source: I do this for fun (with larger targets).
Reminds me of a friend's bachelor party out in the woods where we were shooting guns. A couple friends brought big revolvers and so I tried shooting them at some targets. Missed every one. I decided if I wasn't gonna hit anything, I should at least have fun, so I took two of them and did a Yosemite Sam impression firing them akimbo at the targets in rapid fire and I heard a PING PING PING PING of 4 shots hit in a row from 2 different guns fired in tandem.
Sometimes the best aim is no aiming at all.
There are times where I have time to line up my shot and track the enemy in my sights and yet in some cases I miss all my shots (I actually end up being out of sync with the enemy’s lateral moves, essentially lagging behind).
On the other hand, there are times where an enemy surprises me and I move my mouse in a sudden motion, shooting while it’s still moving - I manage to land the vast majority of those shots (sometimes shooting twice in panic, but the first one turns out to be a hit - this is on PC so no aim assist as far as I know).
Not that I would like to “prove” this hypothesis in actual combat, but I wonder if taking shots “by feel” is actually better than doing so carefully and consciously.
The game is effectively giving you a way more massive hit box when you’re not scoping than when you are. In turn you are more likely to hit something but you usually do lower damage and bullets will prefer the torso hit box, so you’re unlikely to get a head shot.
Since you emphasized PC I assume you’re also thinking of aim assist on consoles. Those are related but different techniques to help gamers.
Aim assist moves the reticle closer to a hit box centre in screen space. However it doesn’t increase the hit box size because you’d often have overlapping hit boxes in screen space.
Adaptive Hit boxes exist in world space and grow and shrink accordingly to user aim mode.
Indeed, it's closer to a field athlete (basketball, soccer, etc) shooting/throwing a ball.
Lots of "muscle memory". Kind of like someone else mentioned, throwing a ball. You don't have a sight you aim with when you throw a ball. You look at what you want to hit and throw. You don't do that very consciously though. Your body and subconscious just do it for you.
Not sure if that was in that video or another one but he trains every day. He's got a deer target right outside his door at a typical range for hunting and every time he walks out he just takes a shot at it (plus a really nice outdoor 3D course right on his property).
my sister when she was in college was incredibly good at hitting small things across the room by finger snapping bottle caps.
Works surprisingly well for unsighted shots.
Good video testing this method:
The first time I saw that killed any interest I might have had in 'serious' archery (I was into it as a kid). It's like watching a weightlifter use an exercise machine.
What are we talking? Like a peanut m&m? A macaroon?
People that do shoot moving targets from what I've seen might just use frisbees or the like. You kinda need a barn full of straw behind it.
If you want to learn more about instinctive archery, here's something on that from Clay Hayes ("Alone" season 8 winner): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mzWQ5_1bXtM and the whole channel is full of (serious - not stunt) archery stuff.
Here, found youtube footage of him shooting the deer that helped him win: https://youtu.be/tI5812NwiS0?t=86
But getting the shots into a keyhole even at a relatively short distance is very impressive still.