[Scharfschuetzer]

The natural respretory pause is a good time to shoot. Depending on health and aerobic capability, this can be up to nine seconds according to the gurus at the AMU. It is natural and comfortable.

As Old Grump notes, if you start to feel uncomfortable and need to breathe, do so and then continue to your shot once you have re-oxygenated. One of the hardest habits to break is the feeling that once you line up to fire, you need to fire. Unless it's a trophy buck about to bolt or you're in combat; relax, breathe and start the process again.

Some real life situations or employment may preclude such an approach at times, but for sport shooting in most of the various venues you should be able to do it. Don't count, that just distracts you and as noted above, factors such as stance, grip, sight alignment, sight picture, breathing, trigger pull and follow through should be on your mind for each shot.

Bottom line? Don't breath while you pull the trigger. It will usually cause a vertical error to the shot or a vertically strung group on target if consistantly done while shooting. Your body should be as stationary as possible when the shot breaks.

Another point about breathing not mentioned yet is to use it to refine your elevation when shooting from a prone or sitting position. For a normally proportioned shooter, inhaling a fuller lung of air will lower your sight in reference to a target and exhaling will usually elevate your sight. Once you breath a full cycle to oxygenate, exhale some or inhale more to bring your sight on to the target in the vertical plane, then hold and shoot.