One weird trick to improve your shooting and get shots on target
For the last couple of years, I’ve been a terrible shot. Well, with handguns. I could still shoot rifles well but my handgun targets were embarrassing. Turns out, getting my eyes checked seem to do the trick. I now wear glasses and can actually make out both the front and rear sight. Also, you should probably get your eyes checked for plain old health reasons.
Took The Morrissey to the range today to try out the new Apex Tactical triggers I’ve installed to give them a function check. More on that later. But here’s a ten yards as fast as I can reasonably get the shots off while aiming.
Two to the chest. The face gets the rest.
August 6th, 2016 at 5:07 pm
I’ve noticed my scores dropping too.
Did you have to get a particular distance set-up on your lenses or would “handgun” glasses work for shotgun too?
August 6th, 2016 at 5:20 pm
Just got glasses. Didn’t specify. But it worked. I’ll try rifles soon to see if there’s any improvement.
August 6th, 2016 at 7:11 pm
Just got my new cheaters and stressed on the guy to make the bifocles no line, photogrey, and front sight focused.
Works great.
Rifles I need scopes except for red dots at 3gun.
Sucks to be a geezer.
August 6th, 2016 at 7:38 pm
Len’s focus at set ranges. to get out farther you might have some issues with open sites, but scopes will make that issue go away. Good luck and that did look like some good shooting.
August 6th, 2016 at 7:39 pm
Handgun shooting requires practice, much more so than rifle shooting. I have handgun trophies on my shelves from when I practiced, but only embarrassing memories from when I didn’t.
Best run: shot 4 bowling pins down with my S&W 629 with aimed shots, and then shot the fifth one off the table without even aiming at it. Just shot it.
Worst run: cold run, no practice at all that year. 9 shots from my Colt Gold Cup, no hits on the five bowling pins on the table. Not one. Zero.
August 6th, 2016 at 8:31 pm
Grip, sight alignment and trigger control. Poor grip is what was holding me back for a long time.
If you haven’t already check out the magpul pistol videos. They were the key to my success.
Nice shootin and yeah, it sucks getting older……..
August 6th, 2016 at 8:39 pm
Good shootin’ Tex!
@Chas, that fifth pin jumped off the table when it saw what that 44M did to its four buddies.:)
August 6th, 2016 at 9:28 pm
I had to get reading glasses twenty years ago, and then gradually get stronger ones. I got tri-focals two years ago, and they work pretty well on iron sights; just not as good as my youthful eyes once did. I have cataracts now, and hope to get implants this year. My left eye can’t read a license plate at 50 feet without the glasses. Most of my shooting is with red-dots and scopes, and they make up for old eyes.
August 7th, 2016 at 11:15 am
Nice grouping, and after years of complaining Dad got his glasses and has enjoyed his re-established accuracy with both handgun and pistol.
August 8th, 2016 at 8:26 am
The very same thing happened to me. I shoot “primitive biathlons”, which is a timed event using snowshoes instead of skis, and muzzleloaders instead of modern .22 LR target rifles. I used to do quite well, hitting about 6 out of 9 targets at the main event I go to (the last 3 targets are devilishly small and distant). Then my scores dropped to where I’d be lucky if I hit 2 targets. I could see everything fine, though. This went on for several years until I finally went to the optometrist for a check-up and new glasses because I knew I needed bifocals.
Turns out my left eye was essentially unchanged, but my right eye had changed significantly over the old prescription, and that was causing me to miss. Next biathlon I run I hit 5 of the targets in the woodswalk (untimed), and 4 in the timed event, including two of the tiny ones. I’d never hit them before, especially not while dragging my fat butt up and down hills while wearing snowshoes.
If your shooting is going bad an nothing else has changed, get your eyes checked.
August 8th, 2016 at 11:43 am
Many years ago I found an optometrist who was not a stranger to the world of shooting; after bringing in a couple of guns and a target at closing time to mark exactly where on the lens I was viewing the sights, he made me a pair of shooting glasses with Bausch & Lomb Calichrome glass (sadly, it seems no longer available) with two right lenses, both of which were 1.5 diopters stronger; one had the astigmatism axis in the upper left corner (rifle) and the other in the center (pistol). Made a very big difference in being able to see the front sight clearly.
BTW, Unc, nice groups, but the bottom one needs to come up some; right on the line between the 9 and 8 rings ought to be about right.
August 8th, 2016 at 2:10 pm
Right eye astigmatic, each eye differently far sighted. I get a choice of seeing ta front or rear sight, or a target. Bifocals? Then I get to choose which one of the three I see clearly. And I’m willing to admit it isn’t my eyes that are the limiting factor to my barely adequate shooting.
August 8th, 2016 at 4:08 pm
Seeing matters. Is it racist of me to know that?
August 8th, 2016 at 4:44 pm
This is why the Olympic pistol shooters all have glasses set up to put the focus on the front sight.
August 8th, 2016 at 4:53 pm
My vision is pretty bad and I rebelled against progressive bifocals recently because the clear focus areas were so narrow. So I went to old style bifocals but these don’t work for shooting.
A shop in Denver will set up glasses to have a single “bifocal” area in the upper left quadrant of your right eye lens. (for right dominant)
This is situated where the front sight ends up in my normal pistol shooting stance.
August 8th, 2016 at 7:51 pm
If you save your old eyeglasses, go back and give them a try while shooting. I’ve found that old prescriptions work great when sighting.
August 9th, 2016 at 2:32 am
RE: prescription lenses….way back when some outfit sold “ClearView” or “ClearSight” (or something with a similar name) which was a jeweler’s swing-down magnifier that clips onto the temple (the part of the eyeglass frame that connects the bow (where the lenses are) to your ear). It came with, IIRC, replaceable lenses in 1.0. 1.5 and 2.0 diopters. Tried one back then, didn’t see much benefit, but now that I’m considerably older and starting to use the braille sighting method something like that might be useful.