TargetTalk

Would anyone care to venture a comparison? I find shooting AP in a postal league quite enjoyable. Firing a standard pistol for 50' free pistol in the same league is not much fun. I am considering purchasing a used free pistol but my next birthday will be number 80 so a long learning curve is not in the cards.

Great Question!

Some elements are the same, and some are different.


Execution of Behaviors/Skills
The basic technical elements of how to deliver the "perfect shot" each time are very much the same. At that level (technical execution) the skills and challenges are very compatible.

However

Hiles in Paper/Scores
Free Pistol (especially at reduced distances) I, at least, find to require a higher level of concentration, focus, and execution. Free Pistol is much less "forgiving" than Air Pistol in the "holes in paper" sense. Generally the scores of folks who shoot both will bear this out. Free Pistol requires flawless execution, and is much more challenging. This is particularly true for the mental side of the game. You have to be "Thinking Happy Thoughts" before, during, and after each shot to a much higher level of intensity for Free Pistol than Air Pistol.

Final Note
Shooting Free Pistol with a Standard/Bullseye Pistol is like white water rafting in a bass boat. Sure, you could get in the water and not kill yourself- but you are going to get very wet and not have very much fun along the way!

Steve Swartz

Earlyriser wrote:Would anyone care to venture a comparison? I find shooting AP in a postal league quite enjoyable. Firing a standard pistol for 50' free pistol in the same league is not much fun. I am considering purchasing a used free pistol but my next birthday will be number 80 so a long learning curve is not in the cards.

Congratulations, Earlyriser! You make me feel like a kid, starting air pistol at the age of 56!

Jim

I'll echo Steve's comments in their entirety. Here in Canada our 50m shooting is pretty much limited to summer months, with indoor shooting done from October to April, normally at 20 yards. Indoor free pistol is, well, not nearly as enjoyable as being out in the fresh air at 50m.

There's a huge up-side to shooting free pistol. FP can be a rather punishing sport, with small errors rewarded with holes waaaaaay out in the white. But every time you make one of those errors you learn something. After having reached a plateau for some time, I've found that my air pistol scores have improved only when I've brought lessons learned in free pistol back to the air pistol discipline. That is particularly true for the comments about "thinking happy thoughts" and other aspects of mental control, but also for the finer points of trigger action and sight alignment.

I should also mention that shooting free pistol is, for me, the most enjoyable pistol shooting. If I had to choose but one discipline I would stick to the FP game.

By all means get yourself a free pistol and get out there and shoot it! It's the most gentlemanly of the pistol sports. After all, at nearly 80 years of age, if you don't start now, when are you going to start?!?!? I wish that I'd started 25 years ago...