TargetTalk

I have been shooting air pistol for a while now, and have a problem with incorrectly changing my eye focus from the front sight to the target just at the moment of the trigger being set off. This causes me have a 7-8 ring hit. what can I do to retrain myself to maintain my focus on the front sight?

Make sure you have shooting glasses that bring the focus of the eye to the front sight when it is relaxed. That way you have to WORK to look at the target and you probably won't be able to see the hole, so there would be no point in looking.

While glasses help (and are worth the small investment, I suggest and use the cheapest reading glasses you can find with the appropriate diopter), you can help train by dry holding/firing against a blank backstop. Makes it easy to focus on the front sight, and with enough repetition, it becomes habit.

Is your trigger control such that you know when the pistol is going to fire ? A smoothe pressure exerted straight to the rear will alow you to cause the shot to fire without the break in concentration you seem to be describing. This is usually described as achieving a surprise shot. Good Shooting Bill Horton

As an amateur -- I have found, during a grip fitting session,
that if I concentrate on if the front sight is moving left or right during
the trigger pull, my focus remains on the sight rather than looking
at the target or shot placement. JMHO

Practise on a blank target.

JamesH wrote:Practise on a blank target.

James has hit it on the head. I would add lots of dry firing with particular emphasis on precisely what the front sight does after the shot is released .....follow thru.

My problem with the front sight focus is that the target is not cleanly blurred, but rather an oblong, asymmetrically lighted blob. I guess that has something to do with my astigmatism. I don't know how it should be corrected, as I think it's slightly worse with my glasses on than without them, although I have some trouble focusing even on the front sight without glasses. The glasses correct the astigmatism, but maybe it's not quite right when I'm not focusing at the target. I can see the target with glasses very clearly if I just focus on it, but that's not the point here. My optician didn't know how the astigmatism correction works for things far out of focus, maybe I'll have to ask an opthalmologist.

mika wrote:My problem with the front sight focus is that the target is not cleanly blurred, but rather an oblong, asymmetrically lighted blob. I guess that has something to do with my astigmatism. I don't know how it should be corrected, as I think it's slightly worse with my glasses on than without them, although I have some trouble focusing even on the front sight without glasses. The glasses correct the astigmatism, but maybe it's not quite right when I'm not focusing at the target. I can see the target with glasses very clearly if I just focus on it, but that's not the point here. My optician didn't know how the astigmatism correction works for things far out of focus, maybe I'll have to ask an opthalmologist.

In your case, perhaps you need a prescripton set slightly longer than the foresight to get a compromise. That said I'm not sure how an 'oblong blob' is any different to a circular blob. As long as the sight picture looks the same and you don't have a very fuzzy, indistinct blob, then I would have thought that should be OK.

Rob.

RobStubbs wrote: In your case, perhaps you need a prescripton set slightly longer than the foresight to get a compromise. That said I'm not sure how an 'oblong blob' is any different to a circular blob. As long as the sight picture looks the same and you don't have a very fuzzy, indistinct blob, then I would have thought that should be OK.

Rob.

Thanks. I'll find an opthalmologist and propose this. The problem with the "oblong blob" is that it's not vertical or horizontal, it's slanted from upper left to lower right, maybe about 20 degrees from horizontal. May sound weird, but it's a bit difficult to repeatably hold exactly the same. Also, the lower part of the "blob" mixes a bit with the white, but I think I've been able to compensate that rather well to get a repeatable amount of mixing. This varies slightly with lighting, though, but so far I'm not good enough to worry about that too much.

Last Saturday I made a test with interesting results. After shooting rapid fire targets with center hold, I tried center hold for the precision targets as well. I actually got slightly better results than earlier same day using sub 6 hold. Could be just my own inconsistency, though. The difference is that I don't get that confusing mixing effect when I don't have any of the white on top of the front sight.

I do understand the benefits of the sub 6 hold. I think it's simply a time to find a good doctor that has experience of shooters and get a good pair of prescription shooters' glasses.

Mika

Coming back after a visit at an optician that was prepared to work a bit more with my problem - and had a good offer for new glasses. I didn't visit an opthalmologist, but found help to the problem anyway. It had to do with the astigmatism correction. I don't have the prescription of my previous glasses, so I can't compare them, but anyway either the angle or the amount of correction was changed and it helped. Now the sight picture is clear and the target appears as a round out of focus black area. I haven't shot enough after getting the new glasses to really see how much difference it does in points, but shooting is certainly more enjoyable!

Mika

Edit: I got the terms wrong, like many others I guess. I used optician where I should have used optometrist. Anyway, I meant that in my specific case, a person that is qualified to determine the eyesight corrections and prescribe lenses but is not qualified in general medicine or medical or surgical eye care was able to help.

Mika

I had a similar problem once and the only thing that helped me was reading glasses. I needed a certain type of lenses though. It fixed it pretty good after getting the right pair.