Can Pistol Practice Help Your Rifle Shooting?

[EricW]

Trigger control is trigger control ... one may have a better trigger than the other, but for any given trigger, you have to press it backward without disturbing your sight picture too much for a given required accuracy.

Boy, I sure wish shooting my rifle and shooting my pistol was the same. (Help me Pat!)

THE TOPIC ISN'T ABOUT REPLACING RIFLE PRACTICE WITH PISTOL PRACTICE.

Boy, you could have fooled me.

Consider this: Maybe pistol shooting didn't help your rifle shooting as much as a simple break from rifle shooting. Taking a moderate break from an activity can often lead to improved performance upon resumption of said activity.

I'm not picking on you out of meanness, I'm trying to make a point. That being that a whole lot of people zero their rifles then hardly touch them again prior to game day - all on the false premise that trigger time is trigger time and that one type suffices for another.

It's a practice that's really hurting people. (It's hurt me tremendously.)

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You say po - tay - toe! I say po - tah - toe!.......

[rhino]

Boy, you could have fooled me.

Sheesh! How many ways can I say the same thing? If I were typing with someone for whom I had less respect, I might think you were being more than a bit disingenuous. I will continue to assume otherwise.

Maybe pistol shooting didn't help your rifle shooting as much as a simple break from rifle shooting.

Hah! So taking breaks from my rifle shooting are what's helping ... then if I never shoot rifle again, I will be G David Tubb in a few years ... but then I'll ruin it if I test the theory because I won't be laying off anymore ...

I've never practiced significantly with my rifle. Outside of exactly two three-day "tactical" classes plus shooting in 3-Gun matches a few times a year, the thing sits in its case. There really wasn't much of anything from which I could take a break, other than NOT practicing. Heh!

Maybe I just suck so badly with my rifle that any shooting at all will help. Going from zero to 0.000000001 is a huge improvement in terms of percentage!

I'm going to work harder on that layoff idea. It will probably work for pistola too!

[DogmaDog]

I'm with you, Rhino-man.

Back in '98 the conventional wisdom on the Marine shooting teams seemed to be that you could usually make a pretty good rifle shooter out of a pistol shooter, but it was hard to make a good pistol shooter out of a good rifle shooter. There was also this feeling that trigger control has greater relative importance than sight alignment in pistol, and it's the other way in rifle.

Of course, we're talking about highpower rifle shooting, and bullseye pistol shooting in all of this.

What I've found is that shooting a lot of USPSA pistol stuff seems to have helped with trigger control in rifle shooting, in the offhand position especially, I had a very hard time getting the gun to go off when the sights were good. My trigger pull was either just too damn slow, or I jerked it...either way I'd wind up with an 8 or even a 7.

Last time I went to the requal range, I felt I was able to use a much more deliberate trigger pull without jerking...I could pull NOW!, and hit the center.

I've also gotten better at calling shots...I can tell you in much more detail what happened during a rapid fire rifle string.

I think the rifle shooting can inform your pistol shooting in terms of muscle relaxation, natural point of aim, and visual patience.

For me it's rare that I can get to a rifle range where I can shoot out to 500 or 600 yards. It's logistically difficult to practice rifle--have to travel a lot further downrange to set up targets, etc. etc. And I can't shoot as much with a rifle as I do with a pistol, but shooting a pistol often does seem to have helped me maintain my rifle skills, at least as indicated by my last outing to the requal range.

Yeah, obviously, if you want to be a great rifle shooter, practice shooting your rifle. But if you want to be a good 3-gunner, and you have a choice between shooting 5 rounds of rifle and 5 rounds of pistol, or shooting 2 or 3 rounds of rifle and 20 pistol, I don't think you'd be stupid to choose the latter.

I will side with Eric's advice to keep your rifle on the bench, though

DogmaDog

[Jake Di Vita]

Take an awesome pistol shooter with no rifle experience and he will be better at rifle than the awesome rifle shooter with no experience shooting a pistol when you put a pistol in his hands.

[rhino]

Amd of you take a crappy pistol shooter and put a rifle in his hands, you get ... me!

[skeeter]

well i wouldn't say crappy..... just a little slow maybe, that miss's to much, who doesn't call his shots all the time who... ok maybe crappy fits. but getting better everytime i see you lately.

[rhino]

It's all true except for the getting better part!