SimonM Posted October 9, 2005 Share Posted October 9, 2005 Hello! This topic has been discussed here before, but here's my situation. I've been thinking about the idea of getting an open gun to train with during the "off-season". I've been shooting Berettas in production this year and plan on staying with it. However, I have some issues in my shooting which need to be addressed. I tend to be too tense while shooting and I don't always shift my focus on the next target as quickly as I'd suppose to. These are some of the things I'd like to get rid of and I think that using an open gun might help a little. Since the pistol would be easier to shoot with that might help my body to realize I don't have to fight the gun as I'm doing now most of the time. On rare occasions I get the sensation of floating the gun and I'm feeling smooth, but then it disappears... I've been shooting with a .22 equipped with a dot and it seemed a lot easier (of course) to hit the next target faster than with iron sights. I'm hoping the use of the dot would make me move my eyes to the next target rather than staying with the sights all the way through the transition. So basically where I'm getting at here is that I might be quicker and more relaxed shooter after training with an open gun. The pistol I'd be getting would be 2011 based so the grip angle wouldn't be all that different from the Beretta. The shape of the grip would be, but not the angle. Especially if one thinks about the differences between a Glock and a 1911 for example. I've read that after shooting with an open gun one should start getting to use their iron sighted pistol pistol early enough to get familiar iwth it before the match season. I'm thinking two months prior to the competitions might be okay, since I don't intend to neglect the Beretta alltogether during the off-season. Tell me what you think about my rationale. There must be lots of guys who have tried this. Simon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eric nielsen Posted October 9, 2005 Share Posted October 9, 2005 Click: Top shooter's advice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
standles Posted October 9, 2005 Share Posted October 9, 2005 Wow great Link to post Eric. Alot of what I was going to say was said much better in there. I just started shooting open and in the month I have had my gun I have learned alot from the dot. Steven Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonM Posted October 9, 2005 Author Share Posted October 9, 2005 That's a great link! I remember reading it a while back. There seems to be people in favor of learning through shooting open and then there's guys who feel it's difficult to get back to using iron sights. I'm still wondering if it's beneficial to use so much money to get another pistol rather than using it on ammo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wide45 Posted October 9, 2005 Share Posted October 9, 2005 Can you get a mount to put a good dot on your pistol? Cost will be so much less than a full open rig, and you will be shooting the same gun with the same loads. You will have less to relearn. Ignore those that say you will not be competitive without the latest maximum zoot open gun. It is how you shoot that makes you competitive. If you are operating under a classification system like we do in USPSA, equipment is meaningless. Or do you just want a reason to go full boat open? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rtr Posted October 9, 2005 Share Posted October 9, 2005 I switched from production to Open a little over a year ago in an effort to improve my shooting, I was a D class production shooter, I'm now a B class open shooter, it definitely has improved my trigger control and a variety of other skills. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m.e.t. Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 I took the Double Impact class this past Feb. They both told us to shoot open for a year and it would make us better limited shooters. Short of that they suggested we practice with a pistol with a dot. Their contention was that the dot helps you speed up transitions and smooths out your shooting on the move. I have since mounted a 22 with a C-More. Much more feedback than the 1/2 full water bottle. I use it in dry fire for the above mentioned transitions and movement drills. It does high light your short comings. And it has made me humble in the extreme. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eric nielsen Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 Many new uspsa shooters will sort of hit a wall, where their skills at shooting a stage, handling the gun, and managing recoil all improve a ton. But they get frustrated with misses they don't call on paper, steel that won't go down without repeated make-up shots. For these people, an Open gun or even a Production gun with C-More or Docter can be a big eye-opener. Shows your quality of hold, quality of trigger press, shows what's happening shooting on the move. It can give you back the love of shooting in a hurry. We have so many Divisions now, maybe you can swap guns with a buddy from your club - for a week or ten - just to try it out. [Hint, Rika, Hint] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RayKu Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 Great advice all around. I recently bought an open gun from one of the members of my club, and I can already see the advantages of training with the dot sight. Calling shots, transitions, shooting on the move, trigger pull, everything that everyone has mentioned can be refined and diagnosed much more quickly following the bouncing dot. Mine is an apparantly reliable optima sight mounted on a 5 inch SV hybrid. This set up allows me to have the same NPA as my limited and production guns. Combined with dry firing drills the dot definitely helped me achieve my best placements of the year at this past weekend's local match (too bad its the end up here in Ohio) with a second place open 4th in limited. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Olhasso Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 SimonM: Since you shoot a Beretta in production, and your goal is to get better in production, then I would stick with a Beretta. You can get another gun and throw a doctor sight on it. Or you can just get another slide and thow a doctor on it. I swap slides on my guns all the time. This is by far the cheapest and easiest route. Spend the money saved on ammo. www.olhasso.com/beretta Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew_Mink Posted October 10, 2005 Share Posted October 10, 2005 Not to mention Dave's got the neatest Open Beretta I've ever seen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonM Posted October 10, 2005 Author Share Posted October 10, 2005 Thanks for the input guys! On of the reasons I'm interested in getting an open gun to train with in 2011 configuration is because I've been using them (STI Edge) in standard class earlier and liked them. There's not much experience about slidemounted optics such as the Docter over here, but I guess you have found it to be quite durable. David: It's very nice to hear comments from the Beretta expert! We had a discussion about your pistols in Equador; I'm the finnish shooter using the Stock model. It was great to meet you in person. Using another Beretta as a base for building a training pistol is an interesting option, but I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do. I'm not sure about the availability of slides etc. in Finland. The more I get comments about this the more it seems that I need some sort of a pistol with optics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rikarin Posted October 12, 2005 Share Posted October 12, 2005 Buhahahahaha! Geez, how do you know I was reading this thread! Scary! There's no way I can put reddot on my XD. mmm, maybe someone has opengun which he/she doesn't use for awhile [hint, er, you know...] [Hint, Rika, Hint] <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benos Posted October 12, 2005 Share Posted October 12, 2005 On its own, just training with an Open gun may improve your stock gun shooting (because of the reasons listed in both threads). You can accelerate the improvement, however, if you remember a few things. First, as you're shooting the Open gun, direct your attention toward remembering how it feels. Remember the feeling in as many places in your body as you can. How much easier and calmer you feel, with your whole body. How quickly your eye moves to find the next target because you called the previous shot with certainty. Since you're not muscling the gun as much - remember the feeling of how nicely the gun tracks if you let it. Experiment and come up with ways to remember shooting experience that work for you. Then when you switch back to your stock gun - remember to remember the feelings you remembered. The only drawback to training with an Open gun, either for a long time or exclusively, is your eyes can get lazy. Since your focal plane is always on the targets, you never have to "reel in" your vision. be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeFoley Posted October 12, 2005 Share Posted October 12, 2005 (edited) Does this work for everyone? Can practice with a dot-sighted rimfire give you the same training? What if you simply don't have an interest in shooting open in USPSA? I have shot open once with a very nice Bedell open gun Vikings501 loaned me, and I saw some things happen a little faster, but really didn't leave the range wanting an open gun. I know there are those here who think this is blasphemy, but it just didn't get my adrenaline flowing any better than my other guns do. Edited October 12, 2005 by fomeister Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexmoney Posted October 12, 2005 Share Posted October 12, 2005 Just to play devils' advocate... Shooting a 23oz. Limited gun, with 190pf ammo can teach you a lot about your grip and stance. Shooting it without sights can teach you a lot about your index and about being aware of less-visible inputs from your shooting. (Probably not as easy or as fun as shooting Open) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonM Posted October 13, 2005 Author Share Posted October 13, 2005 The only drawback to training with an Open gun, either for a long time or exclusively, is your eyes can get lazy. Since your focal plane is always on the targets, you never have to "reel in" your vision. I thought about this and I've come up with a solution of some sort. I hope. While I intend to train mostly with the open gun (during the off-season) I'm going to keep shooting and dryfiring the Beretta also. And the iron sights aren't the only reason to do so since I want to keep in touch with that DA first shot. I'm hoping I don't get too confused. From what I've understood Steve Anderson for example shoots a Beretta in production and uses the Caspian for open, which is quite near the STI if we consider the ergonomics. I don't know how he trains though; only open, say for two months, and then only production for another period of time. One thing I noticed when I moved from my standard STI to shooting a Beretta was that I had to relearn my triggerfinger position. After the DA first shot my finger was in a position where I was pulling the trigger with the first joint and throwing my shots of to the side. I don't think that it will be that much on an issue any more and the transition between the guns will be rather painless since I've played with both for while now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Weidhaas Posted October 15, 2005 Share Posted October 15, 2005 Open gun to train for limited or production: Quick story regarding my 12yr old son and our experience with this......... My son has been shooting centerfire pistols for 2 years, since age 10. He started shooting IDPA and then USPSA at age 11. A year ago this past July, we got him an open gun after he took a class with Todd J. Todd told us that if he really wants to learn to shoot and improve faster to get him an open gun. He said the open gun (dot) shows/teaches you so much and allows you to do things so much faster that when you go back to limited, you carry over much of what you learned with the open gun. That said, I worked a bunch of OT and got the boy a gun. Now prior to shooting an open gun my son shot a single stack Caspian limited gun in .38sup. He had not touched his limited since getting his open gun. Last week he wanted to shoot some IDPA with me and we pulled out his single stack. He shot really well, made 1st round head shots on swingers (target called for 2 body 1 head), no misses, down few points. I was amazed at how well he shot his limited gun after not shooting it for a year. The time with his open gun really seemed to help his limited gun skills. You would not of known that he had not shot the limited gun for the last year. Although not really scientific, it seemed to prove what Todd had told us. Nick- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErikW Posted October 18, 2005 Share Posted October 18, 2005 Shooting my Open gun at steel is making me pay attention to trigger control. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincent Posted October 18, 2005 Share Posted October 18, 2005 I just got an Open gun in an attempt to help me through a performance plateau. I too hope that by training with the dot I will be able to more quickly figure some things out that I have not yet been able to do with an iron sighted gun. I have heard that shooting Open will help from so many top competitors that also shoot iron sights that I believe there has to be something to it. Only time will tell. However just like anything else, the dot is not a magic wand it's up to the shooter to put in the effort needed to really learn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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