What To Practice For A Shooting Open

[Colvis]

I went out purchased a new Open gun the other day. I'm checking with Grams and going to look into getting him to tune my mags for me.

I've been shooting Limited with a Paa for about a year now. I want to move up into Open class. When making the transition, what should I practice on to make things run smoothly. I know that I'm going to have to do tons of dryfire to get used to acquiring the dot, what else would be some good drills or practice to get acclamated to shooting Open??

[eric nielsen]

Make yourself look at the targets. This tip was written by Jojo Vidanes years ago & it really helps me a lot:

Tape a small piece of white paper to surround the front [muzzle side] of your optic lens. Then both your eyes will HAVE to focus out on the targets & your brain will combine the image of the target with your off eye & the image of the dot with your dominant eye.

It will all look normal, right up until you slip and start moving your focus in toward the gun. Then your view of everything will be like - Huh? - and that's because you're trying to look at the piece of white paper. I find this still happens to me when I practice weak-hand shooting. I guess the other hand holding the gun tempts my eyes to look at it.

Sometimes the blast coming off the comp & barrel with blow the paper off of your C-more or tube sight or whatever. If it won't stay on then just do this trick during dry-fire.

To transition from iron sites to a slide-mounted dot like the Docter, this advice goes 3x more important. It's tough to stop looking at the slide when your optic is moving with the slide. Time each shot with the dot & the target spot, not by the slide slamming shut.

Edited July 14, 2006 by eric nielsen

[Jake Di Vita]

The biggest thing to remember is that having a dot does not mean you no longer have to aim.

[Jon Merricks]

I think you are headed in the right direction with the dry firing. Barricades and other awkward positions will also help you not to lose the dot. Really learn to push your self especially on transitions. Maybe this is not the right way to do it but during some practices I would push so hard for speed that I would have to let my accuracy catch up. This was all part of teaching my eyes what they needed to see at speeds they were not used to. The key thing is that the accuracy does have to catch up or the speed is irrelevant.

[Colvis]

Today I picked up my Grandmaster...WOW! Aside from having to break it in, it's a sweet ride!!!! Today was the first time I ever shot an Open Gun as well. I know what you're thinking, why would anyone buy an Open gun without ever having shot one first? Funny I bought my STI Edge and all of my gear without having ever shot an IPSC Match too (I shot IDPA before). Luckily I liked it, and here I am now with my new Open gun and loving it.

While I was waiting to get it, I read all 32 posts on the Open forum to find out everything I possible could about Open guns. I was so surprised that when I started shooting it today, it didn't seem to take very much for me to get used to it. I honestly figured that there'd be a big learning curve to Holding, Aiming, and Shooting it, but I picked up on it really quickly. I guess shooting Limited iron sighted guns really helped. I know that there's quite much I will need to learn in the transition, but todays session went really well.

I really think I've found my new division.

[Jon Merricks]

If you really put some effort into it you will see your overall shooting performance rise. Learn from the dot and welcome to the dark side.

[Fireant]

Clovis,

Do you shoot JAX on the 2nd Sat.? I just did my first practice with my new open blaster and it felt great. i'll be switching from limited to open now also. Maybe we can squad together sometime and help each other with the new blasters.