Question For Left Handers

[greyrelic]

I need the help and opinions of the lefties here. I shoot limited and limited 10 only. From Brian's book and the other information I could find here it seems that right handed shooters use a grip with more pressure exerted by the weak(left) hand. I have tried this and find that when I do this as a left hander, I cause the front sight to veer to the right dramatically.

Experimentation leads me to believe that for a left hander to cause the front sight to rise straight up and down, the left wrist should be very firm to counteract the guns tendency to torque to the right. I find that for me, the less grip pressure and wrist firmness in the right(weak) hand, the more vertical the front sight rises and the easier it is for me to track it during recoil. The best results seem to come with my right hand and wrist exerting almost no control, just kind of along for the ride.

I would be very interested in the experiences and opinion of the other left handers on the board.

Thanks.

[benos]

It's not important for the front sight to move straight up and down.

What is extremely important is that your front sight moves up and returns back (to where it started from) on exactly the same path, each time.

It does not matter if this path is an arc instead of the theoretical straight line.

The guns/sights tendency to travel in an arc is influenced by MANY factors, two of which are barrel twist and the angle/position of each elbow, respective to each other (in a two-handed hold).

If you just grip the gun with a firm, uniform grip with each hand, then, really learn to SEE AND TRACK the front sight's path in relationship to the vertical sides of the rear notch, you'll be "on the path."

[greyrelic]

After reading Brian's reply(several times) and spending some time in "the book", made a trip to the range today for experiments and practice.

Started out without a target firing into the berm, just watching the sights and trying different grip pressures and elbow positions. Fire one round, watch front sight come back, fire one and watch front sight come back. After about twenty rounds of this, found that a very light neutral grip with both elbows up and out(just below shoulder level) produced noticably better results in sight return.

Marked one target with a 5" circle and engaged it from 21 yards so I would have to reacquire the sights between shots. Set the timer on delay with gun mounted; at beep fired first round into circle, the second round as fast as I could get a sight picture. Second round had to be in the circle to count. Tried this with my usual grip and elbow position. Splits between shots were between .60 and .66. Yeah, I'm old and slow.

With the above very light neutral grip and my elbows up the splits dropped to .52 to .56. I didn't believe it the first time, so I repeated it four times. Same results.

Still not gonna cause anyone to lose sleep over my shooting, but dam I feel encouraged.

THANK YOU, Brian!

[Newguy]

I'm also a left-handed shooter who finds that with each successive target my shots land further to the right. Given the gun's natural torque to the right, I realized that resting my thumb on the right side safety is probably aiding that torque--I end up steering the gun to the right by using the thumb safety to help steady the recoil. Right-hand shooters who rest their thumbs on the left safety probably counter some of the right torque and it may end up more neutral. BTW, this may not be a big problem for left-handed shooters with strong grips and excellent mastery of recoil.

The answer may be for left-hand shooters to keep their thumbs off the safety in search of the neutral hold. I'm going to work on that when the weather gets better. The only problem is that my wide paddle safety makes it difficult to keep the thumb away from it. If my theory works, it's grinding wheel time.

[Flexmoney]

Visual Patience.