Do You "Blink" as you fire a shotgun

B

BigJimP

New member
I've been shooting clay targets for 40+ yrs -- and handguns, and hunting big game and birds for a long time as well ...I was never rated above class B in sporting clays or any other clay target game / just a "club shooter" for the most part ...but

I went thru an extensive defensive handgun training for 3 days last week --and one thing the instructor was trying to work with me, and others, is to try and keep your eyes open after you pull the trigger ....and not blink ...in his opinion, if you can shoot without blinking ....you can track the sights better, and shoot faster and more accurately ...and if you do blink, its the start of a flinch ( maybe because I shoot too much at in-door ranges especially for handguns twice a week ... and not blinking did make a difference ...

Instructor was no shotgunner ...but I'm wondering if my misses on a Skeet field ( like dropping low 8 two weeks ago, for a 24 instead of a 25 ) ...might be because I'm blinking sometimes, or maybe often, as I fire a shell ??

Opinions - on whether you blink as you fire a shotgun ? Do you even know if you do ? ( you'd have to have someone stand beside you and look at your eyes ) ... What do some of the big name shooters / instructors say about "hard focus" - or more specifically "not blinking" ...as you shoot Sporting or Skeet, etc ...

Any "tricks" on "Not Blinking" ? ( open your eyes like an Owl or something ) ...

I appreciate your thoughts ...
 
I find that if I'm wearing shooting glasses I don't blink with a shotgun or a .22, however I still blink with my black powder guns just because they make so much smoke and you have little embers flying everywhere. I also blink with high power rifles unless I have a really slow trigger pull, then I can make my self not blink. Its just practice, I've forced myself not to blink, but I still do majority of the time.

My advise is stay absolutely focused on the target and don't think about anything other than the target. When a have an absolutely clear conscious and literally have no thought in my mind and I am focused on nothing but the target, I don't blink and a rarely miss. When i think about how much to lead the target or when to fire, I usually miss and I always blink.
 
Shooting rifles with scopes, I always closed one eye, and since I started shooting those first, I had a real bad habit of shooting shotgun with closing one eye. Now I keep both eyes open, but I still find myself closing my off eye right as I pull the trigger. I don't shoot as much handgun as you do Jim, but I tend to keep both eyes open, so I can see how bad my shot is!.....:eek:
 
I'm not talking about shooting with 2 eyes open...vs one eye open ..

I do shoot with 2 eyes open ...with shotguns and handguns ...

I'm talking about "blinking" - with the dominant eye, or both eyes, as I fire the gun / as a noise reflex or something ??
 
You're starting to get on my nerves ...:D ...no I'm not trying to develop a flinch .../ and I'm happy for you, if you don't blink ...(although I'm not sure I believe you ) ...;)

but I think I probably do blink when I fire a shotgun / if I blink every time I fire a 1911 in 9mm ...

What do you think the "big boys" - like Todd Bender, Bobby Fowler Jr, etc think about blinking / or more specifically how to prevent it ...unless they have the eyes of an eagle ...(which they do ..) but do they coach against it, or have any tricks you've heard to stop it ...( I need help here man ...) ...not sympathy ...not that you were offering any ( you were just laughing ..) ;)
 
Not laughing, my friend, as I said, 95% of the time I am closing my off eye as I pull the trigger. Been trying to help a new shotgunner - decades of rifle match shooting has him holding his gun like an M-1A.....his scores suck, it's just an ingrained habit (they wanted me to work a little with him and have him watch me because we are both LH, not because I am a great shot...:eek:)

Is this just something you started or have you been doing it a while?

I mentioned the anticipatory flinch only because I watched someone develop one after surgery (not too dissimilar what you went through)......

You might get on shotgunworld.com and find the forum that Anthony Matarese "moderates" and ask him
 
( I think you were laughing ...but ok ) if you say so ...

I don't know if I've had it a long time or not / or if its related to my 20/350 vision and now my "off and on" blurry vision in my dominant eye ...but I'm sure none of that helps ...

I'm sure the pros would probably say, don't blink ...but can you really control it ??
 
I dont think blinking is going to make you lose the low 8 bird, since that stage is only one at a time. In fact, I dont think that blinking may play a big part in skeet/sporting clays at all. Now, if you didnt blink, im sure that would be somewhat beneficial.

I would imagine blinking would hurt you the most when you are trying to take a quick follow up shot with a pistol. Your blink and the muzzle rise would happen at the same time, and when you eye opened again, you would not see the sights for a split second.

I found with time, my blinking went away....
--George
 
I think you should try to not blink. Having a surprise trigger break rather than an intentional one would probably help matters, but for the most part shotgunners tend to have a more deliberate trigger pull IMO
 
Well ...

we were doing "Bill Drills" with handguns the other day --- goal was 4.5 sec or less - hands at your sides ( drawing gun from holster / putting 6 rounds on target / IPSC A zone hits ) ... and I was a lot better when I could keep from blinking ...Targets at 10 yds ... My primary handgun is set up with a 3 1/2 lb trigger ...so I would have thought that would help me / not hurt me ..

My shotguns are all setup with triggers around 4 1/2 lbs ....

my shotgun scores have come down as my eyes have gotten way worse the last couple of years ...so I'm wondering if its because I may be blinking when I don't realize it ?? I think I have hard focus on the target - and watch a target break ...but I just don't know ...(so something else to work on ..).

Tips on how you guys keep from blinking are welcome ...:D
 
Jim, one of my shooting friends was having a hard time with targets - I told him to get his eyes checked as a matter of course - turns out he had cataracts - got the surgery, no glasses for the first time in about 40 years, still getting used to it, but his shooting is improving. NOT saying you're in the same boat, but how are your eyes doing?
 
Brian Enos calls it looking through the shot. If you can learn to do this then you will find that suddenly you will be able to call your shots.

If you blink when you touch it off, then you don't even really know where your sights were at the moment of ignition? Huh? :D

How can you have a suprise break when you're anticipating it? You turn off your vision and pull the shot off in effort to get it over with? (I think this is what happens). I do it too, I am not saying I don't. I am pretty good at looking through the shot but lets face it, with heavy recoiling guns it gets harder to argue with ones central nervous system late in the range day.

I like switching back and forth between a 22 and my 44 Mag. When I do it enough, and empty my mind when I shoot, I can fool my brain into thinking a 22 is coming. The hammer falls and there is no blink or wavering of the muzzle, just a bullseye and the millisecond of suprise as the brain catches up to the realization that that was no 22, that was another 300 grainer :D
 
Brian Enos calls it looking through the shot. If you can learn to do this then you will find that suddenly you will be able to call your shots.

If you blink when you touch it off, then you don't even really know where your sights were at the moment of ignition? Huh? :D

How can you have a suprise break when you're anticipating it? You turn off your vision and pull the shot off in effort to get it over with? (I think this is what happens). I do it too, I am not saying I don't. I am pretty good at looking through the shot but lets face it, with heavy recoiling guns it gets harder to argue with ones central nervous system late in the range day.

I like switching back and forth between a 22 and my 44 Mag. When I do it enough, and empty my mind when I shoot, I can fool my brain into thinking a 22 is coming. The hammer falls and there is no blink or wavering of the muzzle, just a bullseye and the millisecond of suprise as the brain catches up to the realization that that was no 22, that was another 300 grainer :D
 
My eyes have gotten terrible ---over the last 3 yrs...

Started wearing glasses at 18 / they stayed maybe 20/100 thru my early 50's / then its all downhill ....and I've been checked for cataracts, glaucoma, etc ...and all that's fine .... / my blurry dominant eye is a couple of yrs old and its a weak muscle problem - but it comes and goes. The solution, in my progressive bifoculs ...was to add a "prism" into the prescription ...to force the muscle into doing the right thing ...( but it sucks ) . Some days on a round of 25 Skeet targets - I see 20 real clearly / some maybe 10 ...

Medically - ( for the big stuff ) -the eyes are ok ...

I guess I'd never thought about blinking as an issue / didn't know I did it frankly. Figured it would be easy to stop doing it / but I'm having trouble with stopping it ...

Last week, I was shooting a very nice 1911, finely tuned to a 3 1/2 lb trigger and chambered in 9mm ( that's when this came up ) ...and while I could quit blinking for awhile / I couldn't control it for an hour or more ... and today I was just thinking about my Skeet, Sporting shooting ... and maybe Brian Enos's idea of "looking thru the shot" is a key I can try ....

I'm shooting Skeet, Sporting Clays and 5 Stand with one of my boys on Sunday ...so I will give it a try / thanks for the thoughts guys. Even just being aware of it -- can't make it a bad thing ....
 
I wondered over the blinking thing too. What I was shown sounds kind of strange- but it's helped. I spoke about it to a shooting coach (rifle & pistol). He said, "Have you ever wondered exactly what the front sight(bead) does when the shot goes off? Watch that and only that for a while." So, for about just short of 2 boxes of shells, I pointed towards a berm and only watched and focused on the bead. It helped to slow everything down and exaggerate the trigger squeeze and let off, and to keep my eye on the bead until I recovered from the recoil and the SG was back on it's original level plain. I don't shoot at those clay pigeons very often (often enough)- but it's done wonders on dove hunts and service rifle shoots.
 
Do you blink when you have a snap cap in? Can you have someone load a revolver or semi with live and AZOOMS and then if you do it with both? If so, I would think it is an anticipatory thing
 
Jim, my friend, are you talking about a voluntary closing of the eyes as you pull the trigger, or an involuntary blink reflex from the gun going off?

When shotgunning I try to shoot with both eyes open. When the cross firing bug comes to visit, I'll put a bit of tape over my off-eye lens; but, usually it means I'm watching the bead instead of the bird -- bad habits are hard to break. With the shotgun I don't bother to consider trigger control beyond getting my finger properly positioned on the trigger -- when I see the lead I pull the trigger.

With handguns it's different. As you know, my pistol training is much less aggressive than yours. I'm slow and deliberate, when the trigger breaks I want it to be a surprise. So, I don't have a voluntary blink. If there's an involuntary blink, it's much faster than the 1/4 to 1/3-second the books say is average. I say this only after this afternoon's experience: I was sighting-in a new red dot sight on my M41. I was conscious of being able to see the trace path of the red dot as the gun recoiled -- if I'd blinked, wouldn't the trace have been interrupted? Time after time, as I tried to follow through, I could follow the trace of the dot's motion under recoil.

I'm guessing, for your style of tactical pistol shooting, your trigger work is similar to your shotgunning -- a quick pull as opposed to a slow squeeze. Consequently, you're well aware of exactly when the pistol is going to go off and it would be easy for your sub-conscious to anticipate and blink as the hammer falls. How about slowing way down and trying some bullseye-like slow-fire trigger work. Perhaps it would tell you what's going on with your eyes.
 
Try breaking up your shooting sessions with some dry firing. Is it just a blink or a small flinch? I think you mentioned being able to focus on not blinking for a good amount of shooting but toward the end of the day you start again, that would be a good time for a sandwich and some dry firing before shooting again.

I did a six week shooting course which put us shooting between 6-800 rounds of .45 every day in the middle of an Okinawan summer, before lunch breaks, and before finishing for the day almost everyone had some degree of a minor flinch, so we would finish shooting at 25 yards with dummy drills and watch each other flinch, then we'd dry-fire for 15-20 minutes before packing up to eliminate that flinch.

The dry firing and resting are crucial, build it into your head that you are going to see that front sight through your entire shot. When you stop seeing it, take a break.

I don't know how much this would help with shotgunning, but it will help with the pistol.
 
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