flinch?

[chuck-ia]

OK, be honest. How many of you flinch? I guess you don't really know if you flinch unless you have a missfire. I really don't get many missfires anymore, but the last range session I had a missfire, pretty obvious I flinched, sights were not lined up on target when gun did not go off. How many of you can say when you have a missfire, the sights are still on target? flinch

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

The whole flinching thing is a bit strange. I think most people flinch in ANTICIPATION of the pan flash. I say this because the actual flash isn't really noticeable if you keep your eyes open throughout the entire firing sequence--unless, perhaps you have an hellacious overload of priming in the pan. I sometimes wonder if new shooters would flinch at all if they weren't told about it beforehand. My wife had never fired a gun in her life until she fired my flinlock fowler. She doesn't flinch and doesn't notice the flash at all. She's a pretty good shot, too! :thumbsup:

 

[Many Klatch]

The best way to tell if you have a flinch is to see how well you do with a hangfire. If you are still in the black or on paper you don't have a flinch. If you can't find a hole anywhere, you have a flinch. One good way to test it is to do a cannon fuse shoot. This only works with flintlocks.

Load the gun like normal, prime the pan. Stick a short length of cannon fuse in the pan and have someone light it while you aim at the target. The gun will go off when the fuse ignites the pan. People that flinch when they pull the trigger will suddenly be able to hit something since they don't know when the gun is going off.

Many Klatch

 

[wvbuckbuster]

Another way to test if you flinch is to have someone load or not load your gun. Let him hand you his or your gun and not knowing which way it is will allow you to tell when pulling the trigger.

 

[Capt. Jas.]

There is more than one type of flinch. Some can be cured, come can be tamed and some are hopeless.

 

[adrian]

I have a bad flinch when I'm shooting my one of my rock locks! I only have one eye that half ass works, and when the flash goes off I flinch big time!! But I'm working on it :shake: F.J.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Fat Jack: To cure that flinch, shoot that flintlock holding it both hands, but below your shoulder. You can even shoot it from your hips. Concentrate your focus during this practice on the target only.

I once talked to a police Firearms instructor who found he had to have officers put the butt of their police shotguns in their sternums, holding the gun with both hands making a triangle, so that their upper bodies became a turret. With the stock mounted this low, their eyes were looking over the barrel of the riot gun by about 10-12 inches. All the flinching stopped. And, to their surprise, they actually could hit mansize silhouette targets out to 50 yards using shotgun slugs.

He then had them raise the butt up on the sternum until the heel of the stock was actually at the junction of the throat and colar bones. This reduced the height over the barrel for their eyes to about 6 inches, or so. They still could shoot the heavy slug loads, without flinching and without suffering from recoil.

Only after doing this many times did they finally break themselves of flinching when the shotgun was held with the butt in the pocket of the shoulder, in a more conventional stance, with the comb of the stock against their cheeks, and their eyes looking at the front bead down the top of the barrel.

I hope you are always wearing eye protection when you shoot that Bess. That is the best way to calm your subconscious brain and convince it that Nothing is going to injure that remaining " good " eye.

When you mount that musket/rifle to your shoulder, it should mount to your face and shoulder at the same time. Often this requires you to raise the right elbow up and out in line with the shoulder, to create that pocket, and raise the shoulder high enough that the comb is to the side of, and NOT UNDER the cheekbone.

Don't lower your head to the comb- as that is how recoil beats you up! If you mount the stock so low that you have to lower your head to get your cheek against the comb, STOP! take the gun down, and remount it correctly.

The more heads up your stance is, the less likely you are going to anticipate recoil and " flinch". With flintlocks, the more erect your head is, the further away from the flashpan your eyes will be.

If you are wearing glasses, your eye should be looking at the front sight and target thru the middle of the eye socket, not out from under the eyebrow, or up under the corner where the nose and eyebrow meet. Centering the eye in the socket puts the least amount of strain on the eye muscles, and lets the eye focus properly without fatique.

If you keep your head up, you stop putting strain on the neck muscles at the nape of your neck, and shoulders. Without that strain, you are far less likely to flinch. With that strain, you are almost assured to begin to flinch as you continue to shoot and fatigue sets in. :thumbsup:

 

[pulaski]

Best way I found to beat a flinch with a flintlock is with an older , dull , flint .
Sometimes the gun fires , sometimes not . Chip off a small piece of the flint not the whole lead edge . It will fire occasionally . Keep working untill your hold is steady and you can track the front sight .
Just my 2 cents

 

[redwing]

That is very good advise. This works well when shooting a flint lock pistol. :thumbsup:

 

[JohnnyO]

I flinch no matter what gun I am shooting, even my lightly recoiled AR-15. I do seem however to flinch more with my flintlock and it really bugs me :cursing: practice makes perfect though

 

[Trench]

My flinch was horrible when I started shooting flint 2 years ago. I still have one, but it's not all the time. Surprisingly, my flinch doesn't really throw my shots off now. This sounds silly, but before I would shot I would mentally prepare myself not to flinch and keep my eyes open a little wider with intense focus on the sights.

 

[mike alexandre]

It also helps to put just enough powder in the pan as opposed to plenty - it cuts the amount of flash.

 

[Raider2000]

Fat Jack: To cure that flinch, shoot that flintlock holding it both hands, but below your shoulder. You can even shoot it from your hips. Concentrate your focus during this practice on the target only.

I once talked to a police Firearms instructor who found he had to have officers put the butt of their police shotguns in their sternums, holding the gun with both hands making a triangle, so that their upper bodies became a turret. With the stock mounted this low, their eyes were looking over the barrel of the riot gun by about 10-12 inches. All the flinching stopped. And, to their surprise, they actually could hit mansize silhouette targets out to 50 yards using shotgun slugs.

He then had them raise the butt up on the sternum until the heel of the stock was actually at the junction of the throat and colar bones. This reduced the height over the barrel for their eyes to about 6 inches, or so. They still could shoot the heavy slug loads, without flinching and without suffering from recoil.

Only after doing this many times did they finally break themselves of flinching when the shotgun was held with the butt in the pocket of the shoulder, in a more conventional stance, with the comb of the stock against their cheeks, and their eyes looking at the front bead down the top of the barrel.

I hope you are always wearing eye protection when you shoot that Bess. That is the best way to calm your subconscious brain and convince it that Nothing is going to injure that remaining " good " eye.

When you mount that musket/rifle to your shoulder, it should mount to your face and shoulder at the same time. Often this requires you to raise the right elbow up and out in line with the shoulder, to create that pocket, and raise the shoulder high enough that the comb is to the side of, and NOT UNDER the cheekbone.

Don't lower your head to the comb- as that is how recoil beats you up! If you mount the stock so low that you have to lower your head to get your cheek against the comb, STOP! take the gun down, and remount it correctly.

The more heads up your stance is, the less likely you are going to anticipate recoil and " flinch". With flintlocks, the more erect your head is, the further away from the flashpan your eyes will be.

If you are wearing glasses, your eye should be looking at the front sight and target thru the middle of the eye socket, not out from under the eyebrow, or up under the corner where the nose and eyebrow meet. Centering the eye in the socket puts the least amount of strain on the eye muscles, and lets the eye focus properly without fatique.

If you keep your head up, you stop putting strain on the neck muscles at the nape of your neck, and shoulders. Without that strain, you are far less likely to flinch. With that strain, you are almost assured to begin to flinch as you continue to shoot and fatigue sets in. :thumbsup:

That is some very solid advise there, some of which I admittedly have to check on myself to be sure that I am part of a solid foundation & not part of a minor issue in my stance.

 

[BV]

I flinch no matter what gun I am shooting, even my lightly recoiled AR-15. I do seem however to flinch more with my flintlock and it really bugs me :cursing: practice makes perfect though

Disclaimer: I am not trying to come off as sarcastic or trying to belittle anyone else's experience. Also, I'm talking about a real, honest-to-goodness flinch, not a new flintlocker who is merely needs to get used to the flash.


Many times when someone tries to practice "through" a flinch, all they do is practice flinching. As a law enforcement firearms instructor, I have had several occasions to work with people with flinches. The most effective way I have seen to cure this is to use dummy rounds or leave a revolver chamber empty so the shooter doesn't know if they are going to fire or not. Obviously this is much more involved with a muzzleloader than a modern handgun. Having a buddy help with this as listed above will help more than anything you could do. Now bear in mind, this is with people whose problem usually is only a fear of recoil and noise due to inexperience. I suspect, but don't know for certain, when an experienced shooter develops a flinch, it could very well take much longer to correct.

A flinch can be worked through, but only with specific "anti-flinch" practice. Simply continuing to shoot might help (in the long, long, long run) but may also prove to worsen the problem.

 

[rafterob]

Right on about the anticipation factor. I had my daughter shoot off the bench, first time for any type of firearm. After instructing her on the process and lining up the sight picture she was on her own. 1st shot, 1/2" off dead center. 2nd shot, absolute center. Neither her brother nor I have been able to duplicate that!

 

[MikeChapin]

99% of the time I don't flinch. When I start getting tired and concentration starts going I will find myself flinching occasionally. It doesn't really matter if I am shooting a flinter or percussion. When I get tired I will start anticipating recoil and getting a little sloppy in follow through.

As far as flinching from the flash, I don't even notice it unless it is twilight.

The fellas have presented many ways to help with the flinch. I have used a few myself, helping other people get over their flinch. Try some of them if flinching is your problem.

 

[Emet Huntsman]

In my days of shooting on my school's rifle team (that really dates me, doesn't it?) we were coached to make sure every shot was a surprise. Squeeeeeze the trigger until the gun fires -- pad of trigger finger only touching the trigger just below center.
before squeezing, take breath and hold (no more than ten seconds). What I found doing that was that if my rifle had not fired within the first five seconds I would begin to flinch because I was anticipating the shot before my count of ten had run out!
Has worked for me in overcoming my flinching problems :thumbsup:

 

[paulvallandigham]

Actually, Johnny, only " Correct Practice " makes perfect. :wink: :thumbsup:

You might consider the fact that you flinch with all guns is that you have not been practicing correctly with any of them to get rid of your flinch.

I learned to shoot first with a single action revolver. We could skip-load the cylinder, and never know when the gun would go off. You can do the same with any revolver, but to do the same kind of thing with a pistol, you have to make up dummy rounds( casing, bullet,but no powder or live primer).

With a flintlock, you can have someone else load the gun and either not put a charge in the barrel, or not prime the pan. With percussion guns, you are pretty well stuck with having someone Not put a load down the barrel, as you can see whether their is a cap on the nipple when you bring the gun up to shoot.

You should do lots of dry fire practice at home, with an unloaded gun. Put a piece of wood, or a rubber eraser in your cock for practice with a flintlock. Use a pencil eraser over the nipple, or even those plastic valve stem "nuts" for tires over your nipple if you are practicing with a percussion gun.

Concentrate on your front sight movement, and your breath control, squeeze, and follow through. Then adjust your stance to remove strain on you eye and neck muscles, and steady the movement of that front sight. Busy your brain with all these things and it won't have time to respond to any unconscious command to "flinch" when you pull the trigger.

At the range, always wear ear and eye protection. Start out your shooting sessions with a .22 shooting the quietest ammo you have. Work up the noise factor. I even have students begin by hip shooting both handguns and rifles, so the gun is NOT NEAR their eyes and ears when it goes off. They get used the sound the gun, and any movement of the gun in recoil that way. It seems to teach their brain that all their fears about being hurt by the gun when it fires are silly.

If you are using scopes as sights on rifles, consider using a " scout " scope, with its longer eye relief, and position out on the barrel over the forestock, rather than a traditional scope that is mounted on the action, and poses the Optic lens only inches from your eye. The scope tends to both magnify the target, AND ANY RECOIL MOVEMENT, which the brains uses to scare itself. By using the long eye relief scope on your gun, the brain does not hit the panic button when the gun fires, because it knows that the scope is too far away to hurt the head in recoil.

I helped one long time shooter of scopes get past his flinch by taking the scope off his gun, and having him shoot the gun with iron sights. I did have him do some dry firing, and just to busy his brain, I had him close his eyes, and point the gun off at an angle to the targets, then called out a number for him to shoot, so that he had to move quickly to locate the target and fire fast. Sometimes I put a cartridge in the chamber. Sometimes I didn't. I loaded his magazine one cartridge at a time, and sometimes just made the noise but didn't leave a live round to cycle into the chamber.

The only shooting coach I had when I was growing up was my father. He had no formal training as a coach. But he become a very accurate shooter killing rats in the alleys of Chicago back in the late 1920s with his .22 rifle. And, he seemed to know how to spot what I was doing wrong when I began missing the targets. If you have a shooting coach available at any local range, hire him for some lessons. If not, ask experienced and competent shooters to watch you and give you pointers. DO WHATEVER they tell you to do, no matter what you think. Whatever you have been doing isn't working too well, or you wouldn't need their help, right? Once you do it their way, no matter how wrong it seems to you, and do it correctly, THEN, and only THEN can you evaluate their advice as useful or not.

I am Left-Handed and some of the things good shooters do who are right-handed with right handed guns just don't work for me. But they are very few, and they relate solely to how the particular gun is designed to function. I learned a long time ago to look at the Stance and foot placement of fine shooters, who were right-handed, and simply reverse the positions of the feet when I shoot Left-handed. Speedy operation of a Right handed bolt action also requires different movements by Left-handed shooters. I love to hand my LH bolt action gun to RH shooters, and have them dry fire the gun and cycle the bolt. Its the first time for most of them to really understand the problems these gun designs pose for LHed shooters. Then I get to teach them to " improvise, overcome, and adapt."

(For instance, loading a clip in a M-1 Garand works for RHed shooters, but doesn't for LHers. I had a shooting coach helping me qualify for my CMP rating using his Garand, and even he laughed when he realized that I could not load that clip of cartridges in the gun with my left hand the way he had been trained, and loaded the clip with his right hand, and avoid the "M-1 Thumb".)

Practicing your same mistakes over and over again only reinforces these mistakes, and makes them a deeply held muscle memory activity, much harder to change and overcome. If you find yourself flinching, STOP shooting immediately, and call it a day. Sometimes just getting a better night's sleep and rest is all you need to clear you head ang stop flinching. If you flinch again the next time you are at a range, STOP, and have someone skip load the gun, or just practice dry fire exercises for the rest of the session. One or two good shots at the end of the session, where you don't flinch will do you more good than shooting 20 to 50 shots while you continue to flinch. If recoil is the culprit, then use reduced loads during practice, and shoot the heavy loads only at the end of the session, or only just before you go hunting. If you shoot only "rhino rollers" in practice, all you are doing is teaching your brain that shooting that gun is going to cause you pain, and that is not a good association you want your brain to be making, consciously, or subconsciously. :thumbsup:

 

[J.D.]

Actually, Johnny, only " Correct Practice " makes perfect. :wink: :thumbsup:

You might consider the fact that you flinch with all guns is that you have not been practicing correctly with any of them to get rid of your flinch.

Practicing your same mistakes over and over again only reinforces these mistakes, and makes them a deeply held muscle memory activity, much harder to change and overcome. If you find yourself flinching, STOP shooting immediately, and call it a day. Sometimes just getting a better night's sleep and rest is all you need to clear you head ang stop flinching. If you flinch again the next time you are at a range, STOP, and have someone skip load the gun, or just practice dry fire exercises for the rest of the session. One or two good shots at the end of the session, where you don't flinch will do you more good than shooting 20 to 50 shots while you continue to flinch. If recoil is the culprit, then use reduced loads during practice, and shoot the heavy loads only at the end of the session, or only just before you go hunting. If you shoot only "rhino rollers" in practice, all you are doing is teaching your brain that shooting that gun is going to cause you pain, and that is not a good association you want your brain to be making, consciously, or subconsciously. :thumbsup:

Paul is right on about good practice.

It takes 40 roughly hours of practice to establish instinctive muscle memory, and probably twice that to eliminate bad habits.

I learned to shoot a flint gun by dry firing, with a wood block in place of the flint, every day for a month. The gun was held in the shooting position with the sights aligned, to establish muscle memory for follow through, for a full 5 seconds after the "shot was fired".

The second month, powder was flashed in the pan. No live rounds were fired. The gun was again held with the sights aligned for a full 5 seconds after the shot was "fired".

The third month, very light loads, about 20 gr of powder in a 54 cal, were fired at a target only 20 ft away. The goal was to learn follow through, holding the gun steady while the ball exited the barrel. The POI was nearly 12 inches below the "X", but the location of the group doesn't matter, only shooting a group. Again, follow through lasted a full 5 seconds after the shot was fired.

My first match was shot the week following the completion of this program. I took third out of a field of over 100 shooters...my first time out with a flint gun.

I want to reiterate that no live rounds were fired during this three month program, other than the reduced loads in the third month.

When I do develop a flinch, and everyone does from time to time, I go back to the basics of dry fire with a wood block in place of the flint. The flinch is eliminated with anywhere from several 10-15 minute sessions of dryfire several times in a single day, to a coupla weeks of practice.

 

[chuck-ia]

I think, (for me) the most important is a fast lock, I try to concentrate on the sights, and gradually squeeze the trigger,and concentrate,try to follow through. On a good day I can keep the shots in the black on a nmlra postal target.At 50 yards on a good day I may put 1 or 2 in the black and the rest in the scoring ring of same target. thanks for the suggestions. chuck