Thread: I love my Rossi .357 levergun, but I don't shoot well with it.

I would like to have aperture sights on a couple of my rifles, including this one, but in this case I might just be flogging a dead horse.

Yesterday I wondered if the poor grouping was mainly my fault. I don't wear glasses, but I find that sometimes things aren't so clear when I'm using open sights. I haven't done as much regular shooting in latter years, but I hope to remedy that. I'm a believer that we can exercise our eyes and improve how we see (eg the 'Bates Method' if anyone is interested)... so I'm hoping to keep shooting - and improving - for years to come.

A few years back I came across 'pinhole glasses' which really are an interesting thing. You can't drive wearing them, but you can read and, as I found out yesterday, you can shoot with them. While shooting they are at an angle to the target which doesn't help, but they did improve the sharpness of what I was looking at. Sometimes in certain light conditions and especially with high-contrast targets I see, without the glasses, a second 'ghost' image of the target or foresight. I generally still shoot well enough in such conditions, and an aperture would probably reduce or eliminate this problem... but yesterday I wanted to reassure myself of my abilities.

I have an Anschutz .22 repeater with open sights. The foresight isn't ideal for target shooting because I've sloped the back of it and covered it in white nail polish... but it was the most suitable rifle for the test. Leaning over my car bonnet and using the pinhole glasses I got an encouraging group at 25 yards despite the less-than-perfect trigger and the old Norinco ammo which sometimes misfires.

I then shot a group of factory loads through the Rossi, and the results were not nearly as good.... I'm not sure how you define a group officially, but if you measure the holes centre to centre the group was probably just over 2 inches. Fine for short ranges in the bush, but not a sniper rifle.

Here are my pinhole glasses: