when did/will you go to a red dot

I've only been shooting for a year, Bullseye for less. I just shot a 90 slow fire indoor(practice) and have shot a 93 rapid fire outdoors. So I'm making progress. I've read/heard a few times to use iron sights til sharpshooter at least. I think it'll give me an advantage when I start going for distinguished so I'm planning on sticking with them. I'm just curious what others have done! Thanks

I switched to a dot 19 years after going Distinguished.

I switched to dots after shooting 2600 open sights, couldn't do HM score twice in a row, but came close.  

(Even shot some bullseye matches with John a couple times when we were the open sight minority).  

But, I got old a lot faster than he did.  Dots are easier for old eyes, but that don't mean they are any more accurate than open sights.  So don't think you are giving up anything by keeping open sights for a while. 

Personally, I think open sights and area aiming will help establish better holding and triggering process for the shooter (if they can see well enough for the sight alignment and effective sight picture). The feedback from keeping the front sight perfectly centered in the rear sight notch gives excellent feedback on how well we keep the gun in alignment with the intended path throughout the shot process.  Wobble is nothing when compared to angular displacement, and its sometimes hard to tell the difference when shooting dots. It can be difficult to tell if the dot movement is from natural wobble, or if the trigger / grip is producing some angular displacement.  The relationship between the front and rear sight will tell us a lot about how we are influencing the shot. 

Stick with open as long as you can if you really want to learn how to shoot pistol well. Then going distinguished will be a breeze.

CR

If my eyes were still good as they were 40 years ago, I would still shoot irons.  But now I need a lens, ideal lighting, and I need to play with the width and depth of the rear notch.  Given those ideal conditions I think I could do well still.  And Cecil is absolutely right as usual.

I have a ball gun and a wad gun with a UD being built, but I don't plan on using the wad gun until I go distinguished.  Even then I may not use it as a primary pistol because my eyes are good 20/15 both L/R.  Unfortunately I had to order a wad gun before moving due to the laws of the inbound state (grandfather clause) or I wouldn't have bothered.  I have a lot to learn as evidenced by my scores, but every once in a while I throw up a 97/98 TF/RF and normal 80s SF.  All that is done with a 22 conversion on my current hardball gun (RO w/4 lb factory and Nelson Conversion).  So even in the hands of the incompetent....me...open sights with a heavy trigger on a factory 1911 I'm approaching the low end of expert.  Unfortunately, I'm working on putting my momentary flashes of success together to execute consistently...   I continue to shoot 265 with some random combination of SF/TF/RF 4 in of 5 of the last matches.  One score goes up another goes down, but the aggregate deviates by less than 5%.  I don't think (not that my thoughts count for much at this level) an optic would bring me in any advantage until I learn the fundamentals.

Shot double hardball for a few years at the insistence of the team coach.  When I was consistently breaking 2500 I was issued wadcutter.   The next shooting season I collected the remaining points needed for my distinguished badge and broke 2600 shooting iron sights while holding an expert card.  Before the days of the HM classification I enjoyed whining about shooting the 2600 class at the registered matches while being classified as an expert!   The next year I went to red dots and got lazy.  The scores stayed up but did not get better. The best I could tell I got lazy.  At the end of a 2700 match there was no longer  the feeling of mental and physical exhaustion I always felt with iron sights.  Now 30 years later, as a civilian shooter, I'm going to try to work harder.

Im new to bullseye shooting, and have a TON to learn.... but my eyes are REAL bad. I want to keep with irons for a bit longer to learn better control, but my days shooting irons are numbered. Not having room in the budget for a OK dot helps....

I agree that unless you have real vision issues a red dot won't make you a shooter.   20/400 is the best uncorrected vision I ever remember having. Of course my corrective lenses make it 20/20.   I can shoot irons but I think that I'm much more negatively affected by low light than shooters with good unaided vision.   Those ranges with low drops limit the light to much for me. Being 62 years old has thrown the old eyes clinker into the vision bucket.    I  think that every shooter needs a red dot or scope gun to work with.  Theyl make your iron sights look like they are locked in a vise.

CR10X wrote:(Even shot some bullseye matches with John a couple times when we were the open sight minority).

But we were a lot younger back then!

It did take me 15 years to go from Master to High Master with iron sights. Of course, High Master didn't exist when I made Master (not that I was shooting 2620s then anyhow), and I was pursuing other shooting goals during that 15 years.

Does anyone remember when the NRA added HM for bullseye? Late '90s/early '00s?

I think 1994 was the year I was grandfathered into the HM ranks.
Jon