EVERYONE at the gun range is STARING at ME!! (if so, how to ignore)

MrBorland posted something in a different thread, that I think is worth its own discussion. It had to do with why new, inexperienced shooters sometimes do better than those with lots of experience behind them:

MrBorland said:

Because women (and new shooters) don't tend to have their ego wrapped up in their shooting. They're more willing to listen and just "do", instead of arguing, doing it their own way anyway, and/or making sure someone else is impressed....

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I've noticed that when I go to a local range where I don't know anyone, unless the person next to me is sending his empty shells bouncing off me, I can blank out everything except what *I* am doing. The person next to me could have a heart attack and drop to the ground, but I'm so focused on what I'm doing, I'd never know. .........but, if I go to a range where I know the people around me, or if they know me, I feel like every pair of eyes at the place are all staring at me and my target!!! That feeling is re-enforced when one of them says something about what I did or didn't do right or wrong.


I'm a nobody. But, a lot of you are out there competing in matches, where it's reasonable to assume that lots of people really ARE looking at you and what you do. Or, "famous" shooters, who can assume they are being video taped, for the entire population of planet earth to look at the next day.


The only answer I've found so far, which sometimes works, is to concentrate fully on whatever I am doing at that very moment in time, not what I did before, or might do later, or if one, none, or 100 people are staring at me. Then everything else seems to become just background static, that I can (try to) ignore. Even then, for me, it's still an annoyance......... and blanking it out from my mind is so durn difficult.

MIL-DOT said:

But if the OP chooses to not take this advice, then I ask if he'll please swing by and pick me up on the way to the range.

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Ha!!!!! You're welcome to come along, I guess! ))

More seriously, the best answer I have found so far, is as several people have suggested, dry-fire over and over and over and over and over so much that when I get to the range, my body is doing things by reflex, and I don't have to think very much, other than to make sure I'm doing what I've been taught, and that the entire world is totally meaningless - other than that one bit of my view that shows the front sight.

Does it work? Well, often, but if I had "an entourage of bikini clad assistants fanning you and holding your cold sodas and such", I'd give up on any serious shooting, and just enjoy the a day at the range!

sigsmoker said:

.....I don't really care if people look at me.......

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Maybe my "problem" (if that's what I call it) is me, not anything else. I suppose I could go to the range to socialize, talk about different people's guns, and have a good time. That's usually part of what I do. The thing is though, that when I set up my targets and shoot, I try to have an open mind, or maybe I should really say a "closed" mind, where the ONLY thing in it is the target, my gun, and me.

I see the way that some people in this forum shoot, and while years ago, I'd say I will never get that good, someone here convinced me that if I think that way, it will come true - but if I believe I can get that good, it's within my reach, if I practice enough, and pay attention to "the fundamentals".

Think of my brain as a one quart jug of something or other, and whatever its capacity is, I want all of it involved in one single thing, and nothing else - shooting. As I see it, *anything* else that intrudes into my brain diminishes the amount of brain left for what I'm trying to do.


I suspect that if I ever get as good as I'd like to get, I'll be able to carry on a conversation with someone else, think about what I'm going to have for dinner, and be aware of what everyone around me is doing, while putting shot after shot into the "X" ring, but right now, as I see it, it takes 100% concentration to just try to get shots close to that spot. :banghead:

Sam1911, the "problem" isn't that others are watching; the "problem" is that sometimes I'm thinking about them watching. It's not a "problem" with them, but with me.

Specifically for me, I couldn't care less if they're watching or not, but there's a part of me that is aware of all this, and I want to get that out of my head completely, if I can.


For that matter, other people see things so differently. I'm looking at my target, and someone comes up to say how good it is, while I'm thinking it stinks, and then others come up telling me to do this or that, so I need to be polite to them, even while thinking they don't have a clue what they're talking about............

............and then, I meet someone every so often who knows exactly what is going on, and who offers wonderful advice! .....like Linda Dillon at the club I joined. She has a VERY good understanding of these things, and I enjoy having her watch me, as it gets me excellent feedback that I wasn't aware of.



Thanks for your thoughts. How do YOU deal with this?
Ya, competition.... I've been in a whole -1- match in the past 20 years. Even so, I'm not the guy by far that anyone's going to want to stare at to learn something!!