How To Aim A 1970s
 

Hi all,

I finally managed to get my first Luger. It's a 1970s Mauser with 6" barrel. For me being a .22 shooter most of the time, this was an interesting experience in the range to say the least.

Now, I aimed it as I am used to from my .22 Ruger Target pistol, I aligned the top of the front sight with the top of the rear sight and shot a few holes in a papertarget at about 7 or 8 yards. I had the feeling that it was shooting too low. I was experimenting with different ways of aligning the sights when I shot the fixtures and the strings came all down on me :p so I gave up for this week.

However I was wondering, especially after reading that there are various aiming problems with various types of Lugers, is there a general rule of thumb I should be keeping in mind for this particular type? Is it known to shoot low? Is there a standard way to align the sights for this model? the rear sight is fixed so I cant adjust anything at all.

Thanks for any hint :D

The only way to correctly adjust is to find a slightly lower front sight blade. I have seen several of the 1970s Mauser Lugers with the sights mutilated due to shooters using files to regulate the sights.

They are sighted for and testfired at 25 meters, as opposed to the P08 which was sighted for and testfired at 50 meters.

With a 29/70-ish version in .30 luger with 6 inch barrel, point of aim (top of the sights line up) should be point of impact. Flinching can produce low shots as well, a luger will usually shoot higher than point of aim, not lower.

With the P08 it helps to ignore the rear sight and just point the front sight into the general direction :)
The combination of a P08 and subsonic 145gr bullets considerably lowers the point of impact.

Thanks. It's a 9mm I should have added. I will try it out again next week at the range with my benchrest and start at a short distance. I like to approach those problems systematically. I think once I know how the gun behaves at various distances, I can simply adjust the point of aim instead of filing away the front sight.

Just to add the result here, I was shooting my Luger today with benchrest and was able to hit bullseye at around 7-10 meters with the top of the sights aligned. I guess it was me in the first place who messed up. It looks like a 1970s is pretty accurate at that distance when taking the shooeter out of the euation, I was surprised. Even freestanding later was pretty good once I got the hang of it :)