Purchasing Pilla Shooting Glasses My Experience and Information

FatCatsDad said:
Ammunition, firearm, weather and more are all key to winning
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True, they are all key to winning but lets break your statement down. Ammunition makes little difference whatsoever on the majority of targets under 35 yards., premium ammo can help beyond those distances but only if you know how to use it. Firearm, all too often I've seen new guys compete with old pump guns and do better than the guys with expensive fitted firearm's. So for guns and ammo, lets just say that Tiger Woods could still beat most everyone on the golf course with Canadian Tire golf clubs... why, because he has the ability! Weather... this is where having glasses with different lenses come in to play and you need a hat that will keep the raindrops off of them. Lenses that will emphasize the target color under different lighting conditions are important. I've seen lots of shooters go from bright sunlight out in the open all of a sudden not be able to see anything once entering shade in the trees with their dark lenses.
Good glasses certainly do help break targets but the most important thing of all is focus, hard focus on the leading edge of the target so yes, vision is key regardless if you wear glasses or not.
 
FatCatsDad said:
It's still shooting, beer league hockey is still hockey.
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Just like street shinny is like organized hockey, and tossing a football around with your kid is like organized football. We get some people that show up for skeet, claiming that they hit 9/10 of the targets from their home thrower, and they usually don't do better than 50% on actual skeet targets.
 
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Being a newer trap shooter I started with cheaper glasses. In my short time of experience this is what I have learned when you cheap out.

1. "Glasses" do not stay clear for long. They scratch and fog up easy.
2. Little if any lense colour options.
3. They do not sit well, move around more.
4. Distorted view.

I've researched the Pilla stuff. Very nice but too expensive for me at this stage. I bought some Browning glasses for $50 and they have meet all my needs. Clear, undistorted, great fit with full field of view. No awareness of the lense edges. Time will tell about durability.

Pilla's could be in the future but I needs a few more shotguns first and a few 25's.
 
jckstrthmghty said:
Being a newer trap shooter I started with cheaper glasses. In my short time of experience this is what I have learned when you cheap out.

1. "Glasses" do not stay clear for long. They scratch and fog up easy.
2. Little if any lense colour options.
3. They do not sit well, move around more.
4. Distorted view.

I've researched the Pilla stuff. Very nice but too expensive for me at this stage. I bought some Browning glasses for $50 and they have meet all my needs. Clear, undistorted, great fit with full field of view. No awareness of the lense edges. Time will tell about durability.

Pilla's could be in the future but I needs a few more shotguns first and a few 25's.
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If you really want to cheap out on good glasses then get ones without the Browning, Remington, Beretta or any other gun manufacturer name on them. Almost any hardware store will have good polycarbonate safety glasses for cheap, often these are better quality than the logo embossed ones too. They won't have a good selection of colors to choose from, usually clear, smoke or yellow but those will do for most shooting situations, just make sure the smoke ones are not dulling down the color on the targets. Wrap around glasses give better protection than flat glasses but they are more prone to fogging, that's why most shooting glasses are usually flat.
 
stubblejumper said:
Just like street shinny is like organized hockey, and tossing a football around with your kid is like organized football. We get some people that show up for skeet, claiming that they hit 9/10 of the targets from their home thrower, and they usually don't do better than 50% on actual skeet targets.
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Maybe, who knows, stupid of people to make claims they can't back up, but it's also stupid to claim that if you have cheap glasses your not a serious shooter, same as if you don't have $1K worth of camo clothing your not a serious hunter.
 
FatCatsDad said:
Maybe, who knows, stupid of people to make claims they can't back up, but it's also stupid to claim that if you have cheap glasses your not a serious shooter, same as if you don't have $1K worth of camo clothing your not a serious hunter.
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Their claims of hitting 9/10, with their personal thrower may very well be true, the point is that the degree of difficulty is greatly increased, when you shoot actual organized clay games like skeet and sporting clays. Not only are the targets faster, but they aren't all going pretty much straight away from the shooter, the angles make a huge difference, as do incoming or broadside targets. Until you actually shoot some regulation clay targets, you can't comprehend the difference between regulation targets and throwing your own with your personal thrower.
 
To be fair, I have also seen people who have never shot trap on a real trap field before whoop my ass.
They give me a puzzled look and say something along the lines of "I thought you did this every week?"
 
stripperclipper said:
To be fair, I have also seen people who have never shot trap on a real trap field before whoop my ass.
They give me a puzzled look and say something along the lines of "I thought you did this every week?"
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That tends to happen now and then at trap ,not so much at skeet or sporting clays. I have seen two people shoot 20/25 at skeet, their first day out, but that is over about 25 years of skeet.
 
stripperclipper said:
To be fair, I have also seen people who have never shot trap on a real trap field before whoop my ass.
They give me a puzzled look and say something along the lines of "I thought you did this every week?"
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Met the same guy a time or two typically the wheels fall off if they stick with it and start to figure out what they are doing wrong.
 
Now that safety Sally’s are clamping down and when it comes to skeet rightly so, those targets (or any close one for that matter) will send shot back at the shooters.

MANY Olympic level athletes participating in trap and skeet events at the olympics, shoot (shot) with no glasses at all…… take that for what you will.

I’ve had rangers, pilla and raybans.

Sold the pilla after a year. Just too expensive for what they are.

Rangers are decent, lots of colours choices. Still not cheap.

My go to these days. Even in less than ideal light conditions. Regular rayban aviators in b25 brown. Not polarized. Have shot just as well. $230 cdn vs 5-600 us for rangers or $1000-$1500 cdn for a set of pillas.
 
JIMMY 808 said:
Met the same guy a time or two typically the wheels fall off if they stick with it and start to figure out what they are doing wrong.
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Funny, but true. Too many books, videos, technique changes, guns, chokes, glasses,etc. Damn near everyone goes though it to some extent.
 
PTG said:
Now that safety Sally’s are clamping down and when it comes to skeet rightly so, those targets (or any close one for that matter) will send shot back at the shooters.

MANY Olympic level athletes participating in trap and skeet events at the olympics, shoot (shot) with no glasses at all…… take that for what you will.

I’ve had rangers, pilla and raybans.

Sold the pilla after a year. Just too expensive for what they are.

Rangers are decent, lots of colours choices. Still not cheap.

My go to these days. Even in less than ideal light conditions. Regular rayban aviators in b25 brown. Not polarized. Have shot just as well. $230 cdn vs 5-600 us for rangers or $1000-$1500 cdn for a set of pillas.
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I just bought a set of replacement lenses for my Rangers, and with shipping, they cost me around $120, I paid under $300 for the glasses with three sets of lenses and case about 12 years ago.
As for glasses being mandatory at skeet, I have been struck by shot twice over 25 years, once right in the lens of my glasses. A friend was struck by shot shooting sporting clays.
 
Falconflyer said:
I've been hit by shot at several sporting clays events and I know a guy who got a pellet just below his glasses on his cheek, an inch higher and without glasses he probably would have lost the eye!
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And yet some people don't want to wear glasses, I had one 80+ year old swear and curse at me, because I would not let him shoot skeet without glasses.
 
Falconflyer said:
Some people would just sooner risk losing an eye than take good advice from someone who knows what they're talking about!
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And if there is an incident, where someone loses an eye, the club could be shut down by the CFO, while they investigate
our lack of safety precautions for our members.
 
stripperclipper said:
To be fair, I have also seen people who have never shot trap on a real trap field before whoop my ass.
They give me a puzzled look and say something along the lines of "I thought you did this every week?"
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I've seen you shoot and I had that same question...:p J/K

All joking aside this is a great thread for pointing out that one person in particular here has never set foot on any of the courses, has zero idea how the games are played yet he sure knows about what it takes to win and could care less about actually protecting his eyes.
The chances of being struck by a pellet in a back 40 informal setting are pretty slim based on target angles but those of us who have shot targets presented the way they are in disciplines like skeet or sporting clays with incoming targets being smashed a few yards to a few feet off our noses so to speak know cheaping out or shooting without good impact resistant lenses may cost us some day. And it is not always pellets that hit you. Lord knows I've taken my share of hits from broken pieces of targets. Anyone who has inkballed #8 skeet targets after a few rounds has washed their share of black soot off themselves in the shower too.
Now in the thousands of rounds of trap I've shot in 41 years I've never been hit with a deflected pellet or broken target piece but again that is due to angles and distances. Not that it cannot happen either I just think the odds are much less.
Personally I went to Rangers about 8 years ago and they are very nice and affordable. I bought them with two sets of prescription lenses with frames for $460 CDN and twice have updated lenses as my prescription changed at a total of $160 x 2 . That's $780 for 8 years. IMO that's cheap insurance on my vision. I wear them hunting as well. That's alot of use for under $100/year.
 
the spank said:
I've seen you shoot and I had that same question...:p J/K

All joking aside this is a great thread for pointing out that one person in particular here has never set foot on any of the courses, has zero idea how the games are played yet he sure knows about what it takes to win and could care less about actually protecting his eyes.
The chances of being struck by a pellet in a back 40 informal setting are pretty slim based on target angles but those of us who have shot targets presented the way they are in disciplines like skeet or sporting clays with incoming targets being smashed a few yards to a few feet off our noses so to speak know cheaping out or shooting without good impact resistant lenses may cost us some day. And it is not always pellets that hit you. Lord knows I've taken my share of hits from broken pieces of targets. Anyone who has inkballed #8 skeet targets after a few rounds has washed their share of black soot off themselves in the shower too.
Now in the thousands of rounds of trap I've shot in 41 years I've never been hit with a deflected pellet or broken target piece but again that is due to angles and distances. Not that it cannot happen either I just think the odds are much less.
Personally I went to Rangers about 8 years ago and they are very nice and affordable. I bought them with two sets of prescription lenses with frames for $460 CDN and twice have updated lenses as my prescription changed at a total of $160 x 2 . That's $780 for 8 years. IMO that's cheap insurance on my vision. I wear them hunting as well. That's alot of use for under $100/year.
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Take it from someone who has experienced amputation that could have been prevented with better equipment/tool. That few dollars you saved becomes insignificant and there isn't an amount that is more than you would pay to reverse that descision.
 
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