[.41 magnum man]

I just put Hogue monogrips on my Blackhawk, and now my groups are a little high, and not as tight as before. Would the grip itself cause that?

[Snapping Twig]

In so far as the grip is second only to proper sight alignment, yes.

If the grips feel right and your web is right up in the backstrap, then take some time to get used to the new hold.

Hogue works for me, but it's a real personal thing. Try a few more manufacturers to see if the Hogues are what you want.

[The Lone Haranguer]

The grip surely could not affect the mechanical accuracy of the gun itself, but would affect the way you hold it and its movement during recoil.

[CSA 357]

thegrips will or could change the way you shoot, it will not change the way the gun shoots:D

[Jim March]

Was this it?

http://executivegunworks.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/page10.html

It can affect point of aim, yeah. It's changing two things: overall feel, and how the gun is angled in your hand.

To shoot accurately, you need to put the gun to the same place every time. It's called indexing the gun. There's a bunch of different ways people do that, all dependent on the grip.

I index SA revolvers with a "pinkie under" grip: my pinkie slung under the grip frame socks it into the same place every time and as a bonus, curling my pinkie back in after a shot brings the barrel back down out of recoil. BUT this trick is limited in terms of how much horsepower it can cope with, and it stretches hammer reach with the thumb to the maximum. To cure the latter problem I run an SBH lower-slung hammer. To at least help with recoil issues pounding my pinkie to scrap, I round and smooth out the bottom edge of my panels. This lets my all-steel New Vaq handle maximum-power 357Mag but I'm still right near the edge of the power I can control this way, at least in this weight class gun (4.68 barrel isn't helping). If I did the same trick with a larger-frame Ruger SA in 44Mag, I'd want a longer barrel, or maybe porting.

The other way people index is by jamming the top edge of the middle finger up under the trigger guard and hard against the inside-edge metal. Which leads to a damned funky grip, but there's indications it's period-correct. Bat Masterson talked of having his trigger finger angled at the feet of a human target at six to ten foot range. Do recall that people were literally smaller back then and Masterson was never described as a giant. Yet others with bigger hands WERE doing pinkie-under hence the traditional beveled lower panel edges.

In DA revolvers, this "twisted grip" Masterson used was even more difficult, so we saw the rise of grips that filled the area behind the triggerguard, or the similar Tyler T-Grip. A lot of the Hogue rubber grips for Ruger SAs do the same thing.

You have to think all over again about how you're indexing the gun. If the reach to the hammer is severe enough that you're throwing the gun out of index on each cock, you should consider dropping the hammer reach to the SBH or Bisley hammers.

Here's the good news: if you've been "unconsciously" indexing until now, stopping and thinking about it, and working out a proper index, may help you shoot this gun and all others better.

What else...ah: my experience is that we can adapt to completely different index methods for different guns, but there's some advantage to running the same basic type between guns. My snub38 Charter Arms has a Pachmayr Compac grip that has a "pinkie stub" that allows me to index it there same as I do with the New Vaq...well, sorta anyhow. Pics of my snub grips:

http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=281860&t=11082005

http://cgi.ebay.com/Pachmayr-Charter-Arms-Bulldog-Compac-Grips_W0QQitemZ130141142494QQcmdZViewItem

Good luck :).

[earplug]

YES!

[.41 magnum man]

Thanks everyone. I can tell the grips cause me to hold the gun much differently and see what you mean about indexing the gun. Also, my wooden factory grips slipped through my hand more during recoil, and wondered if that in itself would change things too?

[Jim March]

What happens after the bang matters less than what happens before :).

The after-bang movement just makes getting a re-index take longer. BUT it also helps soak up big recoil. Bit of a trade-off. At some power level, most people gain by going to a "slip in the hand" grip type, wood over rubber for starters.

There are exceptions...the big rubbers on the S&W X-Frame, Ruger SuperRedHawk and the big Hogues work well for some people.