You could have nailed your eye dominance and gun fit but if every time you mount your gun it’s in a slightly different place, this is a serious chink in your armour. The third leg of the tripod is gun mount. Have a read and make sure that your gun fits you properly and is not ruining your shooting. Gun fit can get quite technical and of course, we’ve covered that in the past here: gun fit. Think of a well fitted shotgun as more of a tailor-made suit than a shop bought one. The problem is, the specification required for somebody of 9 stones in weight and 5’ in height is likely to be very different from somebody of 16 stones in weight and 6’2” in height. Like a shop bought suit, shotguns are made for the ‘average person’. To learn more about eye dominance and some solutions to fixing any issues you may have with it, have a read of our dedicated article on this topic: eye dominance. It’s OK obsessing over staring really hard at the clay but if your gun isn’t following your eyes, we have a fundamental issue. So, with that established, the next piece of the puzzle is to make sure that your gun is pointing where your eyes are looking. You must obsess over locking your eyes onto the clay and only the clay from the moment you pick it up to the moment it breaks into tiny pieces. This results in the gun being stopped, the swing being ruined and the clay being missed. When you’re playing tennis of course, you keep your eye on the ball and hit it without looking down at the racket subconsciously and this should also be the case when you’re shooting a clay target with a shotgun – keep your eyes locked onto the clay throughout the whole movement and don’t look at your gun’s rib or bead, at all.Ī common beginner mistake is locking onto the target as it’s moving through the air but right at the last minute, just before pulling the trigger, looking at the bead in relation to the clay to make sure that the lead looks correct. If you shifted your focus onto your racket, the chance of you missing the ball increases exponentially. Why? Because as soon as you take your eye off the ball, your brain can no longer calculate its speed and line of travel which are key elements to sending the correct signals to your body to connect with the ball. Yes, you need to move your body, swing your arm with your racket and connect with the ball but your focus never shifts from the ball to the racket. Not for one second would you consider taking your eye off that ball. The ball is served by your opponent and it’s travelling towards you at speed.
Tennis, squash, baseball, cricket and even football is relevant here. To emphasise the importance of locking your eyes onto the target, just think about any other sport which requires one ‘thing’ to hit another ‘thing’. Unlike rifle shooting which is aiming a static gun at a static target, shotgun shooting requires movement and therefore requires the gun to be pointing wherever it is you may be looking (ie the target, always). Bryce ') in the air with tracer fire from a Thompson.The starting point to shooting consistently well is making sure that all the fundamentals are in place. He was not only skilled with a revolver, but performed aerial shooting tricks with rifles, shotguns and even submachine guns. Life magazine did a photo essay of Bryce drawing and shooting a coin that he'd dropped from shoulder height, hitting it at his waist in 2/5 of a second. In nearly every instance, the criminals had drawn or fired first.īryce's exhibition shooting was nearly as impressive as his martial exploits. When his law enforcement career was over, Jelly had killed a reported 19 men. Before the bad guy could pull the trigger, Jelly drew and fired, hitting the armed man five times in the head. In one incident, Bryce entered a hotel room to find himself staring down the barrel of a known cop-killer's handgun. 'Jelly ' Bryce became famous for his fancy shooting on the streets, killing several armed criminals with his blinding fast draw and accurate shooting. Whereas most trick shooters where known for their feats on the range, D.A.