Okay now I'm confused. So what happens when they fly straight at you? The way I was aiming was using the little red bead as a go by I'd swing at the bird then go a little further and then pull the trigger that was on fly by shots. Is this basically right? Or should I not use the bead at all? Cause at first I was just pointing the gun in the general direction of the bird and shooting. I didn't have my cheek on the stock or nothing just looking at the bird and at the tip of the barrel. But I missed allot. The 2 I got was from doing it the one way of course only one of those was a fly by right to left. The other was flying away from me in a straight line. I guess my shot was just faster than he was... lol Yeah I really want to understand how to do this it would be that much more fun.

Johnair:

We had better discuss this, ONLY TWO BEERS?!?!?!?

Quote:

---

Does anyone actually think one beer is okay when handling a firearm?

---

Well, if one is all there is.......can I have yours?

You guys must love your beer more than your guns. Why is it illegal to drink (even one beer) and drive?



Hey, as long as we are drinking, let's drive on a quad with a gun in one hand and a beer in the other. Do you think that helps our image?



I personally would never hunt with anyone drinking. After the hunt, great - I will drink too.

Gatogordo I really appreciate all the time your taking trying to explain some of this too me it is greatly appreciated.

Mike:

I don't normally copy and paste my own posts, but here is one from "teaching a kid to hit moving targets" further down in this forum that will give you some more basics. A lot of it is repetitive, but there is some information about your shooting stance that you might find helpful. A couple of lessons, if you don't have an accomplished shotgun shooter friend are highly recommended. And.....a lot of good shots can't tell you how to be one, or what you are doing wrong. A good coach doesn't necessarily have to be an exceptionally good shot, he just has to know the fundamentals and have the ability to transmit that knowledge to others while being able to discern and correct the inevitable mistakes they will make while learning. Based on that, I'm still learning.

Old post follows:

Brent:

I've had the pleasure to teach quite a few kids and some adults how to be accomplished shotgun shots (kids are much easier, women are easier than men in the adult age group)and I've got a few minutes between ebay bidding wars so I'll try to give you some starting tips.

Obviously, the child MUST know the rules of gun safety and obey them religiously BEFORE you take him around other shooters. Most ranges require gun actions to be open and unloaded except when actually on the line shooting. It is a good habit to get into whether you are on an "official" range or in your backyard. Assuming gun safety as a given.... (believe me, it ain't necessarily so)

First of all, YOU have to be patient. I don't know how good you are with a shotgun, but unless you were a wunderkid it took you a lot longer than YOU remember to get to your present status. So, don't expect miracles the first day's shooting, or the second....etc.

Second, as a shooting coach, you MUST NOT overload the pupils learning system. Sure, he needs to know the fine points of stance, etc, but he can't absorb it all in one or two lessons.

Third, and again, with no reflection on you, if you are NOT an accomplished shotgun shot, then you need someone who can call the shots for your pupil and suggest how he might do it a bit better. I'm not suggesting a shooting coach is necessary, but they know what to tell them when.

Fourth, unless you are going to use a hand or spring loaded trap in a back pasture or yard if you live in the country, I urge you to start him off on a skeet field. Specifically, if the club permits it, on station seven low house, by far the easiest target in all of competitive shotgundom. Go early or late so that you'll have a field to yourself.

Now to the basics.....

First, and most critical, the shotgun MUST fit the student, within reason. It can be a fraction (1/8 inch or less) long in the LOP to allow for growth but shorter is better than longer. If you're starting him or her with a .410, cut it off and either duct tape the butt or just put a hard pad back on it. Then, as he grows you can add a pad to make it longer. Or, you can cut it off, add the pad and give them a decent gun to hunt with and use that one to start all your kids on. I recommend the latter. A .410 is NOT a gun for kids to try to kill something with if you can afford better.

Second, be sure the child is dominant hand, dominant eyed on the same side. If not, you're going to have to switch shoulders for his shooting or have him close the dominant eye. If he is not already committed, and barring other reasons such as a bad arm, switching to his "off" side is almost certainly the better option.

I can tell you how to check eye dominance if you don't know, but I'll save that bit of typing for later if you need it.

Third, he must have eye and ear protection, most ranges require it, and it is good to start them with it, even if you are training in the backyard, especially ear protection.

Now that we've got the pupil ready to shoot, (1/2 oz #9 skeet loads), with eye protection, ear protection (of coures, you'll wear them as well) and a gun that fits take him (I'm going to use the masculine for simplicity's sake from now on) to the shooting position. Prior to this, you have taken some time at home, with the correctly fitted gun to show him how to mount it, get his head in position on the stock, etc.

Show him a low house 7 bird and tell him to mount the gun, point where the claybird just flew, get his head down, call "pull" or "bird" and that the bird will come out beside him and to simply cover it up with the gun and pull the trigger. With any luck at all, he'll break it shortly or on the first shot. Let him break several, even if it takes a while. Then, let him shoot a High house bird, while he is still on station 7, tell him to track it, swing through it until he gets about a foot or so of daylight and pull the trigger. From there, you can go to low house 2, and then stations 3, 4, 5, and low house 6.

Basics......

The student MUST stand fairly erect. Shotgun shooting is done from the waist with the whole upper body moving as a unit. If he leans back, which all kids, most women and some men do, it locks the waist up and makes smooth movement very difficult. They all lean back to get the center of gravity of the gun over the hips. Wrong....they must hold the gun with the back muscles as much as possible.

Obviously, if he can't hold it standing straight up, he will have to lean back a bit, just don't let him exagerate it any more than the minimum necessary for him to hold the gun.

Stance......you'll see all kinds of odd stances on shooting ranges. Most of them are the result of bad habits the shooters have gotten into over the years. Some people shoot amazingly well out of bad stances, our own Saeed comes to mind, one of the worst I've ever seen, but bad stances can easily hurt your shooting and don't ever help it, so why not get it right to start with and stick with it?

Since we are teaching him to shoot, not to just shoot skeet, I recommend to start kids with what is known as a semi-closed stance. Basically, I tell them to get into a boxing stance, most kids don't know what that is these days, and to just be balanced and comfortable with the off foot forward of the shooting side foot, roughly shoulder width apart. Again, stress standing erect or leaning slightly forward, NOT leaning back. After they've shot for a while, tell him to slightly "break" his off knee and to slightly lean into the shot. But these are more advanced ideas and should not be introduced in the early stages.

Explain to him the reason for "lead". Just like throwing a football or spraying a water hose at someone, you have to aim in front of the moving object (target) to intersect its path.

Enough for now, I'm sure I've left out many details, please feel free to ask questions if I haven't been clear. There are very few dumb questions, and many dumb answers. I'll try to avoid the latter to the best of my ability.

Mike72:

Dove hunting sure is fun. I got seven this am, mostly walking up on them and shooting as they flushed. As bad as I am with a shotgun, the shooting is pretty easy this way.

Gee, your doves must be tougher than mine. I just use my .410 O/U in IC/M and #9 skeet loads.

Of course after 50 years of dove hunting, I don't bother with the 100 yd. shots!

Mike:

You are making the classic and extremely common mistake made by people that are used to shooting rifles or pistols when they first switch to shooting shotguns.

You absolutely do not AIM a shotgun at a moving target. You point it in a fluid motion, (depending on what method you are using)you swing through the bird, get what appears to be enough lead (then get a little more until you are used to dove shooting) and pull/slap the trigger while MAINTAINING that swing and lead.

Aiming, as in using the sights to get an exact firing point is anathema to good shotgunning IN MOST BIRD SHOTGUNNING SITUATIONS and destroys both the speed and continuity of your shot. This may seem like a sematics argument, but believe me it is not.

PS one more thing.....I don't know how big, old, or strong you are BUT almost all kids, most women, and some men have a distinct tendency to lean back a bit when they first start mounting a shotgun. The reason is simple, their body is trying to get the wt of the gun as close to over its center of gravity as possible. DO NOT LEAN BACK. It severely hampers the ability to move your waist and most shotgun shooting is done by swinging the waist and the whole upper body, not the arms as you would imagine. The arms, besides being a platform to hold the gun in place, are used only for last second relatively minor corrections if the bird zigs when you thought it was going to zag.

I've been dove hunting for only 45 years now, and I'm reasonably sure I've killed more doves than at least 99% of the world's dove hunters. At the time, we didn't keep count, but I probably killed about 7000 or more on my first trip to Argentina (this was prior to the clicker days). Doesn't prove anything except that I've shot a few doves.



As for me, I'd rather kill one dove in excess of 70 yards than use a .410 on 15 floating in front of me. Different strokes. I don't pass on the close ones, but I position myself for the tough ones. Not that I'm that good of a shot, I just like them that way. And yes, I still miss a bunch of the close twisters.



On the other hand, if there are millions of doves, I want the lightest good quality loads I can find in 12. There used to be a 32 gram load of 7s available in Argentina that would reach out and touch them up to about 75 yards.



I'm sure the Big 3 don't produce them because of the lack of knowledge of US dove hunters and thus the lack of demand, but a light trap type load of 1 1/8 ounce for 12 ga, using good quality shot in 6s, 6 1/2s or 7s would be the absolute nuts for most US style dove hunting. Until then, for 98% of normal dove shooting a trap load 2 3/4 dram, 1 1/8 ounce of 7 1/2s is about as good as it gets. Early in the season, you might make that 8s if most of your shooting was close, of a social occasion type, or over some type of waterhole.

Mike, one formal shotgun lesson will make all the difference in the world for you at this point. Unlike most other sports, one lesson (or two; they're really fun!) can make a huge improvement in an hour or less. Should be a skeet or sporting clays range near you and the cost is pretty cheap, too.

The lessons recommendation is good advice since you apparently have no one to teach you the fundamentals.



In the meanwhile, keep this in mind, your eyes are the rear sight of a shotgun, and must be in nearly the exact same spot for every shot. Most people achieve this by getting the cheek firmly but not grindingly in contact with the butt stock. It is somewhat complicated to explain the variations and different techniques of mounting a shotgun, but in general, you should try to bring the gun up to your cheek, keeping your head relatively erect. If you shoot with you head off the stock, normally you will be shooting over your target. Same thing as if you raised the rear sight on a rifle or pistol. You will constantly hear coaches, and shooters telling themselves (and any others around that will listen) to "keep your head down, dammit", usually after a miss and often accompanied by more colorful language. There is another benefit, especially with hunting loads, of a good head/stock contact. If your head is on the stock, you will get pushed by the recoil, if it is off of the stock (besides probably missing) you cheek will likely get slapped by the butt stock. Much of it becomes painful and leads to worse habits.



I assume you have checked yourself for eye dominance and are shooting on the same side as your dominant eye (which surprisingly often is not the same side as your dominant hand). Otherwise, you will never do well with a shotgun unless you elect to close the dominant eye which is an option but not the best one. Like many things about shotgunning this is a somewhat complicated issue, and there are other options, such as dots or tape on your shooting glasses, etc that work for some but not very consistently for most in my experience.



The bead on a shotgun barrel is there mostly for tradition and to refine a "pointing" spot. It is not necessary as your are really using the whole end of the barrel but there is nothing wrong with it, just don't try to pick an exact spot in the birds flight and "aim" with the bead. I suppose you could refer to it as a refined reference point. Your focus, while shooting, should be on the bird/target, not the end of the barrel, beaded or otherwise.



It is hard to cover all the bases in one step, incomers are actually pretty tough birds for a lot of people to hit. Since you have to swing through the bird and then you can't see how much lead you have. Obviously, if the bird is coming dead straight at you, you just have to cover it up and pull the trigger. Most of them are above you so you have to get some amount of lead. If there is only one bird, and assuming there is not a safety issue, lots of shooters let them get above (and turn sideways to the birds line of flight) or beside them before shooting. The danger is, if you have one above you and you don't turn sideways, if he gets too far, you run out of swing going backwards in a hurry. Best advice is probably to use what is known as the swing through lead, just start with a moving gun behind the bird, swing through him as fast as you can and as soon as you've covered him up, pull the trigger.



PS be sure the stock fits you, if you're between about 5'8" and 6'2" and have normal length neck and arms, most factory stocks will work pretty well for most people. This is always a matter of opinion, but I prefer shorter to longer lengths of pull within reason. Normally when you mount the shotgun, with you head in contact with the stock, you should have about 1 1/2 to 3 inches between the rear of your shooting hand's thumb and your nose. I prefer it on the shorter side of those numbers but that is somewhat personal preference. It is very important that you LOP be approximately right for your build because of the built in drop at comb of most stocks. And.....it gets more complicated from there.



If I can answer any specific questions I'll be glad to do so to the best of my ability. Either here or via email. Good luck and hie thee to a skeet range.

Wow didn't realize you could get lessons... sounds like even more fun. I'll have to look into it. Thanks

Gatogordo:

If you drive with an open beer in a car (in most states) you will be cited. Doesn't matter if you are impaired or not.

I have hunted in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, blah blah and have never had an issue with being an outcast (maybe because I hunted 1:1?). On one African hunt my PH packed beers in the cooler, and offered one at lunch, but I declined. But a beer at lunch on a two hour break is a lot different than driving in the Toyota with a beer in hand.

And no matter what your legal points are, drinking beer while hunting plays right into an image that we don't need. There are a lot of people who are ambivalent about hunting...until they start seeing hunters drinking.