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.