I'm having a really hard time this year with my follow through on the skeet range. I can only manage a score of say 16 on average. Last year I averaged 22 with a 24 once.

The R.O at the club competes and shoots alot so he stood behind me and noticed I always stop my swing before I shoot. He said my lead is perfect, form is excellent but I always stop swinging. He golfs and plays softball and he says that helps with his follow through, but I don't play either sport.

Does anyone have a cure/training aid to help aleviate this problem, or is it just a mental thing?

Thanks for the help,
it's getting frustrating!

I find it best to pick a spot considerably beyond the point you pull the trigger and swing to that point .Remember that the bird ,clay or live, never stops .If you do it's tail feathers !!

See if you can go when you have the field to your self and shoot a few rounds like this. Load 2 shells and after you break the bird with the first shot see if you can bust the biggest piece with the second shot. You'll have the follow through down in a couple of rounds and you can go back to shooting the normal way.

Weagle

A couple things to try:

People often stop the gun when they look at the barrel. Really focus on the leading edge of the clay. DON'T look at the front bead, it should be in your peripheral vision.

Also try following some birds without shooting at them. You can dry fire (use snap caps to protect your gun) but do the exercise without live ammo for a while. This should show you clearly if you're stopping as the recoil won't mask your movement or lack thereof.

Nothing against the R.O. and maybe just more time with him wwill help, but try to find an experienced instructor. I've been shocked at how quickly a qualified teacher can straighten out problems and even get you working on things you didn't realize you were doing wrong.

Best of luck,
Kyler

thanks for the advice guys, i'll give them a shot next time out.

Kyler, now that you mention looking at the barrel instead of the bird, this seems to be the case. The ones I recall missing, I was more focused on the bead rather the bird.

thanks again,

It is rather hard to actually "stop" your gun when you're swinging, many shooters try to be too exact, that is they want their lead to appear to be exactly 2 feet 9 inches on station 3. When anyone tries to deliberately execute what needs to be a reflex action, it slows their swing substantially. Just swing out in front of it, get what looks like the appropriate (or a bit more amount of lead) and keep swinging as you pull the trigger. Don't try to "aim", just shoot. Actually, you can compensate for the "thinking" swing by getting more lead, but that is not the way to shoot a shotgun.

Finally, I'll give you this tip, which was the result of many, many shots on the skeet field. Most people think the most difficult target is high two and it probably is for most people. Getting a good position in relation to the house is critical, as well as being "on go" when you say "pull" or "bird", since if you let it get a jump on you, it is very difficult to recover. The tip is that many people shoot just as the clay is starting to tail off it's initial kind of straight rising trajectory (obviously it is dropping all the time, but as it loses speed it drops faster, usually just starting about the midpoint of the skeet range). This makes it pretty easy to shoot just over the target, since your gun is going in a more or less straight line swing and the target is on a parabola, you may hit it, but sometimes it won't break or you may miss it completely. Try to shoot with the whole target above your line of sight/swing on Hi Two.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to go shooting yet, since I'm on shift relief.

My worst stations are 3,4,5, with 4 being the worst. I'm off next weekend, so I'll go practice then.

There is also a new sporting clays range which just opened so I may give that a shot as well.

quote:

Originally posted by beretta96:
I'm having a really hard time this year with my follow through on the skeet range. I can only manage a score of say 16 on average. Last year I averaged 22 with a 24 once.

The R.O at the club competes and shoots alot so he stood behind me and noticed I always stop my swing before I shoot. He said my lead is perfect, form is excellent but I always stop swinging. He golfs and plays softball and he says that helps with his follow through, but I don't play either sport.

Does anyone have a cure/training aid to help aleviate this problem, or is it just a mental thing?

Thanks for the help,
it's getting frustrating!

If technique looks OK, then you've probably just developed a bad habit.

If you are shooting a sustained lead shot, you really only have 2 options:

• Practice and more practice
• or Switch to a quick pull-through lead shot

quote:

Originally posted by beretta96:
Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to go shooting yet, since I'm on shift relief.

My worst stations are 3,4,5, with 4 being the worst. I'm off next weekend, so I'll go practice then.

There is also a new sporting clays range which just opened so I may give that a shot as well.

It is your money and your fun time, but I'd really advise against going on the SC range until you can consistently shoot in the 20s, preferably at least 23s or more before I'd attempt to shoot much SCs. SCs are fun but not the place to learn how to shoot a shotgun initially IMO.

Work out your problems on the relatively cheap skeet range where you can easily sit there and shoot a particular target until you understand it. Lots of people shoot SCs BECAUSE it is more difficult and a bad score is kind of lost in the chaff of a bunch of mediocre to terrible scores. Perhaps it just my shooting goals, but I think one should strive for excellence and that takes work, even if it is fun work.

Besides incoming 1 and both 7s (the easiest), 3,4,and 5 are pretty easy once you get them. The old rule is 3 feet and swinging on 3 and 5 and 4 feet and swinging on 4. It depends on how fast you swing but a good swing and a rough yard of lead will break 3 and 5 every time. Get a bit more lead and 4 is toast. I repeat my earlier admonition, don't try to get EXACTLY 36 or 48 inches, that's aiming (bad), just get a good piece in front of it and pull the trigger while swinging (good). To repeat, and this is semantics but you don't aim a shotgun, you point it. Trying to be too exact slows down what should be a reflex action. Good shooting.

PS: The recommendation of getting a good coach was excellent. However, if you really want to learn, you can do so without a coach. For instance on 3,4, and 5 (while remembering the 3 foot and 4 foot rule) shoot them like you think they should break a couple of times with someone standing behind you. If they break, just remember how you did it and how the target looked in relation to the gun barrel. If they don't break, ask your buddy where you shot. (I added this as an after after-thought to be clearer, your spotter buddy has to be someone who has enought experience to call your shots, some people can do it easily and some can't ever seem to do it, be sure he/she knows what she is doing, most shotgunners of reasonable experience can do it, but not all.) He'll usually say "behind" but whatever. If he says "behind" just add a foot of lead, I don't care if it looks like 6 feet to you, just do it until it breaks. If he says in front, well, obviously take a bit off. He might say "over" in which case you are almost certainly "peeking" or lifting your head off the stock. You don't have to have a "weld" like some in rifle shooting but you do have to maintain the same degree of stock contact for every shot. Most shooters do this by firmly cheeking the stock but not pushing down like they're trying to drill holes with their cheek. BTW, a slow pull really tends to create a "peek" since your brain expects to see a target "now" and if it isn't there, it is a normal reflex (which you'll have to learn to ignore) to lift your head to locate the missing target, just as it comes out of the house.

Point of all of this is, it isn't rocket science, just have a good spotter and analyze what you're doing and change it until you've got a good result. By far the hardest shooter to teach is one who is all over the target, that is he has no consistent "miss" pattern.

One final thought, be sure you check your eye dominance.

I took lessons from an englishman who came over to teach sporting clays. People told me it was too expensive. No it wasn't.It prevented me from getting bad habits ,it made the rifle shooter to shotgun shooter transition easier,it greatly shortened the learning curve which reduced the frustration.

Listen to mete and Weagles suggestions. Your problem as you said is stopping the gun and not lack of knowledge on the lead. Go out and just lock your eye on the clay and keep the gun moving all the way to the opposite house. Exagerate your swing and do not stop it. Do not even worry about breaking it, just make sure you are not stopping the swing and it is easy to stop it or slow it down, both of which can end in a miss and it is a common problem.

And you can practice at home with your gun (unloaded of course) and visualize shooting, call for the clay, pull the trigger and keep it moving.

This whole topic of "follow through" suggest something like a baseball batter swinging through at the pitch - which is not what shooting at a flying target involves.

Mete has mentioned in two posts that an "Englishman" taught him and that he should shoot at a "spot". In my time, (back when dinosaurs walked the earth) this was called the "London method". I used it all my life and it worked for me on as different types of flying targets as a snap shot at ruffed grouse or pass shooting at ducks. (To be frank, I noticed often at a skeet and trap club where I often shot {I was a trap shooter exclusively} that some skeet shooters (when I was watching) seemed to swing so hard that the shotgun nearly touched the ground as they finished. It fooled me the first few times I watched this because I thought the clay must be moving faster than it really was) Everyone must adapt himself to a flying target. "Lead" is a very misleading term. It always come back to adapting hand and eye -and that comes with practice. "Each to his own" is an old expression. Whatever the shooter is comfortable with is what will determine how well he shoots. (No, I'm not saying to persist with an obvious error of shooting -as with a rifle. I'm talking about that very personal coordination of hand and eye -and it really is personal to the shooter)

Yes you have to sort out the methods .The english face the targets mor squarely for example. Target shooters often pick a distance ahead of the target and maintain that distance as they swing.This is very un-natural for me ,I want to swing through.
One of the rifle habits the instructor got me out of --I was focusing on the bird as it came out but at one point I changed focus to the bead.That very slight hesitation made me miss [behind] the bird .It doesn't take much.

Mete:

You, very importantly, touched on something that is absolutely fundamental to shooting a shotgun at a flying target. You mentioned that your instructor picked up on the fact the you had shifted your eye to the bead (instead of never leaving the bird). You had been doing something perfectly natural to the rifleman - you were aiming at the target- which requires lining up of sights with a target. A shotgun, however, is pointed - as one points with a finger at an object - and the finger and eye naturally line up. Point at any object and you never miss making the line up. It is the pointing of a shotgun and the coordination with the eye that does it. Now comes the movement of the "finger", (barrel) moved along by a hand that wants to continue that coordination with the eye. It's being too slow (or too fast) or looking above or below the target that accounts for those mysterious misses. See! I have explained why it's impossible for anyone to miss who follows my instructions!

Don't take your eyes off the bird till it's broken. Try to break some pieces with a second shot.

Your brain is telling you the job is done as soon as you have the right lead.

Like golf and baseball, the follow-through is the hard work. Getting your feet and gun hold right is the easy stuff. Follow-through is work.

You'll get it.