I'm more of a rifle guy so I'm sorry if this is a basic question. Other than changing the bead, how do you sight in a shotgun?
My friend just patterened his shotgun with several brands of 2 and BB's and they all shot low. How do you bring up the center of the pattern to hit where he's aiming?

Have him tape a popsical stick up top of the barrel for a bead sight. It should bring the pattern up. If you need more try a thicker magnet or something till it is where he wants.

Cuda54 ... you have that backward. If you want to raise the POI (point of impact) you need to put a smaller bead at the muzzle but that isn't the way to do it because you don't want to look at the muzzle while shooting ... you have a couple of choices.

1) Strange to think but it is possible to bend the barrel a bit (not you, a professional) and get the desired POI...not for the faint-of-heart and of course will only work on a gun with only one barrel.

2) Briley can install their screw-in chokes so that the POI is raised. Tell them how much and they will do it.

3) Cheapest and easiest way is to raise the comb causing you to see more barrel. An easy way to try this is to simply tape some thin cardboard on the comb .... layer by layer ... until you get the POI you want. When you see how much thickness you need you can buy a stick-on pad to take the place of the cardboard.

How are you actually checking for POI?

The correct way is from a steady rest at 13 yards. Take a magic marker and draw several crosses on a large sheet of paper ... make the crosses at least 8-10" apart. From the steady rest (at 13 yards) fire one aimed shot at each of the crosses....all you should get is a hole where the shot hit the target and this will give you your POI - if you obliterate the spot the lines cross you are basically shooting 50/50. Once you determine the POI and raise it to where you want it, you can shoot some at 30-40 yards. One shot per piece of paper and here you will draw a large cross and, from a solid rest, fire one shot trying to hit the cross. Now you can check to see how many pellets are above and how many are below the POI for a fairly good idea of the POI.

Remember, to eliminate human error as much as possible you must shoot from a solid rest and try to get the same cheek pressure etc each time.

Mike,

Basically what DB said in "3".

I wouldn't want anyone altering barrels or choke on a gun when gunfitting is the basic issue here.

It also depends what you want to shoot with the gun. If you are wing shooting, (I guess geese if you are using BB's) then the hheight won't be the only thing to look at when fitting your gun. toe and heel dimensins will alter POI depending if yu are taking overhead shots or straight going away shots. For crossers the cast and profiling of the stock with affect the lead you percieve on crossers going in each direction.

If you are turkey hunting then I don't know as we don't do that kind if stuff here, but I would think shooting and patterning from a rest will be much more beneficial as DB suggested.

The Cardboard (I use cartridge packets and electrical tape)is the best way to find what alterations you need without going to a custom gunfitter. Just remember that as you add layers to the top you will naturaly be thickening the stock thus bringing your eye to the left. This has the same effect as adding cast to the gun so you may find POI moves horizontally too.

If his gun is one of the semi autos, there are spacers available for the synthetic models that will alter hheight and cast. If I rememebr correctly with my 391 Urika, these can be fitted by the owner fairly easily (never done it myself) so it could be an easy experiment.

Rgds,
FB

Your eye is the rear sight on a shotgun and others mentioned cheek placement on stock as being imortant which it certainly is and placing the cheek/eye the same each time, correct placement that is, will further insure more hits. Rear sight movement, your cheek/eye relationship to stock, up, down, right, left is where the POI will be. Front sight is opposite from rear sight. As in shooting matches w/ micrometer sight rifles, cheek weld at a correct spot on the comb is critical to repeatability of good shooting, same in shotgunnig. You can purchase via Brownell's a system of adhesive laminates which can be used to build up the comb of the gun to where you want it and remvove if needed and not damage the stock. Might check them out.

I agree with everyone from DB Bill on -for different reasons. It's interesting to see how everyone of you (obviously familiar with shotguns)approaches from the perspective that shotguns are pointed (and not aimed) so factors as to how the shotgun is mounted and how one does not look at a muzzle bead matter more than a "point of impact" ( I presume the original poster referred to where the bulk of shot (hopefully) would go - he will live to learn how shotguns are perfectly capable of "blown patterns" as we called them when I was young -referring to a doughnut hole pattern where the bird flew through the "hole". The same shotgun would kill him dead next time because the "hole" was gone on the next shot) BTW, Just out of curiosity and a desire to pick your brains - What exactly is the function of a muzzle bead on a shotgun? I really don't know and welcome being educated on the point. I promise I'm not looking for an argument)

Well I would say for my own experience the bead front sight is used to line the barrel with the target, but elevation, left, right is determined by the placement of the shooters eye, be it up down or left or right from the bead/target alignment. I have shot trap for many a year and do aim the bead at the bird as they say and as opposed to the rifle trigger squeeze, do in fact jerk the trigger for lack of a better description. Seems to work fine for me, but I am not a champion shooter w/ shotguns so perhaps I am doing it the wrong way??

Gerry,

I've come accross shotguns with no bead, and in one case a ribless beretta, (it was supposed to be like that). I think the Bead has two "functions" The first is Asthetic. A gun without a sight of sorts doesn't really look right and so in some way it is a hangover. Personally I think this is a very small part of it though.

The main thing is to provide the shooter with a point of reference. Although the bead isn't necessarily aligned with the target to produce a killinng shot, it forms a major part of the sight picture in a number of ways. Firstly it enables the shooter to have constant amount of rib in view. That is a function of cheek weld, and with driven birds there is often a propensity to lift the head and stop swinging the barrels, as a result the amount of rib visible increases.

The other thing that the bead does is develop a sight picture. There are many different techniques but over all focus should always be on the target not on the gun. By focus I don't mean an optical prescription but more the way a proponent of matial arts would term focus, almost a projection.

The result should be an almost subconcious use of the bead as a fixed reference point within your library of sight pictures.

Many people use the bead, (especially in trap shooting), again as a reference point but I believe the going away target allows for more aiming than other disciplines, although I still think that it is a less than optimal technique if you are aiming to compete at a relatively high level.

Icidentally the use of hammers on early shotguns meant that the hammers were used as a similar point of reference when game shooting. So much so that in the early days of the Hammerless shotgun, one member of royalty had his best english hammerless shotgun fitted with fake hammers so as not to disrupt his perceived sight picture. I'll find out who it was and post later.

Rgds,
FB

fallow buck --- assuming proper form on high incomers and overhead shots the pitch of the butt shouldn't have any effect of point-of-impact......and by pitch I mean the relative length of the stock at heel and toe.

Most of my shotguns have 1.5" of down-pitch but I have a few side-by-sides that I shoot better with "0" pitch but these guns have more drop at comb than the O/U's and repeaters as they tend to have a higher comb...... I will typically shoot 1.5" x 1.75"x 14" with 1.5" down pitch for everything from trap to skeet to sporting clays and upland hunting but I've learned over the years that my most comfortable and consistent "sight-picture" is with the bird well over the barrel so the gun will pattern no lower than 80/20.

quote:

fallow buck --- assuming proper form on high incomers and overhead shots the pitch of the butt shouldn't have any effect of point-of-impact......and by pitch I mean the relative length of the stock at heel and toe.

DB,

yes I agree when assuming proper form. In some instances where if the stock is noticably too short in the heel then the gun can have a tendency to cartwheel on lower fast incomers as only a small portion of the bottom part of the stock maintains contact to the shoulder during the swing. I have had this problem with a Browning 20bore that slips out of my shoulder after the first shot.

The other thing is also depending on body shape and specifically in women, incorrect toe dimensions and particularly the lack of a "kick out" at the toe can result in canting of the barrels which make the swing naturaly pull to the left (assuming a right handed shooter) on an incomer.

As you say though good form, especially footwork, is probably far more important to good sporting shooting than the minutae of gunfit.

Rgds,
FB

I've been shooting a shotgun since Truman was President and soon afterward starting bird hunting and I was always what I thought of as a pretty good "natural" (no lessons) shot. Later as a fairly intense competition shooter (pigeons, trap, skeet) I became a more thoughtful shooter and my field shooting got even getter.

However, it wasn't until I hunted with a couple of Welsh shooters (one whose name was the same as mine and came from a town where my paternal grandparents lived at one time) who were in the US for a large competition that I came to realize the importance of proper form when it came to hunting with a shotgun. Not only did they shoot more birds than I did but they did it with an ease (and style) that did more than just deflate my ego ... it made me determined to learn it. I still have a tendency to want to rush a shot, I rarely look bad anymore and there are a far fewer "fly-aways".

But.... I still won't wear a tie when walking up pheaants.

Bill,

My boss wants to come out and see what shooting is all about one day. I have no reservations about encouraging anyone to be exposed to the sport, it's just that I work in the city and he always take the mickey out of me that I don't wear a tie with my suit. I'm not sure how he would take it that I always wear a tie to go and shoot pheasants!!

I've recently gone back to my shooting under the guidence of Mike Yardley. He has refitted my guns for me and broken down my form to a scarily minute degree. The result is more and better kills , and although my shooting is not as good as it used to be when I was shooting 300-500 shells a week, I'm happier in myself and feel less frustrated.

The major thing for me to overcome was my psycological control when shooting a round of clays. It's amazing what a difference it made when I managed to leave my mediteranian temprement at home!!

I went from shooting like this:

To shooting like this:

You get the idea!!

If you are in the UK at all then let me knw and it would be great to go shoot some clays/game together, or spoend a day with mike shooting some old English guns. We won't make you wear a tie, but the orange socks are compulsory!!

Rgds,
FB

Fallow Buck:

Many thanks for an interesting exposition on the function of the bead on a shotgun. My attention was caught immediately by your initial observation that it completes the picture of what we want a shotgun to look like- I realized immediately that was true. (All my life, my first impression of a firearm has been based on how "nice" the firearm looked - a sometimes fatal flaw of mine in a trading situation!) If I understand you, you are saying that the bead serves more importantly as a point of reference for the end of the barrel and that is important for the whole sight picture of relationship of barrel to flying bird. (Yes, I'm saying "sight picture" in the sense of a whole picture of what's occurring - and not in the usual sense of a rifleman's "sight picture") Anyway, even if I have imperfectly understood you - I at least, now understand why the gun companies kept putting that "useless" bead on shotguns. I simply was using that "useless" bead all along -and congratulating myself on how I really wasn't using it!

I used to shoot with an older gentleman who shot with a beautiful Parker Single Barrel Trap Gun. He was in his late 70's when his eye-sight began to fail to the point he could still read with a magnifing glass and he could see things if they were bright... but not clearly.

His son used to bring him to the club and he would sit on the clughouse porch, smoke his pipe, listen to the guns and you could see he missed the sport.

One of the members bought a very bright orange rubber ball that was about 3"in diameter and reamed a hole thru the center just big enough to fit over the end of the old fellows' Parker and the weekend when his son brought him to the range his son told him about the suprise and while everyone stood and watched his son led him out to the 16-yard line, got him standing correctly and then asked to see a few targets (orange, of course) and then he told his Dad to try it without loading his gun to see how it felt. A few more birds were thrown and then he loaded his gun and shot under the first couple of targets, clipped the bottom of two or three and proceeded to hit the rest with only one more miss....club house virtually erupted with cheers (and a few tears too) and the old fellow came back and shook hands with everyone and offered to stand everyone the drink of their choice....at the end of the day.

This old gent continued to shoot 16-yard targets for a few more years and usually shot in the mid to high 80's. He was really an inspiration to a lot of shooters who would watch him smoke 5 targets and then need to wait until someone helped him walk to the next post.

He had a great sense of humor and was always trying to encourage others to try it with a "pumpkin" on the end of their barrel.

Bill,
That is a wonderful story. Too many times, we don't make the effort for older shooters like that.

I used to shoot trap a lot, and it was common for them to bend barrels to adjust impact. I like to draw a 2 in. circle and shoot it at 8 yards. Since I like my shotguns to shoot a bit high, I like to cut the top of the circle at 8 yards. I have on occasion bent barrels myself. A shotgun barrel is way easier to bend than you can imagine. Don't drop one in other words.