Just getting started

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DaveB
Posts: 1592
Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2013 7:11 am
Home club or Range: Wellington Service Rifle Assocaition; NZ Deerstalkers Association; Wairarapa Pistol & Shooting Sports Club
Location: Upper Hutt, New Zealand
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Re: Just getting started

#11 Post by DaveB »

Certainly when you are just starting out, one gun is the answer. A gun intended for Sporting Clays with interchangeable chokes is ideal for starting out. But make sure you get it properly fitted. For a shotgun, good gun fit is essential for success.

Long-term, and if you are serious about more than one discipline, then you really do need to have different guns for different disciplines.

You can get away with a Skeet gun in sporting (if it has interchangeable chokes) and vice-versa. From Shooting UK website on Sporting Clays: "The Sporter, therefore, needs to be designed as a sort of ‘compromise’ gun. It shoots closer to point of aim than a trap gun, is less tightly choked (1/4 and 1/4 being the norm in a fixed-choke), and its handling and balance are designed for fast swinging. Being a compromise gun in the way it handles, balances and shoots, you can also use a Sporter for skeet as well as pigeon and game shooting. That’s why we usually advise newcomers to pick a Sporter as their first gun."

DTL (or Trap) is different and to be really good at it, you need a gun specially set-up for it. Here's what Shooting UK has to say about it: "To tackle rising targets, a trap gun is configured so that it shoots slightly high. This enables the shooter to fire with the target in view just above the muzzle end of the rib, and hit it right in the middle of the pattern. As the target is retreating from the shooter at quite a rapid rate, choking is usually quite tight: 3/4in the lower barrel (which is fired first), and full in the top. Also, when tackling trap targets you don’t have to swing the gun as quickly or as far as you do in Sporting, so the gun can be heavier (which helps to soak up recoil), and also steadier in its handling. As you can see, it is a tool designed to do a job, and it isn’t much use for anything other than trap."

So, I stand by my original post - as you get more into clay bird shooting and if you are serious about it, your shooting battery tends to grow. I have all of my stocks adjusted for length-of-pull and cast to be identical, so I can switch between them easily. Because my wife also shoots and she is physically quite different than I, she naturally has her own guns.
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