General
Bores
Cartridges
Protection
Why Bother?
Tips
Actions & Distractions
Choking or Coughing
Springing Teal
Bolting Rabbit
Incoming
Going Away
Battue
Long Crosser
Swedish Mistress

However, spend your filthy lucre on one of yesteryears quality guns and you will stand a good chance of enjoying the gun for many years to come. The engineering and finish will show its quality or lack of it. Would you like to live in Little Piggy No.1's straw house or Little Piggy No.3's nice brick and tile semi?  The first thing to decide on before buying a gun is what you are going to use it for. If coming into shooting as a first timer then you are going to be influenced by your peers, do you want to shoot because a chum rough shoots? Because you want to mix with the country boys in tweeds on a grouse moor? Because you have seen clay shooting? Tread carefully, accept advice and remember that there is no need to rush your decision, the great thing about shooting is that we are generally a friendly bunch and you can usually have a look at a gun and see how it mounts in a shop (recommend this to be a gun shop and not a jewellers though) or if you are at a shoot and ask around someone will put you straight, more often than not letting you have a go with their gun if it helps.

Then there is what KIND of clay shooting you want to do!! There are different styles of guns to suit people's needs. The side by side, over and under and semi-automatic.  The side by side. Once upon a time this was THE gun, a farmers gun, a hunters gun, a sportsman's gun. People do shoot clays with them, but it's not all that common. As the name suggests, the barrels are side by side, this is generally a light, some may say elegant gun, sometimes with double triggers, one for each barrel. The high grade English guns can cost tens of thousands of pounds. If you are a game shot get a side by side 16 gauge which can be, I'm told, real fun. If not ..... stick to what will work on the clay ground ....

Next is the over and under gun, undoubtedly the most popular gun around today. As the name suggests it has two barrels one on top of the other and just the one trigger which can be switched to fire one or t'other barrel first. These guns are used by many shooters from clay busters to pigeon shooters and game shooters. Fixed choke or multichoke, different barrel lengths, different grades of engraving, different discipline orientated guns, Game, Trap, Double Trap, Sporting, Sporter, Skeet, Electrocibles, American Trap, STREUTH! Can't I just buy a GUN!!  Trap guns are usually heavier with longer barrels say 30" / 32" with tight chokes and are designed to place the shot pattern slightly above the point of aim. Skeet guns are the opposite of Trap guns and are lighter, shorter barrels of 26" / 28" and openly choked, because the skeet shooter is shooting fast targets at a close range. The sporting gun is generally somewhere in between, the targets vary in distance, size and speed so we need a gun that will cope with the many differing scenarios and will be multichoked to be adaptable.

What do you want to pay for an over and under? You generally get what you pay for, do your research, find out what dealers are selling the guns that interest for and be brave enough to try to do a deal! You can pay £100's or £1000's. A decent, quality, used Browning or Beretta can be yours for £500 to £1600. If you want a good low cost NEW gun for £500, no doubt about it buy a Medallist or Lanber, though the Zoli is coming through now.  The semi auto is a single barreled gun mainly used for clay and pigeon shooting. The law permits only guns holding a maximum of three cartridges, each pull of the trigger will fire one shot, the empty cartridge cases being ejected to the side. The supposed main advantage of this type of gun is the low recoil and ease of handling. It may be seen as a bit of a ladies / childrens / old guys gun (joke.) 

There has been a health scare recently with Semi-Auto's.  Have you noticed that people using semi auto's rarely pick up their cartridges after they have been ejected?  According to a BMI / CPSA survey it is believed that using a semi auto actually fuses the vertebrae together, preventing the said user from bending to pick up their spent cartridges....... well its either medical or ******* laziness.

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I have been shooting Clever Mirage T4 Bol D'Or for a while now, quite a soft shooting cartridge, high velocity, good hard kills, the business and beautiful!

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I want to review guns. I want to know if that Browning / Beretta / Perazzi / Kemen / Krieghoff is worth seeking out and buying. Lets face facts, most dealers don't stock a great variety of guns do they?  My initial enquiry if I want to try a gun and review it has to be to the manufacturer / importer. GREAT ! Done that, had some responses. But of course I have to have an RFD (Registered Firearms Dealer) certificate to have the gun delivered to me from the manufacturer and to allow me to keep the gun for longer than the 72 hours that you can hold a shotgun for without notifying the Firearms Department of your local Police Authority.  The alternative is to liase with a friendly local dealer to lend me a gun or to receive it from the Importers ~ say Browning or Beretta. But of course the dealer will have a load of admin from this and won't get a sale at the end of the loan. well not from me because I have found a gun that I love to shoot already but I do get asked to assist some people and I have an opinion that might be **** or useful depending on viewpoint, there must be some sales potential from that?

This site came about because a certain other site wasn't listening to suggestions, wasn't changing to accommodate what should really have been on that site. So, the forerunner to this site was created, encompassing those things that I felt should be on a shooting site.  I started off reviewing those products that I use and find invaluable, I approached Lyalvale Express which gave me more material.  When I wanted to take up shooting I had no idea at all about what gun to choose or how to choose it. When I first mentioned that I might like to shoot, a friend who is a game shooter advised me to go for a quality gun, a Browning or Beretta. So after a few years of catching the bug and then not doing anything about it, letting the plan slip, one Saturday afternoon I grasped the nettle and went to Garlands near Tamworth and started looking in cabinets.

Sooner or later, a keen member of staff asked "that" question  "can I help you" the simple answer was YES. Then the trouble started!  Did I want 28" or 30"?  Browning or Beretta? How much did I want to spend? New or second hand? How does that feel?  BLIMEY!! I didn't know!  Before I walked out of the shop I had settled on a Browning 325 28" at £800, I declined to leave a deposit but vowed to return. I rang England DTL shot Nev Bailey (now deceased but not forgotten), I had spoken to him on the telephone before, he was a local chap and I knew was an accomplished England shooter. I was very grateful when he offered to pick me up from home and take me to Garlands to sort out the prospective purchase. Straight away we agreed that the Browning 425 was a good solid starter for me and that 30" was the right size. He ignored what was in the cabinet and asked what good guns they had in "under the counter!" as it were.

I left with my first, an NN serial number (I believe that's a late '99 model) 425 30" that was indistinguishable from a new gun for £740 including a rigid case. When looking on that first visit to Garlands I was offered a choice of two manufacturers and a limited range of guns, the Browning 325 + 425 and similar Beretta models which I don't recall. The used guns that I was offered were by and large not that great and maybe a tad overpriced. If I, as a brand new shooter, had walked out of the shop with the gun that was initially recommended, it would have been wrong for me, I wouldn't have been happy and maybe I wouldn't be shooting now or at least not doing as well as I am. Bear in mind that Garlands is something of an exception having such a large array of guns, your local rod and gun shop wouldn't be so well stocked.

My point is this. If I go to a gun shop I am invariably going to see and be offered a VERY limited range of guns, which will mainly be older used variants. How do I as a shooter know what a gun is or does if all I have to go on is a salesman matching old stock to new shooters and in the case of new guns, I have to choose the clay killer from a few lines of pizzazz in a catalogue? If for instance I wanted a Browning Ultra XS Sporter Ported, all I can go on is a few lines in the 2000 catalogue that its the best there is in terms of efficiency, technology and comfort. It apparently reduces recoil and muzzle flip, comes in an aluminium carry case and (according to a phone call to Litts just now) costs £1295. As for the Ultra XSH that I saw an ad for in Clay Shooting Magazine ~ Litts were baffled ~ no idea. That is an attractive looking gun, I like attractive things and would be put off by finishes that I would consider ugly ~ but is liking the finish on a gun a good enough reason to buy it? What about how it shoots? Can I get my hands on one? Maybe, maybe not.

I later learned that the XSH is a gun designed for a German trap discipline and wouldn't be ideally suited to my use. The surprising thing (or not) is that dealers didn't know what the gun was for, so again I could have bought the wrong piece of kit. It just goes to show you.  I have been told from several parties that my 425's stock is a touch long for me, that it doesn't fit me properly. So do I consider changing my gun, or do I keep the 425, get the gun fitted, see what having the barrels ported does for me?  It seems to me that if you shoot a Browning you stick to a Browning, similarly with Beretta. That is unless you are taken by what you read, hear or experience for yourself ~ trying the gun myself is the only way that I can possibly see to make a safe and confident decision to change and even then take advice and listen to it !

Now I come back to point, get back on track with this RFD thing ~ I can't see a gun shop giving me a gun to "play" with over a period of two weeks (two shoots) without having an interest in a sale and I really cant see them wanting to do it several times! So maybe I should apply for that RFD certificate after all. But on a site that brings in no revenue, can I afford to spend £150 on an RFD application and another £100 on an additional gun cabinet just to evaluate someone's products? The word from the Firearms Department is that I don't fit the bill for the granting of an RFD, I didn't think I would!! But I have tried and failed in my attempts to find out about the guns that I would consider changing to. The next move is to go to a gun dealer, attempt to catch them with the model derivative that I require and have a limited few shots with it. Would you buy a new car or house with this amount of information?  So if you are by chance reading this and you can assist with my quest, mail me!

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The rifle shooter closes one eye, lines the sights up on the target and fires AT IT, the sights being set to shoot to the same point of aim at a specific range, at the far end of the scale wind speed and direction are taken into account as well but unless you are a sniper don't worry too much about this! The missed target is more often than not due to movement of the hand, in turn moving the stock or fore end and the resulting deviation of even a tiny amount can put the bullet way off course. Rifle shooting is largely down to a steady hand, controlled breathing, so you are squeezing the trigger rather than jerking it, taking the shot while breathing out slowly.

The shotgunner shoots with both eyes open and POINTS the gun rather than aims it, shooting where the target will be rather than where it is. You need to realise that where you put your head in relation to the stock and therefore how it lines up with the top rib and bead of the gun, affects where the shot goes, the 'sight picture' alters accordingly. 

Most of us has a Master Eye, an eye that is dominant. What you see down the barrel of the gun and what we are REALLY pointing the gun at can be different! Try pointing a finger at a distant object and then closing your right and left eyes alternately, with one of the eyes closed you will see that your finger remains pointing at the object, closing the other eye shows that you are now pointing to the left or right of that object! This can affect what you are shooting at so be aware! If you find that you are shooting from the right shoulder and have a left Master Eye then shooting with both eyes open may give you a deceptive sight picture, causing misses behind or in front accordingly.  Shooting with this dominant eye closed will correct the sight picture in the short term. If in any doubt, take advice from a qualified CPSA coach and he will advise you how to tackle this. 

Movement of the gun is important, the principle is to shoot where the target is going, not where it has been, so to ensure that your shot meets and breaks the clay, you must basically move your gun at the same speed as the clay and keep the gun moving AFTER you have pulled the trigger.  People talk of lead, if you miss a target you may be advised by a "back seat shooter" to 'give it four feet of lead' or 'whatever lead you saw, double it.'  This advice can be very helpful or a hindrance, very helpful because many of these guys are quite good and have been shooting successfully for years and know what they are doing. A hindrance because if like me, you don't SEE lead, you will be delaying shooting the clay while you attempt to visually measure this advised distance from your muzzle to the front edge of the clay, check it again, pull the trigger and oh bugger it's too late, the clays gone.  Don't worry about having to measure lead in terms of feet and inches, worry more about where you missed it - was it missed in front or behind?  Do you need to open more of a gap or close it down on your next shot?  Did that kill the target?  Try again.  If you killed the target and can repeat the process, you have added experience and sight picture to your memory.

Clay shooting is about HAND <--> EYE co-ordination. To use one example, if someone throws a ball to you, you catch it, if you drop something you instinctively reach to catch it, it's a REALLY amazing process that happens without "thinking" about it, it's a reaction. You don't go through a checklist of looking at the ball, looking at your hand, looking back to the ball, adjusting your feet, looking at your hand ...... It just happens. In the same way, when you shout PULL, see a clay flying through the air, you just KNOW when to pull the trigger. If you trust in that instinct, you will be a long way towards success!  Believing and trusting your minds processing power. 

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When I had the Kemen I shot 5/8 & 5/8 or Light Improved Modified in both barrels, this is the choke that comes in between quarter and half.  Half choke will break most targets on the shooting field and while being a bit tighter than some people would shoot, it's also not the full choke that some others would be worried about using.  It's a compromise, but a very good one!  Having the same choke in both barrels eliminates the concerns about switching barrels over, both barrels are equally 'good' or 'bad' (appropriate)  for any given target!  After another period of being a bit of a choke changer, I had an eye opening experience on the pattern plate during a lesson.  How holey ¼ choke was at 'normal' shooting range and how good the full choke's pattern was.  This was not a jam jar pattern compared to a dustbin lid pattern it was a very convincing argument for the tight chokes.  I am now shooting 1/2 and 5/8  and am thinking of a little more constriction now my shooting is settling down again ... anyway this is about what to do as opposed to what I do.  What else? When you shoot, feel comfortable in your stance and gun hold, relax, don't panic, shout PULL, count ONE, TWO, while moving the gun and pull the trigger on THREE, seeing the clay disappear into a puff of smoke. The speed of this 1-2-3 will of course change but its a good leveller and aids repeatability and cadence.

There are a few methods as to HOW to shoot clays.

Maintained Lead ~ where the gun starts in front of the clay and stays the same distance ahead of the clay, maintaining the lead.

Pull Away ~ following the clay, keeping the gun ON the clay and pulling away to open up the neccessary lead

Follow Through ~ the gun starts behind the clay, catches it up, passes through the clay, through it's Bum, through it's Belly, through it's Beak, then BANG !!

Whatever method that you shoot, don't be afraid to try something else, be open to other concepts and persevere. I have tried to do that and feel that building a score with various methods in your box of tricks is always going to make you happier than struggling on chipping your way through - your brain learns what approach is best.

I shoot a multichoke gun and have all the chokes, I tend to shoot 1/2 & 5/8 for most things, but if something is particularly close I may stick in the skeet or cylinder ... or rather wish I had after missing some with the tight chokes!.  

You would be surprised at the holes in the pattern of a ¼ choke, if you saw the pattern plate at your normal shooting distance you would use ½ - so bear this in mind and have a look if you get the opportunity!

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Springing Teal
This is a target that many people fear appearing in a layout and often miss because they shoot it at the wrong time. The Teal rises, stops at the top of it's flight and drops quickly.  PULL!  We know where this bird is going, UP, so the gun hold position doesn't need to be on the trap, just be comfortable and ready to follow the bird or pair of birds up, say halfway, staying underneath, following the bird to the top, when the clay seems to stop at the top of its flight, pull the trigger, if the second bird is dropping get underneath it and keep the gun moving!  The alternative approach is shooting them fast, the clay is rising, you will know where the clay is going, and may want to shoot it before it gets too far away, too edgy or before it gets lost behind the scenery, gun speed and timing can kill this target if you trust your instincts and you are confident you can do it.  Dead Teal.

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I went through quite a rough patch with missed rabbits and was cured by closing my left eye after calling for the bird, shooting at it, bingo.

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Someone suggested following the arc of the clays path with your gun and body moving as one - imagine the clay rises in an arc, peaks and falls away - pick up the target, follow it up and don't just move the gun from side to side but roll with the clay and get the Mr Sheen out (there will be some dusting). 

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A tip for shooting these consistently is to use the Pull Away method, keeping the barrels on the clay, matching the speed and flight of the clay, then pulling away in front to give the required lead and firing.  If you do not kill the target and know where you missed it, compensate the second time and open up or decrease the lead accordingly.  For example if you're missing behind consistently, try shooting to miss it in front ... Dead Clay? 

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