doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Thoughts on Gun Fit

With experience and study one can lean what fits and what doesn't and if one understands what is going on, one can compensate to a degree.

Without this, a gun which shoots where the shooter does not think it does is going to make him miss more shots.

You can and must compensate for fit - when changing from thin to heavy clothing for example.

If the drop is wrong, you will be shooting the legs of your birds or shooting over them. hopeless if you don't know it.

As range increases, fit matters more.

I shoot over a dozen different gun on a regular basis. About half of them are near my normal fitted dimensions half are not. I can pick up just about any gun and have very good results for a round or two of clay targets or a few live birds. But a gun that does not fit me well will start to become harder to shoot well the more I shoot after that. Many others have similar results. Just pick up any gun for sale and you will shoot it well until you buy it and get it home.

I have had several fittings over the years. Gain fifty pounds or loose fifty pounds or age 30 years and you better get refit. Funny thing is that most were almost what I was shooting with only minor adjustments. If you watch the target and see how it breaks you can figure out most of what you need to know and make your own adjustments. Experts can tweak but if you can not get within 90-95 they will not be the answer. It is the Indian more than the arrow.

You can get free shooting advice on any skeet squad. Four "experts" will tell you that you were over, under, behind or in front of every missed target. And the best thing is that one of them is exactly right. You just have to figure out which one.

Gun fit is just one of many variables that contribute to whether you do (or will ever) shoot to your potential.

Sure, you can shoot "pretty well" with a gun that doesn't fit perfectly, with cheap promo shells and a cylinder choke.

But just how good a shot you can ever become is certainly influenced by gun fit. For me, perfect gun fit is table stakes. I make a pattern stock, shoot the pattern board, tweak the stock, shoot a couple hundred targets & tweak the stock, etc., etc. Usually within a couple thousand targets I will have decided that the gun fits as perfectly as it ever will. For sure, I will be able to mount it with my eyes closed, open my master eye, focus on the rib and bead and see exactly what I expect to see. And shooting it will have proven that it shoots exactly where I expect it to without having to be conscious of the muzzle, unless I choose to. This applies as much to a trap gun that will be shot pre-mounted as a 6lb SxS. The gun is an extension of my eyes and once the gun touches my cheek not the slightest adjustment should ever be necessary, even from a hurry-up, low gun start. Then I duplicate the pattern with some pretty English walnut.

Now the whole issue of gun fit has been laid to rest, I'll go out and proceed to find a myriad of ways to miss. But with supreme confidence in gun fit I can give them the attention they deserve.

Say what you want about gun fit. I believe a perfectly fitted gun is extremely advantageous. In fact, with an ill-fitting gun, such as an old gun with 3 1/2 in drop at heel, I could literally shoot such a gun better from the hip and I'm not trying to be funny. I mean it.

No question gun fit is important. However, as suggested above, some people adapt to significantly different dimensions better than others. Ted Lundrigan, a Minnesota grouse hunter, discusses his grouse guns in a book called "Hunting the Sun". He talks about using a Westley Richards 20ga, a Remington Model 31 Lightweight, and a Parker 12ga with a dogleg stock. I'd submit that anyone who can switch back and forth between those 3 guns when hunting grouse--where, to borrow a phrase from OJ's lawyer, "if the gun don't fit, you will not hit!"--is about as adaptable as one can be.

Cast is one dimension which, I think, is less reliable than LOP and drop when it comes to the measurements you need in a gun. I've found that I can shoot guns with no cast and guns with quite a bit of cast equally well (or poorly). Yet on other guns with a fair amount of cast, I know immediately when I mount them that they won't work because I'm looking down the right barrel rather than the rib. Seems to me the reason that cast isn't necessarily as fixed a measurement as either LOP or drop is because comb thickness plays a significant role. It can function either to negate a lot of cast or to emphasize whatever bend is present.

Not too surpising that fellows who do stock work and gun fittings, and those theyve brain washed, are most adamant about this. Kind of like them that sell special minerals ect claiming it will cure all your ills. Or them that sell womens facial products claiming their ingredient will make skin look like its 20 years old. Digweed shoots different guns with different stocks and he is world champ many times over. How do you stock makers and fitters and their customers explain that ?

Digweed is a genius. It is always a very bad example to take someone like him as an example of what the common man is capable of. Besides, do you really think he shoots his competitions with a random gun picked up of the shelf, which does not fit him?

As a language teacher, there were always 5% of pupils who would learn a language whatever method (or lack of) you used to teach them, they had a particular aptitude for language learning.

That was no excuse to have a department with poorly trained teachers who lacked a proper teaching methodology. If you did and pointed to the 5% who learned anyway as an excuse, the 95% of failures would have something to complain about; rightly.

Gun fit is simple - if the gun does not shoot to where you think it is pointing, you will miss. If it is too short, you will hit yourself in the face with your thumb, too long and you will struggle to mount it cleanly and it will be pointing across your body. Too much drop and you will shoot under things. Your get the picture.

Having said that, I do get frustrated when people look at a 100 year old gun and then give you a set of dimensions, all down to the extreme degree by a fitter quoting for a bespoke stock and expect you to be able to bent it to exactly what they think they need as if the wood is play dough! If it is basically correct and you practice enough, you can shoot well with a gun which is not theoretically perfect.

I believe the most intelligent and insightful book title in shotgunning was Bob Brister's Shotgunning: The Art and the Science. It accurately depicts the challenge of defining shotgunning because it is are both clear science and malleable art.

The variables when swinging a gun to put its pattern on target are greater than most of us imagine and because they interact differently for each of us they cannot be completely grasped.

I see gun fit as part science and part art. I have had guns fitted and none have the same dimensions, yet each of them when shot against the patterning board come out about the same. However I must sadly admit that the gun I seem to hit best with was one the was fitted like the others, then bent, and after the fit bounced back some (1/4 inch) I now hit with it better.

My point is not that fitting is a waste, it is not. It is that fitting is only part of the variables. Shooting style consistentcy is a foundational necessity for gun fit to work. If you are inconsistent in mount and or swing, then fitting is a waste. This is why when starting your kids get a gun about the right size and have then shoot a bit (maybe years) before any detailed fitting should be bothered with.

One comment on cast. While some do not believe it is an important dimension to concern yourself with, I disagree. I find cast is very important for me, as is length of pull, I find drop less important. But that is me and each of us is different. You will never know which variables matter more or less to you without experimentation.

Some of us are blest to stumble on what works. If you do then do not change it.

The true key to competent shotgunning is repetition. Shoot alot of shells, play around with the variables and find what works for you.

What Digweed or Tom Knapp or Annie Oakley can/could do with a gun that fits or doesn't fit, has no bearing on my need for a well fitted gun. To paraphrase Matthew Quigley: "This ain't the World Championships, and you ain't Digweed"

I'm sure any of the above could stand on their head and shoot with the gun not touching their shoulder and hit more than I can standing pre-mounted.

Brister was a genius-and also a great con man- he conned his wife into driving the station wagon towing the patterning targets, as he was wise enough to know that shooting a shotgun for pattern tests on a stationary target with a 30" to maybe a 36" dia circle inscribed did NOT cover the dynamics of shot stringing as does a moving larger patterning board. The best of the British instructional videos I have seen is the two-part H&H shooting school programmes- with now retired instructor Ken Davies- gun fit, mount, foot position, swing and balance-- all made simple and the videos show both game bird shooting and clays--Tower and British SC programmes-- I watch and re-watch those many times, and practice a 'dry-mount" with the comb of the buttstock tucked under my armpit, muzzles pointed upwards, a easy forward and up movement locks the comb into the "rear sight" of a scattergun, the cheek- or zylogmatic arch perhaps? I think the Digster, the late Tony Treadwell and others are like the late Gene Hill once described the equally late American shotgun "ACE" Rudy Etchen-- who showed up a Gene's duck club but sans shotgun- was invited, of course, to stay and shoot- took a std issue "club gun" a 12 gauge 870- and added a bit of foam and tape to the comb to make it fit him better. He may not have shot 20 ducks with 20 shells like Harold Money did in 1915, but I'll betcha he came damn close to that achievement!!