Being ready in the face of the chaos that comes with an expected flush is the first step in making a shot. Practice a slow, deliberate mount during the offseason to perfect the mechanics. (Photo courtesy of ALPS Brands)
August 07, 2024
By Scott Linden
The chukar made a fatal mistake, sweeping up and over the sandy desert bowl I was hunting. I made a towering, 40-yard shot, and the bird fell, rag dead, almost at my feet. I moved away to let my hard-working German wirehair do the retrieving honors.
It was a fitting culmination to years of misses, thousands of practice rounds and a lot of blood, sweat and tears born out of frustration. Chukars and pheasants still fly off unscathed, but not as often as they did since I’ve become my own shotgun instructor.
You can help yourself become a better shotgunner, too. There are ways to spot issues with your shooting and correct them on your own through simple drills (and lots of practice). Here are some suggestions that might put more birds in your bag this season.
ONE EYE HAS IT I’d spent my first hunting season missing birds, finally slowing a pheasant enough for me to scrabble on hands and knees into the brush to pounce on the wing-clipped rooster. Picking twigs out of my teeth, I swore I’d take a shooting lesson.
Advertisement
My instructor started without a gun, but OK, he was the expert, right? We went through a few hand gyrations, and he quickly pegged me as cross-dominant. Before I could insult his mother, I learned he meant my offside eye was stronger than my shooting eye, and the term had nothing to do with my wardrobe choices. A simple fix and I was hitting 70 percent by the end of the day. I still thank Buz Fawcett with every trigger pull.
Before you make any adjustments to your shooting, figure out if you’re cross-dominant. Extend your arms toward the floor and bring your hands together, palms facing away from your body, to create a 3-inch triangular hole with your thumbs and index fingers. Focus your vision on a fixed object a few dozen feet away at about eye level. Raise your hands, arms extended and maintaining the hole. Look through the hole at the object, and slowly bring your hands back toward your face. You will naturally bring your hands back to put the hole over your dominant eye.
If that’s your right eye and you shoot right-handed, look for another excuse for your lousy shooting. If not, don your shooting glasses and put a 1-inch piece of transparent tape on your left lens so when your gun is mounted, the tape obscures your left eye’s view of the shotgun muzzle. (How do you know? Close your right eye.)
Advertisement
MIRROR, MIRROR In the heat of a flushing covey, we often throw the gun up and try a Hail Mary shot. (At least that’s my modus operandi.) The path to a good gun mount during a covey rise or any other flush starts with doing everything right, slowly and smoothly, over and over again. Then speed things up. A full-length mirror is one way to ensure perfect practice makes perfect.
Face the mirror and with eyes closed, mount your unloaded gun. Open your eyes. Where is your dominant eye? It should be sighting straight down the barrel. If it’s not, look at where the buttstock meets your shoulder. It should nestle into the pocket created by your shoulder socket joint and your collar bone. If there is no pocket, you might be using the rifleman’s stance, with your offside foot too far forward. Square up to the mirror, each foot under its corresponding shoulder. Slowly mount the gun again … there’s the pocket.
When possible, initiate your gun mount from the ready position. This minimizes extraneous motions that booger up your mount and keeps the muzzle tracking the bird. Turn sideways to the mirror, with your shooting side closest to it. Hands in their shooting locations on the gun, put the top of the buttstock about even with your armpit but forward of it, keeping the muzzle a bit higher than the butt. Slowly pull the gun forward a bit with your lead hand, and slide the butt into your shoulder pocket. Now turn and face the mirror to see the position of your shooting eye. It should be sighting down the rib.
Dry-firing is a part of practice, and snap caps permit dry-firing without damaging a firing pin. MAKE IT SNAPPY The show ain’t over till the fat lady sings, and in shooting, the fat lady is your trigger pull. It’s been my experience that everything is just fine until the moment we push off the safety and pull the trigger. Once you’ve got your mount dialed in, slow it down again and add releasing the safety and pulling the trigger. Dry-firing could break a firing pin, so place snap caps in your shotgun. Remember, perfect practice …
SEE THE LIGHT Now, on to nailing those crossing targets. You’ll need an oscillating fan and a penlight. Use duct tape to attach the light to the top of the fan, set on its slowest setting so the light moves back and forth on a wall.
Put snap caps in, stand back from the fan, and with your gun in the ready position, follow the light with your eyes and hips (the gun should naturally follow). Slowly mount and squeeze off a shot when your gun reaches your shoulder pocket. Again, the key is a slow and deliberate mount while focusing on the “target.”
RANGE TIME The range is where you put everything together and practice it over and over. Shoot light target loads so you can get in enough reps without becoming bothered by recoil. Add good ear protection to prevent any interference from fear of the bang.
Shoot by yourself, and you’ll eliminate snide remarks from your buddies. You can take your sweet time and shoot only the bird-like targets. There’s no need to keep score, and you can focus on the ones you’re missing until you need the ego boost of a straight going-away shot. That’s OK; birds sometimes fly straight away, and you should practice those shots, too.
This article was featured in the June-July 2024 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe .
