Gun mount

This is probably the most difficult of all the bits that are needed to put the gun in the right place to hit stuff flying through the air. If you concentrate solely on the so called 'gun down' disciplines I think you'll find it much more difficult to attain a good mount because the stock has to travel that much further to find it's place before the trigger is pulled. I've always shot clays where there is no need for any start point for the shotgun before being brought to the shoulder but then again, as I've never needed to shoot with the gun at such and such a position I'm going to be a bit biased, aren't I?
What I do know is that wherever the butt may be when you call for the bird, at the time of pulling the trigger the stock must be tight under the cheek bone as well as tucked neatly into your shoulder otherwise any break will be luck or instinct. My best results seem to be with the butt resting a fraction inboard of my shoulder with the heel level with my armpit; there's no accounting for why this works for me, all I know is that from there the stock seems to rise nicely into place. Assuming that your gun fits, you must be ready to shoot many hundreds of clays before muscle memory comes into action allowing you automatically put the gun to the right place in your shoulder so recoil doesn't knock you back and your master eye is looking straight along the rib of your gun. Once gun mount seems second nature, you'll then find that on a cold day an extra coat spoils it all, or on a hot day your shirt collar will snag the butt on it's way up; my way of dealing with this is to shoot in the same gear all through the year with perhaps a jumper underneath when it's cold and a coat that is taken off just to shoot when it's wet.
Lots of people will tell you that a good gun mount can be learnt by swinging the gun about along the ceiling line indoors; in my experience that's rubbish. I find that if there is no real target there is a tendancy to lose concentration and focus on the barrel instead of the imaginary bird so when it comes to the real thing I tended to be unable to focus solely on the target and stopped the gun or fell behind but hey, if it works for you then try it - someone else I knew practised his dry gun mount technique on seagulls, I don't advocate that these days but it worked for him then. There are those who are practitioners of the 'gun up' method, that is shooting with the gun already in the shoulder when the target is called for. I don't go along with this theory because too many times I've seen them call 'pull' then lift their head off the stock to watch the bird and forget to put it back so the shot goes high time and time again. Far better to be able to see the target then move the gun up and under in front while it's coming into the shoulder.
Another important factor in a good mount is the way we lift the gun, the hand under the fore end must always push the gun up and away towards the target while the trigger hand supports the stock into position. If this is the wrong way round then the stock will most probably be lifted faster than the barrels leading to a shot below the target or, worse still, you'll find the barrels waving about struggling to come into the line of the clay. However you physically mount your gun it must be in the same place, comfortably tight into your face and shoulder each and every time you shoot; without that you'll never train your brain to use your instinct to it's full capability.

Confidence

So you've started shooting at clays and hopefully breaking several of them as well. How do you make sure you continue to hit them? Part of the answer is to have confidence in what you are doing when you pull the trigger; if you watch a target and think that you can't hit it then you will miss it. You must have confidence that when you mount the gun in front of a target, it is in the right place and you will break the clay. Confidence will be built after you have been hitting targets for a while, so you will instinctively know that the gun is right, the cartridge is right and that the clay will break when you want it to. You will find it difficult to be sure of a clay as a separate target but wait until the straights start coming for you; shoot 10 in a row and you will have the confidence to keep breaking 11 and 12.
I've recently mastered a 40 odd yard crosser from 30yds up a tower - for ages I had trouble with this particular bird because I wasn't sure it could be broken but twice now I have gone to the stand and absolutely plastered the midi each and every time. It's all because my mind has decided it will be broken; it doesn't matter if the wind blows or the trajectory is slightly different, we mustn't worry about that because our sub-concious will work all it out - what does matter is that I now know that 3/8 choke with 8's will break that clay every time, I am confident I can do it.

Trees

Something that has recently been bothering my squad is their lack of ability to hit targets that are behind trees. My club has a surfeit of trees through and around which we throw all sorts of clays, this time of year with no leaves to be seen it doesn't make any difference to the shooter, at least it shouldn't. Once again I'm going to trot out the favourite chestnut about instinct and how the mind controls what we do or don't do with a gun. Consider a left to right rabbit rolling along the ground in front of you but behind two or three small trees; watch the guns in turn and you'll see that most people pick their spot to shoot at the clay, invariably in the widest open area between the trees. Why do they do that? It appears to me that these shooters have told themselves that the only way to kill a target is when it's out in the open so there is nothing between the muzzle and the clay; they've also told themselves that the trees are somehow going to restict their swing with the gun - watch how the timing goes wrong and the gun stops his swing just as the barrels point towards a tree, once again -why? The barrels won't hit the tree, it's yards away.
The shooter has allowed his mind to see anything along the flightline of the target as an obstacle so while he's in the process of shooting his subconsious is saying, 'hang on, that tree might damage my gun, we'd better stop the swing now'. The result is always a miss behind. What's the answer then, you ask? Simple - ignore everything except the target; there is no reason whatsoever that your shot can't be taken at any point along the flightline unless the tree is a mighty oak. Think about it; your gun is moving sideways, the shot string is moving sideways as well as forwards, the clay is moving sideways, there are hundreds of pellets in your cartridge. The vast majority of the pellets will go either side of an 8 inch tree towards the target resulting in a kill to the clay behind. When you next shoot at a clay that is running behind a tree wait until it's safe to do so then look to see where the pellets have hit the wood or branches - you'll be hard pressed to find a couple of dozen, the rest went past. Don't allow yourself to see trees or branches as something which will dictate how you shoot a clay, just concentrate on the bird.

Please come back soon to find some articles or ask me about technique.

Copyright of this page belongs to Andy, How to Break Clays.com - the website for the amateur clay shooter, July 2007