New to skeet shooting. Am I looking at an ok purchase or is there better?

While I have had parents dump off kids at 4-H Trap with a semi and no training, it's the ones that drop a small for age 12 year old off with a 30" full 1100 or such that bother me. Especially when they say, "I learned on that gun, they will too!" (Not surprisingly, I'd often find out they were not very good shots ...)
As far teaching the action, that's usually pretty easy. I had a girl who'd never touched a shotgun before working a TriStar Raptor with ease, and hitting clays well with it. 4 weeks later she beat her younger brother, who was on the school Trap team, with that shotgun.

MEHavey said:

Not that I don't agree an O/U would be first choice, but don't under how
the mechanics of a semi-auto is more distracting than that of a pump action.
(especially since they load the same way)

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Better with the pump, not perfect. With the auto it was more actions to load, close the action ( rotating the gun around in some cases) position the gun in the hands, then shouldering. With pumps it was load, then close the action and shoulder in a motion. We are talking young kids with big gun that don’t anlw fit the best. things developed for the good quickly for most. It all works out in the end but it would be much smoother if they all had micro BT-99’s.

I'm afraid I load an auto and a pump the same way.

- Gun flat in hand sideways
- Drop shell in action
- Close action (Push mag release button w/ auto; Push slide forward w/ pump)
- Rotate gun upside down
- Push 2nd shell into magazine tube.
- Rotate all and pull to shoulder.

I quite honestly don't see any difference.

entropy said:

While I have had parents dump off kids at 4-H Trap with a semi and no training, it's the ones that drop a small for age 12 year old off with a 30" full 1100 or such that bother me. Especially when they say, "I learned on that gun, they will too!" (Not surprisingly, I'd often find out they were not very good shots ...)
As far teaching the action, that's usually pretty easy. I had a girl who'd never touched a shotgun before working a TriStar Raptor with ease, and hitting clays well with it. 4 weeks later she beat her younger brother, who was on the school Trap team, with that shotgun.

Click to expand...

We use a tristar viper for our "loaner" shotgun. Lucky enough to walk out the back door and shoot clays all day long.

As this has gone this far, this is what I have done in the past.

Set the machine up so it will toss the clay straight away. Personally I think that is the most easy target to hit.

Our tristar is a 20 and all plastic, I think if you are walking into this blind, with no shotgun shooting behind you, that big nose on a 12 will put an idea in your head, right or wrong.

During the summer we usually have a few people out, one was my sons new wife, all 5'4" and 100lbs of her. She ran distance in highschool and college. She is fit, but itty bitty. After the "normal" safety stuff, she had shot before just never a shot gun. and the loading procedure, one shell at a time for starters she was on her way. I think she busted her 2nd clay, and it was off from there.

It is fun when you bust them, frustrating when you don't. You want success.

Personally if your student is having issues with an auto, perhaps firearm sports are not for them. It ain't that hard....but then thinking is a lost art these days.

I do need to get a second machine, introduce another target. The one I have can fling them fairly quickly, but a second would sure be fun.

I run them off of riding lawn mowers, pull a trailer with the clays and you are set....until covid it was a every other weekend thing.

for a lot of years , I studied wing shooting and shot a lot of auto trap because it was easy for me and the gun to go to the trap range and shoot and shoot a 4 pak of walmarket shells . that's 100 shells in an afternoon
A friend that I worked with showed up with the pre -owned Krerighoff and eventually i researched the difference between a browning and a K-80.
I'm not a gunsmith but what i learned is that a browning and /or a beretta is built with leaf springs and a krieghoff was built with coil springs. Or the browning citori is good for 25 k shells and the Krieghoff was good for 100k shells '
i have forgotten the number but Olympic shooters fire 500 to a 1000 shells a week .evidently , there are people around the world that shoot several thousand shell a year ,and that's why Krieghoff is in business .
i know their expensive , they start at 13,500 dollars the engraving adds 2000 to 4000 dollars.
with trap skeet or sporting clays ,one competes against themselves
this comment is really only for entertainment , I cant afford a K-80 and wouldn't use it that much now If I could.
tangentially , in an article by Bill Hanus , a wing shooting Guru who has now gone on , The Russian skeet team had their shell marked for each separate station. you fire 2 shells at each station except on the 25. the Russians , and others use spreader shells that tuned for each separated station , I don't know how accurate that is but you can think about that for a few seconds.
Gary M's pre- owned Krieghoff was 6k I think but he probably shoots 5k to 10k shells a year. edit :10 4 paks is a thousand shell 20 4 paks would be 2000 shells a year that's 20 Saturdays out of 52

Get her one of the 12GA gas operated B-Guns. It will be softer to shoot and you can buy the barrel length she swings best. An over under will beat her up unless she's one of "those" liberals we are now seeing in VS magazines.

She's just starting. Get her a ~$600 gun in whatever payload she's comfortable with and be done with it.

For casual skeet, about any shot gun will do well. As I said befor, in the 1930's, pump guns were the gun to shoot at skeet. For practice for field hunting, skeet does well regardless of the shotgun action used. The shooter gets used to doing what he needs to do.

But, the less the shooter needs to think about during a doubles target, the better he/she will do. Hence, over/unders and semi-autos do better in competition.

When I was shooting competitively in the 1990's, many of the top shooters would shoot a semi-auto in the 12 ga event and a tubed over/under in the sub gauge events. Remembering to cycle a pump gun can result in a missed target.

I shot skeet with a Winchester Model 12 for a while and it was second nature to cycle the gun on doubles. But, since I've been shooting an over/under, I have difficulty transitioning back to a pump action when I want to shoot for fun. I have a Mossberg 500 .410 for critter control around the farm and I take it out once in a while for a skeet session. It is tough to remember to cycle the action on doubles.

As far as a newby getting started, a semi-auto adds some distractions as the gun spews out empty hulls at each station and many ranges require shooter to police their hulls. Reloading can be difficult until the shooter gets comfortable with the firearm. Otherwise, if the person providing instruction does not stress these anomalies with a semi-auto, the new shooter will do well. Most ranges should allow time and a magnetic pick up stick after a round is shot for the shooter to police his cases. It does not take that long to police the cases.

I'm so entrenched with over/under shotguns as I have a Beretta 400 in 12 ga Smuf gun and 28 gauge Xplor and I'm afraid to take them out to the skeet field because I'l probably embarrass myself. Maybe someday when the fields are not busy..

Shoot a gun that fits you right, shoulders consistently, and PRACTICE.
There are always better guns, but shoot what you can afford and what fits.