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For a long time I've heard people talking about gun fit and how important it was and I even thought I knew enough about gun fit to know whether my shotguns fitted me or not, but it seems I didn't know what I thought I knew.
I have two shotguns. One is an Italian O/U with fixed chokes (mod and full) and the other in a Winchester 1400 semi-automatic with Winchoke. Both guns wear 28" barrels, but understandably the semi-auto has more weight up front with the gas piston, etc and with a longer receiver pushing everything further forward. Both guns fit me reasonably well (or so I thought) and I thought that the semi-auto fitted me better than the O/U to start with. I have reasonably broad shoulders but with both guns I was looking straight down the rib, despite the obvious differences in cast between the two guns.
I am a relative newbie to shotgunning and I have shot trap mostly (so far). I found someone to coach me a little bit and my first round of trap I broke 19/25 targets. My coach was pretty impressed .... I was annoyed by the 6 that got away
. I shot my first round with the O/U. I continued to shoot with the O/U and my scores have been hovering around the 18-21 mark. I was invited to try skeet and I thought that the semi auto with an improved cylinder choke would be the closest I had to a skeet gun. I scored an abyssmal 4/25 and cursed the game .... however I hadn't patterned the gun (silly me).
So in a fit of belated wisdom I patterned the gun and found that it was shooting well to the left and high. Basically the northwest segment of the pattern board was getting hammered and the centre was getting a patchy spattering of stragglers and flyers from the edge of the pattern. That partially explains the poor skeet score. I tried a round of trap with the semi, knowing it was shooting left and trying to allow for it, and broke about 12 targets. I put the semi auto down and the next round I shot with the O/U and broke 20 targets.
I went home a little disappointed thinking that I'd just never be able to shoot the semi-auto and thinking about how little it would be worth if I tried to sell it and what it would cost to buy a gun to replace it. One of the board members here sent me a link to a webpage advertising shotguns and in the blurb on that page there was a comment about cast and how it can have dramatic effects on the shooters success. The comment that really made the gears whir was that a gun with too little cast usually shot high and to the left for a right handed shooter.
After some discussions with more learned folk than I, I decided to try shimming my stock to bring the gun's pattern back to centre. I figured it was cheap, reversible and if it didn't work I had lost nothing. I loosened the stock bolt and carefully cut two layers of cardboard from the top of a shell box and fitted them between the receiver and the stock. I tightened the stock bolt back up and measured the result. Two layers of cardboard gave the gun 3/8" (9 mm) of cast off ... that is the stock at the butt plate has been shifted 3/8" to the right. Compared side by side the semi auto now had very similar cast dimensions as my O/U.
I hadn't had time to try the gun out since altering the fit untill today. I managed to secure a short leave pass from Mrs Spinner and raced up to the gun club. Unfortunately all the fields were closed bar one which was occupied by a corporate shoot, so I didn't get to try the gun on any targets, however, I did pattern the gun and it is now shooting POI slightly higher than POA (about a 70/30 bias) but centred left to right.
Preliminary results suggest that simply shimming the stock has improved gun fit dramatically and that the gun should now be much more effective for me. A more conclusive result will be obtained as soon as I can get a chance to bust some clays, however, I'm feeling very confident that this experiment will be a success. At least the gun shoots where I look now .... I just have to make sure I look in the right places and I'm sure I'll be breaking targets.
And as for me thinking this particular gun fitted me prior to modification .... well I must have been scrunching myself around the stock and making myself fit the gun (even though I thought I wasn't).
Spinner
I have two shotguns. One is an Italian O/U with fixed chokes (mod and full) and the other in a Winchester 1400 semi-automatic with Winchoke. Both guns wear 28" barrels, but understandably the semi-auto has more weight up front with the gas piston, etc and with a longer receiver pushing everything further forward. Both guns fit me reasonably well (or so I thought) and I thought that the semi-auto fitted me better than the O/U to start with. I have reasonably broad shoulders but with both guns I was looking straight down the rib, despite the obvious differences in cast between the two guns.
I am a relative newbie to shotgunning and I have shot trap mostly (so far). I found someone to coach me a little bit and my first round of trap I broke 19/25 targets. My coach was pretty impressed .... I was annoyed by the 6 that got away
. I shot my first round with the O/U. I continued to shoot with the O/U and my scores have been hovering around the 18-21 mark. I was invited to try skeet and I thought that the semi auto with an improved cylinder choke would be the closest I had to a skeet gun. I scored an abyssmal 4/25 and cursed the game .... however I hadn't patterned the gun (silly me). So in a fit of belated wisdom I patterned the gun and found that it was shooting well to the left and high. Basically the northwest segment of the pattern board was getting hammered and the centre was getting a patchy spattering of stragglers and flyers from the edge of the pattern. That partially explains the poor skeet score. I tried a round of trap with the semi, knowing it was shooting left and trying to allow for it, and broke about 12 targets. I put the semi auto down and the next round I shot with the O/U and broke 20 targets.
I went home a little disappointed thinking that I'd just never be able to shoot the semi-auto and thinking about how little it would be worth if I tried to sell it and what it would cost to buy a gun to replace it. One of the board members here sent me a link to a webpage advertising shotguns and in the blurb on that page there was a comment about cast and how it can have dramatic effects on the shooters success. The comment that really made the gears whir was that a gun with too little cast usually shot high and to the left for a right handed shooter.
After some discussions with more learned folk than I, I decided to try shimming my stock to bring the gun's pattern back to centre. I figured it was cheap, reversible and if it didn't work I had lost nothing. I loosened the stock bolt and carefully cut two layers of cardboard from the top of a shell box and fitted them between the receiver and the stock. I tightened the stock bolt back up and measured the result. Two layers of cardboard gave the gun 3/8" (9 mm) of cast off ... that is the stock at the butt plate has been shifted 3/8" to the right. Compared side by side the semi auto now had very similar cast dimensions as my O/U.
I hadn't had time to try the gun out since altering the fit untill today. I managed to secure a short leave pass from Mrs Spinner and raced up to the gun club. Unfortunately all the fields were closed bar one which was occupied by a corporate shoot, so I didn't get to try the gun on any targets, however, I did pattern the gun and it is now shooting POI slightly higher than POA (about a 70/30 bias) but centred left to right.
Preliminary results suggest that simply shimming the stock has improved gun fit dramatically and that the gun should now be much more effective for me. A more conclusive result will be obtained as soon as I can get a chance to bust some clays, however, I'm feeling very confident that this experiment will be a success. At least the gun shoots where I look now .... I just have to make sure I look in the right places and I'm sure I'll be breaking targets.
And as for me thinking this particular gun fitted me prior to modification .... well I must have been scrunching myself around the stock and making myself fit the gun (even though I thought I wasn't).
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