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Ask the Instructor: Comb Adjustment

Comb Adjustment

 

Short of having a gun fitter adjust my comb, how can I be sure that my adjustable comb is in the right place and adjusted properly?

 

Most senior instructors would be more than glad to take a quick look at your shotgun and help you adjust it without charge, but here are a few tips for the do-it-yourselfer.

Find a mirror inside your home or in the clubhouse and stand in front of it, facing the mirror, with the muzzle of your unloaded shotgun about six inches away from the mirror when you are fully mounted to the shotgun. Use a whiteboard marker to place a small dot on the mirror at the same height as your eye. This is the dot you will be mounting to and using as your target. Mount your shotgun to the dot on the mirror and observe the position of your eye on the rib when your mount is complete. Your objective is to adjust the comb up, down, left or right until the eye naturally comes to rest on top of the rib, and is centered on the rib, when the mount is complete.

The entire colored portion of the eye — the iris — should be visible, but you should not be able to see the lower lid of the eye or the white portion of the eye below the iris. Additionally, you should see the iris centered on the rib from left to right, aligned with the center of the rib. Keep mounting and adjusting the comb until you get it right. That’s it! Verify your fit on a patterning board. If your adjustments look perfect in front of the mirror but are a bit off on the patterning board, it could be that you are mounting differently on the patterning board than you are at the mirror. If that’s the case, you might want to invest in a trip to a nearby gun fitter or senior instructor.

Don Currie is NSCA’s Chief Instructor, an Orvis Wingshooting School instructor, and Master Class competitor. To get free shooting tips and videos, sign up for his monthly newsletter.  You can also see more tips from Currie at www.doncurrie.com.

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Ask the Instructor: Mounts

Mounts

 

In observing the top guns shoot, I noticed most of them mount the gun to the kill point, then wind back to the hold point and call for the target. Why do they use this pre-shot routine, which seems like it draws attention to the gun?

 

This is an interesting observation. Yes, many top shooters mount to the break point during their pre-shot routine, but it is not for the reasons you might imagine. Many students at the novice to intermediate level pre-mount as part of their pre-shot routine in order to visually “check” the alignment of their shooting eye over the rib. This habit can also be a subconscious compensation for an ill-fitting gun. If you are pre-mounting and visually “checking” the bead/rib as part of your pre-shot routine, stop! It serves as a subconscious “reminder” to look at the front bead during shot execution, which is a destructive practice.

When a Master-class shooter mounts to the break point as part of his or her pre-shot routine, what you are seeing is a final “loading” or rehearsal just prior to calling for the target. By physically moving the gun to the break point and visually focusing on the break point (not the rib), the shooter accomplishes two very important elements of the pre-shot routine. 1) the shooter is reinforcing his commitment to break the target at the break point. Since the shooter will be focused on the target (and not the muzzle’s location) at the time the shot is executed, it is important for the shooter to be able to “feel” when the muzzle reaches the break point. 2) In moving from hold point to break point and back to the hold point again, the shooter is essentially conducting a last-minute rehearsal. The shooter is experiencing what it will feel like to move to and arrive at the break point and execute the shot.

Pre-mounting and moving the gun to the break point, while focusing on the break point (not the bead/rib), can be a very useful part of one’s pre-shot routine. I use and teach students to incorporate this element into their pre-shot routine.

Don Currie is NSCA’s Chief Instructor, an Orvis Wingshooting School instructor, and Master Class competitor. To get free shooting tips and videos, sign up for his monthly newsletter.  You can also see more tips from Currie at www.doncurrie.com.

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Ask the Instructor: Consistency

Consistency

 

Sometimes I shoot lights-out and other times, not so much. It’s aggravating to know my potential when I fall short of my potential 80 percent of the time. What’s the solution?

 

Consistency is the Holy Grail for competitive shooters, but it’s elusive for many.

Consistency is the number one goal of competitors that come to me for first-time lessons. For students whose goal it is to reach and remain at the top of the leaderboards, I coach them on three pillars of consistency: 1) Commitment to break point, 2) Planning and executing to plan, and 3) Commitment to your process.

The essence of consistency is breaking a given pair of targets in the same place and in the same way every time. Failing this, you will be shooting a different target or pair of targets each time you call pull. You might think that “plan and execute to plan” is the same as commitment to break point, but it’s not. Yes, selecting your break points is certainly a vital element of your shot plan, but a good shot plan involves much more. Proper pre-shot planning also involves strategizing your stance, body position, hold point, muzzle angle, visual pick-up point, insert point, engagement technique, moment of initiation and your transition between targets of a pair. This might seem like a lot to think about, but all this planning work should be completed and rehearsed before you step into the shooting stand. The more you do it, the better and faster you get at planning and the more natural it becomes. Then there is your “process” or pre-shot routine. Process involves everything you do and think about from the time you step into a shooting stand to shoot the targets and the moment you step out of the stand after shooting the last target at that station. As a shooter’s proficiency improves, lack of process or process control is to blame for a greater and greater percentage of misses. If consistency is eluding you, look to these three pillars of consistency for answers.

Don Currie is NSCA’s Chief Instructor, an Orvis Wingshooting School instructor, and Master Class competitor. To get free shooting tips and videos, sign up for his monthly newsletter.  You can also see more tips from Currie at www.doncurrie.com.

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Ask the Instructor: Leading Crossers

Leading Crossers

 

Is there any difference between a right-to-left target and a left-to-right target in terms of perceived lead? Roger Silcox once talked about left-to-right needing extra lead, or perhaps he meant extra effort (for a right-handed shooter). Do you recognize this in your move/mount?

 

Roger Silcox was a legend; a coach’s coach. I wish I had known him personally. The phenomenon that you are referring to is the comparative difference in “perceived lead” of a left-to-right crosser versus a right-to-left crossing target for a right-handed shooter. For a right-handed shooter, the perceived lead on a left-to-right crossing target will be slightly greater than for a right-to-left crossing target. The actual lead is the same, however. Why the perception of greater lead? Let’s start by recognizing that all lead should be subconscious and that measuring is bad, no matter the reason. Over your shooting life, you will accumulate a subconscious “database” of leads, so this is not something about which you should agonize, because we subconsciously adjust for the perceived lead differential. If we were to “measure,” however, the perceived lead on a left-to-right will be appear to be greater than that of a right-to-left crosser because we see binocularly (with two eyes).

The perception of incremental lead for a left-to-right crossing target is due to the influence of the left eye on our sight picture. When looking at a left-to-right crosser with two eyes, your left eye sees more lead than the right eye given the angle of offset between the left eye and the rib/muzzle. With a right-to-left flat-trajectory crossing target, your left eye sees the target across the barrel and is often blocked by the barrel so the left-eye bias doesn’t occur. It is also important to note that the difference in perceived lead between these two targets will be different for different shooters depending on the degree of dominance of the right eye. If you only had one eye and shot off the same shoulder as your one eye, there would be no perceived difference in lead between these two types of targets. For left-handed shooters, this phenomenon is reversed.

Don Currie is NSCA’s Chief Instructor, an Orvis Wingshooting School instructor, and Master Class competitor. To get free shooting tips and videos, sign up for his monthly newsletter.  You can also see more tips from Currie at www.doncurrie.com.

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Hartmann’s Hint #53: Too Many Instructors

Too Many Instructors

 

Today I was helping a man who is an A-class skeet shooter. He was using the same gun that he has shot some good scores with. He has recently started missing some shots that used to be easy for him. He had recently sought help from some other instructors and each of them had told him something a little different.

I asked the student if he had patterned his shotgun. He stated he had, and that it shot 50/50.

I furthermore asked him if he had patterned it from a steady rest; his answer was no, he had just stood there and shot at a piece of paper. I’m a firm believer in patterning all shotguns and doing so from a steady rest so the shooter has confidence in where the shot gun shoots. He will now be patterning his gun from a steady rest, and we’ll see if it has a more normal distribution.

The next thing I did was look at his gun mount and stance which looked reasonably good. What I did see was that he was mounting the gun relatively low on his shoulder, which made it possible for him to raise his head on some of his shots.

After that I looked at his eye alignment to his rib, and I noticed that he was looking at the back of the breach, so we raised his comb to better align his eyes with the rib.

I believe that he may have consulted too many instructors trying to solve his problem.

The point I’m trying to make is that he may have TOO MANY different people trying to help him. While all of them may have good intentions and may be able to help him in some way, they may also give conflicting information to the student, and they may miss the root cause(s) of his or her misses.

I believe that people seeking instruction on shotgun shooting should go to one, and only one, instructor until that instructor’s helpful knowledge limit is reached. After that, seek a higher level instructor and follow their instructions.

Stay safe,

Barry Hartmann

Barry Hartmann is an NSSA Master Level and NRA Certified shotgun instructor who can help you improve your skills at American Skeet and wingshooting. To contact Barry, email him at threeat8@aol.com or give him a call at (918)803-2393.