From guns and gundogs to the latest shooting news; the complete online network for the British shooting community.
By Clay pigeon shooting
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Clay pigeon shooting lesson: If a complete novice comes to me for tuition - and by that I mean someone who’s never fired a shotgun - I can almost guarantee that I’ll have them hitting targets within the first hour’s lesson.
Clay pigeon shooting lesson.
Building up a library of sight pictures is essential if you want to hit targets consistently.
One excellent way to achieve this routine is to realise the mechanics of smashing a moving object (the clay) with the aid of another moving object (the shot).
In effect, all we have to do is arrange a collision between the two, and this is what we're going to look at this month...
The only way to correctly determine lead is to
build up a library of mental sight pictures:
To make things easy, here's an example where I’ve made all the figures 'convenient.' Let’s say we've got a bird that's crossing in front of the stand, travelling through the kill zone at 40 miles per hour.
A bit of nifty work on the calculator tells me the target is moving at 58.6 feet per second.
Now then, for ease, let's assume the shot is travelling at 1,000 feet per second (fps). I realise that shot actually travels faster than this but, as I said, I’m trying to keep things simple.
The only other variable we have to consider is the distance from the shooting stand to the clay itself, so let’s assume its around 30 yards. Actually, let’s say 100 feet.
Therefore, and even to my knowledge of basic maths, it’s pretty obvious that the shot travelling at 1,000 fps is going to take a tenth of a second (0.1) to travel the 100 feet.
So far, so good? The trouble for the shooter occurs because, in the same tenth of a second that the front of the shot stream takes to travel to the clay, the clay itself has also been moving forward for the same amount of time.
As we know, this was at 40mph, or, 58.6 feet a second. So in that tenth of a second it’s travelled 5.86 feet (dividing 586 by 10) - and that’s nearly two yards!
Therefore, in this example, this is the minimum amount of lead needed to break the clay. (Now you should realise that if you shoot at a clay you’ll always, always miss behind).
Having said all this, I’m not suggesting that giving a typical 100-foot-away bird around six feet of lead will result in a hit every time - there are far too many variables to take into account to guarantee success.
Hopefully, though, this example will make you think about the logistics of arranging that collision between the shot stream and the clay.
In a nutshell that’s about it as far as the theory goes. We’ve established that smashing clays is all about arranging a collision between the stream of shot and the clay, and hopefully we now understand the basic principle, that the muzzles must be ahead of the bird when you pull the trigger, simply to allow the clay to run into the stream of shot.
Now we know there’s always a slight delay before the shot stream collides with the clay, we can begin to understand and (hopefully) start to relate to how far the barrels need to be ahead of the target as you pull the trigger.
Most shooters relate to this in vague, general terms, usually distance: "give it about six feet" is an oft heard phrase.
The difficulty here is simply one of perception; six feet to one man might look like six yards to the eye of a fellow shooter.
And if the bird is at extreme ranges, "I reckon it needs about an acre and a half" or "give it the length of a bus" are not always the most helpful of comments!
Maybe it would be easier if we talked about the angle of the muzzles, relative to the position of the bird, as we squeeze the trigger - rather than the perceived distance the barrels are ahead of the target.
This should make things easier as the angle remains constant, irrespective of the distance between the gun and the bird.
To make the concept even easier to grasp, rather than think in terms of 10, 20 or even 30 degrees, I prefer to try and imagine a clock and refer to the face (with the barrels as the hour hand) when talking about where the gun is pointing.
Saying, "shoot at two o’clock" is so much easier to visualise than "give it 60 degrees."
However you choose to arrange the collision, there’s one factor that remains absolute. You must keep the gun moving after pulling the trigger.
Stopping your swing is one of the most common reasons for missing targets.
If you stop the gun I can almost guarantee you'll miss behind.
The stop whistle is often the only sure-fire way to curb an over enthu... Read more
Cartridges for vermin: The game season might be finished but now’... Read more
Two popular Essex clay shooters have received one of the Royal Life Sa... Read more
Pay only £28.99 for a one year subscription to Sporting Gun, subscribe today!
Licences to take or kill game and to sell or deal in it will be axed i... Read more
Welsh hot-shot Elena Allen of Newport has bagged the bronze medal at t... Read more
Pay only £28.99 for a one year subscription to Sporting Gun, subscribe today!
Comments