True point of aim

I am fairly  new to the sport and I wonder if someone could help to clarify something. To get a true point of aim if a shotgun was a rifle , what would the sight picture be like.?

Is it the figure 8 with the top bead on the target, or do both beads have to line up on the target. 

Thanks

I’m sure others will concur and some may make counter claims while others may put your question into a wider context.

I’m quite new to clay shooting myself and have shot rifles a fair bit in the past with a good degree of accuracy.

It’s often said, you don’t aim a shotgun, you point it. But then you’ll hear phrases like, “it’s a going away so rifle it”. There is one well known and respected coach who says this about rabbits. Even advising to shoot the back edge of a rabbit. 

You’ll hear people say we all see lead differently and my personal experiences would suggest that is indeed true. I definitely* put lead on rabbits.

*definitely, meaning that’s how I perceive it.

When someone says to me “give it another meter ” I’ll convert that to give it another five centimetres as I see the lead at my barrel, not out at the clay, yet I don’t look at the bead (I don’t even have one on the gun) my focus is (well, it should be) on the clay and those five centimetres will be more of sense of there being a lead. 
I’d liken it to driving a car down a narrow street. I’m looking where I’m going with a sense of how far my door mirrors are off parked cars. I don’t look at my door mirror.

I found two beads useful only for practicing my gun mount. It helped me develop an awareness of how the gun should feel in my hands, shoulder and cheek with my head level and eye centred over the rib. Beyond that, it can be a distraction from focusing on the clay. Often at  the moment of taking a shot, a quick glance at the bead... or two beads and you will have lost the clay, it getting ahead of you and you miss behind, because without thinking about it, you’ll slow the gun or even stop it dead for a brief moment.

It’s hard; perhaps more so if you have rifle shooting experience, to trust that you can point a shotgun towards a moving target and it will break when you pull the trigger, just so long as your looking at the target and not the gun. The gun being a little bit like your car. You know where the door mirrors are. You don’t need to “look” at them. They’re in your peripheral vision and you brain has the capacity to get your hands to steer the car while looking directly ahead.

when you’re a new driver, you’re looking down for the gear levers, the clutch and you’re wandering about making you instructor work hard for his money.

I think it’s the same with shooting clays. You just need time in the road, gain awareness of where everything is and it will come. Wether you’re just popping to the shops or you’re on course to be the next Ayrton Senna, out qualifying your illustrious team mate by one and a half seconds, that basic spatial awareness, hand eye coordination and timing and knowing where you’re planning to go is all important. Just takes time to accumulate the skills and bring them all together 

I think the sight picture is a personal thing, I have seen it said that, if you have two beads you should see a figure 8, this allows you to shoot low thereby getting a clear view of the target.

When I started shooting I knew nothing about the above theory, I look flat along the rib, I would only see one bead if I had two. This gives me the advantage of aiming where the centre of the pattern will be .  .  . whether it's on the clay or not.

TRINITY said:

I am fairly  new to the sport and I wonder if someone could help to clarify something. To get a true point of aim if a shotgun was a rifle , what would the sight picture be like.?

Is it the figure 8 with the top bead on the target, or do both beads have to line up on the target. 

Thanks

Click to expand...

Don't even compare the two. Shooting a moving target with a shotgun involves completely different dynamics to shooting a static target with a rifle. So much so that your question is impossible to answer with any degree of accuracy (if you'll pardon the pun).

Speaking of sight pictures, this article may help. Written by Alan Rhone it debunks a few myths regarding sight pictures and comb height...

https://gunlore.com/shotguns/stockfit/stock-fit-part-iv-comb-height/

Jan Powell said:

https://gunlore.com/shotguns/stockfit/stock-fit-part-iv-comb-height/

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Well that explains a lot !

Almost like the time I was shooting “maintained” on loopers, when my the coach revealed I was actually shooting swing through. 
 

It seems perception and fact are strange bedfellows where shooting is concerned 

Jan Powell said:

Don't even compare the two. Shooting a moving target with a shotgun involves completely different dynamics to shooting a static target with a rifle. So much so that your question is impossible to answer with any degree of accuracy (if you'll pardon the pun).

Speaking of sight pictures, this article may help. Written by Alan Rhone it debunks a few myths regarding sight pictures and comb height...

https://gunlore.com/shotguns/stockfit/stock-fit-part-iv-comb-height/

Click to expand...

Thanks, 

I was just adjusting the comb height on a particular gun as it was clearly too low and I could only see the top of the action and no barrel. I was wondering how far I needed to raise it without going too high. In line beads or figure 8. 

Figure 8. Failing that put a pound coin on the rib around the hinge pin (3" from breach face appx) mount the gun. You should see the front bead. Some like it higher, me included (2 coins) some may like it lower.

The "sight picture" is meaningless unless you always shoot the gun like a rifle and adjust the gun to accommodate that.  Proper shotgun use is generally considered to be look at the target, shoot the target.  The guns I shoot have different barrel lengths, different rib heights, and not a common bead scheme among them.  But they all shoot to the same place for me cos they've been adjusted to do that and what the beads and rib look like is non-issue.

JMO of course - you're on your own

BTW - I've found that it is more productive to adjust the gun by shooting it rather than dinking with it in the living room.  Just a thot

Wonko the Sane said:

The "sight picture" is meaningless unless you always shoot the gun like a rifle and adjust the gun to accommodate that. 

Click to expand...

For me personally; and again I qualify this with a good helping of it’s my perception over my knowledge, but I find the “sight picture” is very dependent on the target presentation. This first of all assumes I can hit the target and do so repeatedly.

I find shooting loopers almost entirely sight picture based. I point the gun, with a wee hint of an aim, to the place where I expect the clay to be, ahead and underneath where the clay is when I press the bang button with my index finger.

With a crosser, mid to long range, it’s more a case of point at the clay, make it gradually into a sight picture and the gun goes off all by itself.

With a going away or a teal, it’s more a case of let the clay do its thing for a wee bit, then stick the gun up at it and clay sort of disappears (still working on the assumption I’m hitting them here).

With an incomer it’s more a case of as soon as I can see it well enough, then do as with a going away or a teal.

With a rabbit, it’s watch it come to the gun, give it a smidge of space and a bang happens.

With a close crosser in a window it’s a bit like “pull”-flash-BANG... Oh, look at that, it broke!

With driven, it’s a bit like a mid to long crosser, except I start with a sight picture, then I gradually don’t have one and then the gun goes off 
 

That’s the good version of what happens. The bad version is more like -

“Pull” Oh fff...eck  ! Err... BANG. Ohh FFS! Not again.

But....if you could hit all of them, all of the time wouldn't it become a teeny, weeny bit boring quite rapidly??

Cosmicblue said:

But....if you could hit all of them, all of the time wouldn't it become a teeny, weeny bit boring quite rapidly??

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Yes. Absolutely. 100% agree!

So I can safely say I’m unlikely ever to get bored of shooting

Being a tad controversial for a moment - is point of aim actually relevant in a shotgun?   Shouldn't we be thinking about this in terms of POI - Point of Impact?

There was a principle of drawing an imaginary line from the centre of the rib between the barrels and expressing the distribution of the shot thrown as a percentage deviation from the centre-line?

So 50/50 - so called shooting 'flat' - a game gun perhaps?

60/40 - Sporter

70/30 - Trap

 If point of aim was important, then a 50/50 distribution would be the most successful and the others progressively less so?  

A 60/40 sorta POI lets the bird be seen above the barrel and still just shoot the target.  Personally, high shooting guns are impossible for me and 50-60 number is about all I can handle.

TRINITY said:

I am fairly  new to the sport and I wonder if someone could help to clarify something. To get a true point of aim if a shotgun was a rifle , what would the sight picture be like.?

Is it the figure 8 with the top bead on the target, or do both beads have to line up on the target. 

Thanks

Click to expand...

There is no right and wrong , some people shoot with two beads , some with only the front and some  without a bead at all .  When you’ve set your comb up to suit, you probably will not even see the beads as you progress . at that point the beads have become more of an aid to checking your gun mount . 

If you wanted to throw a bit of money at it , BK Webster gunsmiths near Ripon have a laser fitting system where you “ shoot “ at a big projector screen and the results are recorded on a PC . Then he can play it back and show you how your shot pattern  impacted relative to the sight picture you have on the rib and  the point you were aiming at .  You can make changes to your comb as you go until you’re happy . He also videos you from different angles and it’s interesting to see what you’ve done when you do it right and wrong .   Its about £80, not a bad way to try different  things out and less than a couple of hundred practice shots plus no pressure  .  

The BK Webster scene seems to me a great way tor check things out.  That all presumes of course that the shooter has a well established routine and solid gun mount.