Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns Sporting Clays, reasonable % hits for duffer

I like the older guns and continue to hunt with them. 36 grouse last year with 2 inch shells and 19th century guns. No sporting clays course prepares you for the grouse I shoot. I will shoot them on the ground and no SC course stacks any targets on the ground for me to practice...

I have considered trying my Burgess sometime. I've never actually shot it. It's a little different than yours, being a take down model (or maybe more properly, a fold up model.)

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When shooting practice, the way I look at it and try and shoot it is, if I can break a target with ease, I don't shoot it anymore. When I miss a target, I want to shoot it again and try and figure it out. I have been know to stand at one station and shoot a whole box just a one "A" or "B" target. That is how you get better. The easy birds may make your score care look good but you have not learned how to break the harder birds.
The more different birds you can look at and figure out the better you will be.

This +++. If I break the first two pairs I move on, and save my shells for the tower doves, high and fast. Takes a full choke and about 8 feet of lead for me to connect, and then small misjudgments can cause misses even when you think you've got them figured. I go about 20-25% on those birds, and feel like I've learned something. I do hate the rabbit with a passion, though, and usually skip it.

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That is only an observation. Of course you can shoot anything you want, it just isn't what it originally started out to be as a shooting discipline. If you shoot most any clays range today, you will have guys screwing chokes in and out, long ported barrels and adjustable stocks. Those guns were designed to meet changing conditions on the current clays range.

I still shoot SC on a regular basis and am one of a few that shoot field guns. Most are shooting Sporting Clays guns.

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Sounds like you're talking about Trap guns.

If a shotgun fits, it fits. With Sporting guns, most are fitted to pattern 50/50 or just slightly higher like any field gun, and precisely why this is the fact is because of the presentations mimicking game. Rising, Dropping, Crossing, Quartering

Some guys around here win National and World events with "field guns" right off the rack

If they have a rabbit station don't expect to ever hit those little bastards.

Rick
I was sitting in the bleacher at Nationals 15 plus years ago when I took 2nd place in AA. If I remember correctly that same year, you placed in Master class.