Skeet which barrel first

It takes a bit more work to shoot that longer barrel, but for now the accuracy is worth the trade off. What is best for skeet shooting? Twenty six inch barrels were the thing for skeet back in the sixties, but now many competitive skeet shooters are shooting thirty inch and even longer barrels. Again a lot of personal choice is involved here, but the trend is toward longer barrels. Here is a brief guideline:. How do I choose the best barrel for my game?

Manufacturers are always pushing for change so they can sell more guns. If you use the top barrel first, the greater recoil and higher muzzle rise might affect your target acquisition.

There is a lot of confusion between trap shooting and skeet shooting since they are similar to one another. However, there are some differences between….

Skip to content As a clay shooter, it took me a while to decide whether a top or bottom barrel works perfectly for trap shooting. Trap Shooting Singles: Top or Bottom? The head already inclined forward, the face is located firmly on the stock. With a significant variation in physical characteristics between shooters, technique will vary but exaggerated movements that involve tension in any part of the body are to be avoided.

All this to achieve a technique and posture that provides timely but controlled movement, which is primarily dictated by how well the shooter sees the target. The best way to achieve this is with eyes as central as possible and the head not too inclined forward.

This must be complemented with a stock with more drop at heel, at best usually in the form of the Monte Carlo configuration, to accommodate the greater distance between the shoulder and the eyeline.

A gun with choke constrictions that best relate to the target at a given range is of obvious benefit. For this reason, the Sporting shot in particular has embraced the interchangeable choke tube. On a Sporting course, the most suitable pattern for every target is an asset that you would be foolish to discount. Though this facility has been available for decades, its popularity is still growing. The older generation of shooters who lived most of their lives without its advantages rejected them for both appearance and the muzzle heaviness they could create.

The younger generation has no such qualms on the basis that if they work to their benefit then they will use them. I remember the first over and unders I saw in , a couple of Miroku skeet guns with 26in barrels, and they were the subject of much curiosity. Earl de Grey Lord Ripon with a hammergun. The extra weight of an over and under translates into less perceived recoil, too.

The pistol grip, usually with a single selective trigger, means that the rear hand is at a more natural angle compared to the hand position created by the straight-hand stock of the classic British side by sides, which cocks the wrist of the rear hand at an unnatural angle. The fore-end of an over and under gives the leading hand — which should be controlling the gun throughout the mount and shot — something to grip, as opposed to a side by side where one is holding the barrels.

Too often one sees a shooter with his fingers over the barrels of a side by side, causing him to lift the head to see over them, so shots will go high on a quartering, crossing or going-away bird. And having the head off the stock will cause more recoil-induced pain and often flinching, which is difficult, time consuming and thus expensive to cure.

Those same shooters, spending far less on a game of golf, will buy the latest carbon fibre clubs but will not buy a decent gun. A lot of this is down to the new, modern over and unders being so much easier to shoot and, most importantly, more pleasant to shoot in terms of recoil.

The typical side by side tends to be lighter, which was fine when the main cartridges used were Eley Impax 28g 6s. These are smooth and soft cartridges to shoot and were more than suitable for shoots 25 to 30 years ago. Peter Wilson uses a Perazzi to gold-medal effect at the Olympics. Whereas, with a straight-hand stock, if you mounted the gun 10 times, six of them would have your hand in a slightly different place. A few gun manufacturers are now bringing out side by sides with full pistol grips, beavertail fore-ends, single triggers and multi-chokes.

These are as close as you can get to over and unders while remaining a side by side. I did have a pair of these for a bit of fun game-shooting and had great success with them; however, I never performed quite as well with them as I do with my over and unders. The control and balance was never quite the same.