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The
fit of your target gun or even your hunting gun, is the most important
aspect if you wish to shoot well. At Doug’s Gunsmith Shop, those needs can
be met. Doug has 25 years of experience fitting shooters to their guns. In
today’s world, to be competitive in the shooting sports, a shooter is very
unlikely to purchase a firearm “off the shelf”, and expect great things to
happen. Gunstocks can be too long or short, combs can be too high or low.
With the many body shapes and shooting styles of today’s shooters, Doug
can be of great help in fitting and tuning the gun to you.
Teaching novice shooters is Doug’s specialty. Having spent 4 years
full-time teaching shotgunning techniques, new shooters have been taught
the correct foot position, body posture, and mounting of a shotgun.
Without these basic steps, gun fit becomes irrelevant. To those shooters
that have many rounds of shooting under their belt, the old saying, “can’t
teach an old dog new tricks”, holds true for many but, for those that have
reached a plateau with their shooting, but wish to improve, Doug can offer
up options they may wish to try.
Fitting a gun to a shooter may take only an hour, or it can be very
involved. A simple fit may only require changing the length of the
buttstock and fitting a new recoil pad. And a very involve fitting may not
only include the above, but also altering the comb, changing the grip,
bending the stock, installing an adjustable recoil pad or comb, and in
some cases refinishing the wood, once the changes have been made. Some or
all of the above are necessary just to get the shooters eye looking down
the center of the rib. The shooters eye is the rear sight of a shotgun.
Any error of an incorrect fit is magnified at the distance the targets are
broke.
Doug does have a patterning board located at his shop to help
determine a gun’s point of impact (POI). All of the patterning is outside,
and done during the spring, summer and fall seasons. (A note
from Doug, “It gets mighty chilly here in the winter!!”)
Besides the correct shooting posture and gun fit, a shooter
must know that his gun is shooting where it is pointed. Because many
shooters see different sight pictures and like their guns to shoot at
different heights, Doug likes to start off by shooting the gun as it was
originally designed. You could say it would be like comparing apples to
apples, than to oranges. All of the shots are taken from a rest at 40 or
25 yards. The beads, front and center, are stacked in a figure 8. Shooting
this way, a shooter can truly compare one gun to another in determining
the POI. The error from allowing space between the beads is minimized.
Once we have accomplished where the gun shoots, we then can make changes
to the stock if necessary to accommodate the shooter’s POI wish. An added bonus to the fitting, if
necessary, is Doug has access to a trap range 3 miles from his shop, if
more fine tuning is
needed. |
