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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.
Doug charges a flat $50 for a fitting session.
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