Why does my shotgun shoot low

Importantly, if you shift your focus to the gun barrel at any time you will miss the target. This is called rifling the shotgun. The importance of the dominant eye If you are a right-handed shooter and your left eye is dominant, the gun will impact well to the left of your point-of-aim.

To demonstrate this, point your right index finger at an object if you are right-handed with both eyes open. Without moving your finger, close your left eye, you should be looking at the point-of-aim along your index finger if your right eye is dominant. Close your right eye and you will see that the non-dominant left eye sees your finger pointed to a position well to the right of the object.

Now point at another object using your right index finger with your right eye closed. Open your right eye and close the left and you can see the problem of the initial scenario. Shot deviations from point-of-aim can also be caused by flinching on firing. Not only does patterning give information on gun fit, it also teaches you what the chokes on your particular gun actually do. Chokes are constrictions at the end of the barrels that reduce shot spread. They are usually fixed, as an integral part of the barrel at the time of manufacture in many older guns.

The owner has a specialised tool for a specialised job and often requires several guns for different purposes. For example, it may be choked for long shots on rabbits and high game-birds and another for short range quail shooting, or even closer skeet targets. More recently built shotguns are supplied with interchangeable choke tubes so that the one gun can perform multiple functions, which is a much more sensible approach. Patterning also demonstrates the density and quality of the shot distribution of your favourite cartridges.

Test firing This is usually done standing but using a support such as a ladder after initial free-standing shots to test gun fit. At this stage you are testing the gun and not the shooter. Conventionally, a inch 76cm diameter circular steel plate is used for patterning, coated with new white wash for each firing from 40 yards.

These test targets are available at most shotgun ranges. I prefer to use these sheets at 35 yards because of their lack of width. I had never shot skeet before and they welcomed me. On my first round of skeet, only one bird broke, the low seven.

I had failed before in life with other ventures and would not give up easily. I must have to read more books and watch more videos. That would surely help. It did not! I finally met a shooting coach at the gun club who was willing to help me out. He stood behind me at station four and watched me shoot. He told me I was inconsistent. He did say, for the most part, I was behind my left to right targets by four feet and in front of my right to left targets.

We went back to station one and he called for a low-house bird. I missed one foot in front of it. I am right eye dominant and shoot right handed.

He told me to close my left eye and call for another bird. This time the target was powdered. The diagnosis? As an optometrist I know and have studied binocular vision systems. How could this happen to me? The standard tests for eye dominance are highly sensitive but false positives do occur.

This means my left eye was taking over and the eye looking down the barrel was no longer in charge. I now know this is a significant problem for many shooters. So why does this happen?

The problem is exacerbated by low light conditions, tiredness, poor contrast and under the stress of competition. This causes a right-handed shooter to shoot behind left to right targets, in front of right to left targets, and to the left of straight away and incoming targets.

It is just the opposite for left hand shooters. If you cross fire intermittently, it is worse because your mental computer your brain gets confused and your learning curve goes down.

You miss the bird but the perceived sight picture is the same when your left eye takes over. This is an example of a mystery miss and you have no idea why. The gun on the left is lined up correctly for a right handed shooter with dominant right eye. The gun on the right appears to be lined up with the orange target but in fact it is pointing to the green target. A gun's only ready when you know where and how well it shoots. By Layne Simpson.

Mark the center, and then while mounting the gun each time, fire three shots at the target. Find the center of the patterns of the three shots. Change the shims according to the manufacturer's directions and shoot again to verify the adjustment. If there is no shim set, you can add a stick-on pad, strips of leather or otherwise raise the comb.

Cast might be a problem, but getting the comb height correct is a big step forward. Practice is important to wean us from sighting the shotgun. One of the best checks of fit is to shoot straight-away birds on Station Low 7 on a skeet field. The shot is directly at the bird, and if the stock doesn't fit, you'll miss.

Another check is shooting an incomer such as High 7 or targets thrown from a tower on a sporting clays course. If you consistently miss these, check for fit at the pattern plate. Once fit is verified, begin shooting crossing targets such as skeet High 6. Concentrate solely on the bird. Begin without the gun — practice pointing your finger at the target with the arm extended.

Perceiving lead is tricky. What I see will probably be different from what you see. Shotgunning instructors Gil and Vicki Ash state that if the target is seen for 10 to 15 feet, the brain will know where it will be for the next 10 feet. Why not use this wonderful sense to our advantage? With practice solely concentrating on the target with a shotgun that shoots where we look, the brain will move the gun to where it needs to be for a successful shot.

The instant we begin to try to measure lead, looking from the gun to the bird and back, a miss is all but certain. When the ducks are flying, and I concentrate percent on the duck and let my brain move the gun, I hit with regularity. My guns shoot where I look. If I allow my conscious brain to get too involved in the shot, I miss.

I was recently hunting ducks in Louisiana and missed a couple of close, easy birds.