Rib Height and Gun Fit

Rib height has little to do with how well you will shoot one gun over another.

In the end, it is the relationship between the rib height and the shape and height of the comb and where your cheek softly and comfortably touches the comb.

Most shooters are wrestling with trying to fit their bodies to factory stocks that are made to fit a male that is six feet tall and weighs 190 pounds!

We have learned several things about guns and gun-fitting.

A Forgiving Gun Mount

You can shoot a gun that has too much cast and drop infinitely better than one that does not have enough of either. While this might be controversial or contrary to what some might say or think, it nevertheless reflects our experiences.

Take it from someone who had made a living shooting difficult targets with students’ guns that do not fit us. We would much rather have a gun that is stocked too low for us than one that is too high. While we can shoot and hit extreme targets with ill-fitting guns using our system of shooting, it is more a testimony to the OSP system of shooting than gun fit.

We have shotguns that have a 70/30, 60/40 POI and have evolved to 50/50 with slight cheek pressures. And as a result, the gun mount is more forgiving.

Should a mismount occur with a 50/50 gun, you will still break the target. But with a high shooting gun that you mount with medium cheek pressure, if you mismount, the POI will be so far off that your chances of hitting the target go way down.

Shooters we have helped with gun fit who are shooting flat-shooting guns find that with less practice they are shooting as much as three to five percent higher scores after their stock alteration (creating a 3/16 offset in the comb and lowering the comb so that they see flat down the rib when looking down the rib to check for eye alignment)!

Here’s another thing shooters across the country are finding out: they can pick up our guns after we do a LOP adjustment. And not only can they hit more targets, but when shooting modified chokes they are smoking targets that they could not even hit before!