Evolving Gun Fits

At Drake Landing last week, the owner picked up my gun and was shocked at how easy it was to mount and how it was perfectly aligned every time he mounted it.

“My gun will fit all five people in this room,” I said.
“No way,” the others said.

So I gave them all my gun to mount, and like magic, it fit them all, to their amazement. Concerning comb height and cast, “too low” is infinitely better than “too high.” My two cents.

Wow, have we evolved on gun fit!

In the beginning, I shot a gun that patterned 70/30 and all shots were rising or flat like skeet. In fact, I was taking a beaver-tailed skeet Browning Citori and narrowing the forend, lengthening the forcing cones, porting and screw choking the barrels for our first sporting clays guns.

The rib on these guns made them shoot about 70/30, or even 60/40. With the stock re in-letted to a lower dimension, they still shot high, requiring us to float the targets. Those guns were the predecessors for the Special Sporting and Lightning Sporting, the first two sporting guns Browning made.

Now I shoot a gun that is flat and 50/50 because 63 percent of the targets at Nationals this year were set to be shot on a downward trajectory!

If you are going to win in sporting, you gotta love shooting dropping targets. So, flat rib with slight cheek pressure and 50/50 for me.