If you’re just starting out as a new shooter, try and steer away from being taken around a clay ground with a friend. You are far better off when starting to take several lessons with a qualified instructor, so you can get the correct foundations of good shooting from the beginning.
People often think that practice is going out and shooting 50 or 100 targets around a layout. In fact this achieves very little. Practice should be disciplined, concentrate on establishing a good shooting method and then work on just a few basic targets at a time to build up your experience and your memory bank of “Sight Pictures”.
Don’t hurry!
It is better to have fewer shots concentrating on posture and technique rather than rattling off cartridges without really learning anything. Quality not quantity is the name of the game. Dry runs are even more valuable than live shots, as this focuses the mind on the technique of the shot not the result.
A novice should always start with the gun Pre-mounted, in the ‘gun up’ position before looking to move to ‘gun down’ (Low gun) as this can only be successfully achieved when the correct gun mounting technique has been established in the muscle memory.
The ability to control the timing of the shot is the most important thing. It is easier to speed up a slow shooter than to slow down a fast one.
There is one last but vital thing to realise, if you have assumed that all you have to do is apply the principles of shooting a rifle when you start shooting a shotgun, then I am afraid you are doing it wrong; it’s like trying to play Golf but with Tennis techniques.
The simple unadulterated fact is: a shotgun is just an extension of your pointing finger, which all you have to do is line it up with your eye and the object at which you are going to point (shoot) at!
Wrong technique after going out with his friend Correct technique after instruction with a qualified Coach