SHOOTING FOR THE STARS
Top shooting tips from expert Stewart Cumming
Stewart Cumming is a Scottish champion clay pigeon shot and a legendary shooting instructor. With the grouse and partridge season upon us and pheasants looming, he offers his five failsafe tips to radically improve both novice and experienced shots
As the head shooting instructor at the National Shooting Ground near Falkirk, I see the same mistakes time and time again. Nor is age or experience any guide to expertise – over the past thirty years I have lost count of the number of people I’ve seen who have been shooting for many, many years but are still making the same mistakes as novices. Indeed, their bad habits can be even harder to shift because they are so ingrained in the shooter’s muscle memory.
However, with the right tuition and a willingness to learn, it is always possible to radically improve your accuracy and success rate. The following are the five areas that I always concentrate on because these account for 95% of the reasons why shooters are missing birds.
I’ve deliberately chosen not to talk about equipment because I would probably end up writing a book. All I would say is that at the beginning of the season while birds are lightly feathered I’d recommend light chokes (a quarter or a half) with 30g 6 cartridges. Much more important than the equipment you’re shooting with is how often you shoot, so if you’re going to be shooting game birds, my advice is always to get down to your local clay pigeon ground beforehand, particularly if it’s your first day of the year. Practice doesn’t always make perfect, but it’ll certainly make you a damned sight better than when you arrived.