Flat-Cap

I've shot thousands of self service clays across multiple clubs and systems and I've never seen a clay counter 'jump' 45 clays. One club I go to you pay up front, and they give you an extra 10% for breakages. If you get a lot, they'll usually refund you anyway. Another ground I go to you pay after, and they ask how many breakages you had. I'd have probably stopped shooting and returned it to them immediately, but it's easy to say that with hindsight. I wouldn't have stomached paying for it though.

I don't have much choice... so I'll go for my Barbour Endurance jacket. Warm as a duvet, deep deep handwarmer pockets, and big enough cartridge pockets to carry 100 cartridges if you're mental. Prefer the look of the Harkila jackets now though...

Stick in the two most open chokes. Quarter choke will break pretty much anything.

I have MacWets too for clay shooting on wet days. They allow you to keep good feel of the gun, but they don't keep the water out forever - usually plenty long enough to let me finish my shooting though. I'd imagine that if you want to keep your hands dry and warm you'd either need a thicker glove, or to wear something that your hands will sweat horribly in.

I used them a bit, and felt that they had more recoil than my preferred budget clay cartridge (Hull Comp X), but I was impressed with the breaks (but that may just be a psychological thing due to the recoil). Shot 500 or so without any problems. To be honest, I don't see why you'd pay any more for a clay cartridge, unless you're at least AA class and need something that patterns well at distance for those long range clays at the big competitions.

If it's mostly being used for the field work with only a bit of clays then I'd be tempted with a light little SxS for £200-300, and if doing a long session of clays I'd only use a 21 gram cartridge. If you prefer an O/U the already mentioned Lanber is excellent value for money and you should be able to get a second hand one for £500.

Yeah, Wylye's about as far as I'd want to go - Hornet and Weston Wood are similar distances - but worth keeping in mind. Also realised that Four Counties is not too far away. Will have to start thinking about this kind of thing soon. Cheers.

Hmm, I need to start shooting registered shoots I think. Where do the guys in the south shoot their ESP registered scores? I know of: Wylye Caterham Horne (rarely) Southdown Anywhere else?

Mrs FC can't handle a full sporting 12 bore, but didn't have any problem with a 28" Winchester Lightweight 12 bore. She is 5'5 and about 9 stone. If she did some practice gun mounting with a 12 bore every night for a couple of weeks your missus would have no problem using it. 28 bores are for little boys and American skeet shooters.

I have these: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Top-Gun-Elite-Shooting-glasses-5-separate-glasses-/280780099553?_trksid=p4340.m185&_trkparms=algo%3DDLSL%252BSIC.NPJS%26its%3DI%26itu%3DUCI%252BUA%26otn%3D10%26pmod%3D280727046152%252B280727046152%26po%3D%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D4534261579506062480 Everybody is a bit different in what they like from the colours, so I'd recommend getting a set where you can try lots of colours before deciding what you want and buying something more expensive.

I'm not an A class shooter, so take this with a pinch of salt, but if I miss a target in the first pair at a stand then I take a moment while reloading to run the shot through in my head again and consider a few things: How did it feel to shoot it? Was I smooth and steady? What was the tempo of my swing like compared to the target? What was the target doing? Was it moving a little in a direction I didn't originally pay attention to (e.g. dropping/curling)? I'll also think about a similar target that I've shot before and how that felt when I shot it. When I do this I can normally then see exactly where I missed it and correct it for the next shot. Of course, occasionally something completely throws me as I haven't shot anything like it before, like last weekend when the last stand of the day was throwing a looper away and across the stand, with the trap 30 yards away. Normally I'd take as it starts to come back down, unfortunately today the target was disappearing into mist just before the top of its flight!

I'm still at the stage where I'm figuring out colours. I generally go with a light smoke tint to take the glare off the sky and stop me squinting if its a sunny day. If it's low light, such as at dusk, then I use the yellow lenses. Cloudy/foggy/everything else I use clear lenses. I've never really got on with the orange glasses.

They're horrible for clays. The 28 gram fibre ones I tried had a lot of recoil, and seem expensive too. But they look cool, so that's something. George Digweed is sponsored by Gamebore, and shoots with White Gold when I'm guessing he could pick whatever he wanted.

Bought a Top Gun set that were five different pairs of glasses, in different colours, which have been excellent. I also have a pair of Zeiss Sport glasses, which were expensive, and were prescribed to correct some slight vision defects I have, just for shooting purposes. Unfortunately they have actually made my shooting worse in some cases, so I've stopped wearing them and need to speak to the optician.

Terribly. Shouldn't have had curry on Saturday night. (Sorry, too tempting).

Fuzrat has a great point here. Most sporting shooters usually need to work more on basic technique and concentration than worry about unconvincing breaks. Maybe if you're being very inconsistent on a particular type of target you could put in tighter chokes to cut out some of the fringe pattern hits, but you can just read that from the way the clay breaks too. For longer range targets you might find that having switched back to more open chokes for a competition causes you problems, as the tighter chokes have a better effective pattern at distance, and require you to be less accurate.

The 682 as a model number has been around donkeys years as Beretta's base competition model. It's won many many titles at every level. In more recent years I believe it uses the same basics as the 686 and Silver Pigeon series, but comes with all the twiddly extras - multiple chokes, adjustable trigger, lengthened forcing cones etc. I don't know what's happened to the 686 though - maybe GMK/Beretta feel they already have enough similar guns in that price bracket?

In a later series they silence an automatic grenade launcher.

Same here.

All of this. Dry mounting practice transformed my shooting. Now when I stick the gun in my shoulder it goes in the right place and shoots where I look. I still cock it up occasionally, but I know instantly from the feel when I have, and can fix it in milliseconds. Get your feet right too - this may take some time and experimentation to understand, but your feet position naturally affects your whole body position, and therefore affects everything from how easily you can mount your gun, to whether you are going to be off balance and wobbling when you pull the trigger.

Set my best sporting competition score on Sunday - 84x100 across 12 stands. My scores have been floating around the mid 70s for a while, so its nice to show signs of breaking out of that. Aiming for 85+ at the same shoot in December - I know that 9 of my lost birds could be cut out with better concentration.

I think it's well documented that people are very inaccurate at judging distances in the field without a range finder, and even less accurate when talking about it to a mate down the pub. 70 yards? Hmm.

As you rightly say, the magazine is in the place where the cartridges would eject if they are going downwards. I'd also expect the design evolved this way round to stop people accidentally putting their hand over the port accidentally, or slipping over by standing on a spent cartridge. Semi-auto design are/were heavily military driven, and it's probably best flinging that cartridge as far away as possible when you're a soldier on the move rather than stepping on it. The Beretta UGB ejects downwards:

Hevi Shot is a non toxic (i.e. not lead) load, generally used for shooting waterfowl, where using lead may contaminate the water. I thought £600 per 500 is quite cheap - normally they're > £800 per 500 !! For clays I've never found a problem with the Hull Comp X cartridges at £160 per 1000. Minimal recoil, and not had a misfire or failure in 10,000+ cartridges.

I was walking through one of the local clay shooting grounds a month or two back and saw a chap shooting a left handed semi auto... from his right shoulder.