Not a big deal!
The target should be slightly above the barrel if you are a foot high at 20 yards. (ie Floating the bird)
Or, change the shim so it shoots flatter.
I would personally change the shim and see if that helps.
Is this gunsmith a qualified gun fitter???

 

I do not like to "Float" the bird in Skeet, so I like my Skeet Guns to shoot pretty flat. If you have a center bead, most skeet shooters want to see a figure 8 when they mount the gun, front bead over the center bead, you can also doing this by seeing how many quarters you need to stack in the center of the rib until you cover the front bead.

Bob

 

Folks,
Thanks. I don't have a center bead on my shotgun. How many quarters in the middle of the rib should cover the front bead?
Randy

 

Just some math using rounded numbers.

Assume a 30" pattern. 10% of 30 is 3".

Using the very center of the pattern, 3" high would be a 60/40 gun.

6" would be a 70/30,

9" would be 80/20,

And 12" high would be 90/10.

Basically, if your gun is shooting a pattern centered 12" above Point of Aim, then of that 30" pattern, 15" + 12" are above the point of aim, and only 3" are below the point of aim.

 

With 2 quarters you should just see the front bead and with a 3rd it should be obscured. This is a pretty general rule for a 60/40 skeet sight picture with no center bead.

Bob

 

John,
Thanks, though I'm not exactly sure what your numbers mean?
Randy

 

How high you like your point of impact is a personal preference issue. Some want to center up a crossing target right at barrel height, some like to float it a little, others like to float it a lot. The primary reason I like to float the target is to keep a better visual contact with it; I just see it better above my barrel then if it were to get under it at all. As such, my gun shoots pretty high, but that is just my preference.

When you shoot enough targets, your mind simply knows where your gun is pointing, you don't aim, you don't look at your barrel, you just know that it is there. It depends upon the gauge and how tight you are choked of course, but as a general rule a shotgun pattern is still going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of a garbage can lid. Think about that, a garbage can lid, you have some leeway. 12" does not seem all that excessive to me; I'd shoot it and eventually you will learn its point of impact. Ultimately, if it is too high for you, lower it.

 

Are you a hunter?

 

With an expected pattern of around 26 to 28", shooting 12" high would basically shooting close to a 100/0 gun. Seems very high to me.

 

John,
Thanks, though I'm not exactly sure what your numbers mean?
Randy

Sorry I left you with an incomplete post.

I meant to finish it by saying, you are shooting a gun that would be about 90/10. Most guys in the skeet world would consider that to be too high, if you were only going to shoot skeet with it.

My first skeet over under was a Browning Special Sporting edition. I never paid much attention to Point of Impact and Point of Aim as a new shooter.

After a long absence, I started shooting again. On some long incomers, where I thought I had fallen off the target (dropped well below it) I would still amazingly CRUSH the bird. I wondered how that was possible, so I patterned the gun. I discovered it was shooting about 80/20.

When you are shooting at a dropping target with a gun that shoots that high, it is hard to get far enough under it to break it.

I decided that was too high for my liking, and bought a new gun. (Kolar)

I am not saying you should not shoot your gun, just be aware of how much you need to float the target, and beware those targets that are dropping rapidly. (Like the 2nd bird on a pair on sta 6 when the wind is really pushing it down.

Good luck!!

 

I patterned my Franchi Affinity shotgun and it is shooting about a foot high at 20 yards. I took the targets to a gunsmith, and he told me that I shouldn't change the shim in the gun as, for skeet, I want the gun to shoot high.

Is he correct? When I watched some videos of excellent shooters, they seem to aim at the level of the clay targets.

Thanks,
Randy

As for your original question......

I disagree with the gunsmith that you want that gun to shoot THAT high for skeet.

It would be great for shooting trap, where you have a regularly rising target. You can point right at a rising target, and your shot pattern will shoot high, in to the rising target!

 

What is the distance between nose and thumb when you mount the gun?
Franchi offers a shim kit that should lower the barrel enough to fix your issue.

They also offer different recoil pads to change length of pull.
Longer LOP usually brings the pattern down

 

What is the distance between nose and thumb when you mount the gun?

If you are going to quote the min of 1 1/2" distance from nose to thumb you need to realize where that distance came from. It had NOTHING to do with shotgun length of pull. It was only used for a rule of thumb, excuse the pun, for hunting rifles with scopes to keep the scope from cutting your eye. Which happens with regularity with distances that were shorter than that. That distance and often a bit more allows you also to get the full depth of field of your scope (image fills the eye piece lens). You also see two finger widths between your nose and thumb also.

The important thing is to place our face on the stock so that your eye lines up properly with the rib. Moving along the comb of the stock can accommodate that on a stock with some drop. With a parallel comb, the distance needs to fit you and that can be accomplished with an adjustable comb

 

I wasn't paying attention to the distance between my nose and the first joint of my thumb. Now I know it has to be about the width of two fingers.

To keep my head erect, I was using a cheek pad, not realizing that this was raising my head and causing me to shoot high. I just have to keep practicing my mount. It seems that when I mount the gun without the pad and I keep my head erect, the gun is too high in my shoulder pocket, but after looking at some photos of top shooters I may have been wrong about the gun being too high.

It's all so confusing. I go to the skeet range and people want to help, and I end up getting conflicting advise.

Now I reading King Heiple's book. It's fantastic, probably the best sport-instruction book I've ever read.

I'll pattern the gun again, take my shims and go to a different gunsmith,

Randy

 

See if you can get a good shooter to help you pattern it. All showing the target to a gunsmith is going to tell him is where your POI is in relation to your POA, but not the reason. It may be a poor mount.

As for shooting high, if your gun really shoots that high there is a problem, but I see a lot of good shooters using their Browning XT trap guns for skeet and some with skeet guns have raised combs.

 

I change chokes in my Cynergy Skeet Combo from time to time and shoot skeet with it, without changing and of the stock comb settings and break plenty of birds. I probably need to adjust it more for trap as this might just mean it is not shooting high enough.

I am about to pattern a number of my shotguns, but that will be done sighting them off a bench rest with a bench rest gun support so that I know where my guns shoot rather than where they shoot based on my mounting of them. Then I can adjust to compensate.

Bob

 

I wasn't paying attention to the distance between my nose and the first joint of my thumb. Now I know it has to be about the width of two fingers.

To keep my head erect, I was using a cheek pad, not realizing that this was raising my head and causing me to shoot high. I just have to keep practicing my mount. It seems that when I mount the gun without the pad and I keep my head erect, the gun is too high in my shoulder pocket, but after looking at some photos of top shooters I may have been wrong about the gun being too high.

It's all so confusing. I go to the skeet range and people want to help, and I end up getting conflicting advise.

Free advice is worth exactly what you paid for it, nothing!

 

I know of at least one skeet coach who has all his newbie students shooting with significantly raised combs. I never figured out the method to his madness.

Dr. Duk. I know that some raise their combs so as to permit them to hold their head more erect, but if you look about you will find a recent thread here in which Rollin Oswald advises not to do so but to use a pad adjuster. I believe he recommends that one can permissibly mount with the butt rising as much as 1" above the shoulder.

 

The guns I use for skeet and sporting clays are ALL set to give me 50/50 patterns from my much-practiced and very consistent gun mount. It works very well for me, and since doing it, my scores have really improved and are very good at these games. It just works fine for me.

I did this because I watched various targets as my squadmates shoot, and they don't travel in straight lines. Gravity starts making them start dropping a bit at the point when they (and I, too) shoot 'em (the so-called "break point"), and the 50/50 POI keeps me from shooting over the the targets.

In reality, I did a lot of patterning over the years, and noticed that while I got nice high-percentage patterns in a 30" circle at the distances I shoot, the "killing" portion of the pattern was really well inside a 20" circle in the middle, while the outer ring contained fewer holes and a lot of open areas where a clay could easily sneak through. (And counting holes showed the typical "bell-shaped curve" which has been discussed) and that fact told me a lot. Basically, it told me that I had to hit the clay close to the the middle of the pattern! So for me, I chose the 50/50 POI and really concentrate on the target and the lead!