Pennsylvania Game News - August 2017 - 55

standard-sized stocks are too long, and
tend to catch the stock's heel under their
arm, which delays planting the stock in
your shoulder pocket.
When a shooter undersized for a shotgun gets the stock into his pocket, his
face is back too far on the stock and his
support hand too far forward. That throws
off the gun's balance and forces the barrel
downward. In turn, the shot pattern will go
low and the clay bird gets out too far for a
diminishing shot pattern to hit.
Taller people have the opposite experience: they feel cramped mounting the gun
and pull the stock toward their shoulder.
Their face is too far forward on the stock,
sometimes next to the hand holding the
pistol grip. This causes the bead - and the
shot - to go high, and sometimes leads to
a smack in the nose.
If you're taller or shorter, and using
an improperly fitted shotgun, you'll feel
more recoil and have a harder time getting
on the bird. To combat either situation,
shooters either have to adapt as best they
can, or change the dimensions of the
stock. Believe me when I tell you, that
your success will increase if you change
stock dimensions.
A shooter's height isn't the only
factor to consider. Others include arm
length, neck length, facial build and chest
size. When a properly fitted shotgun is
mounted, the butt fits into the shoulder
pocket as the stock's comb - top - hits
the cheek, while the pitch of the stock
puts the eye in line with the bead almost
simultaneously.

Length of Pull
There are four basic measurements of
a shotgun: length-of-pull, drop-at-heel,
pitch and cast.
Let's start with length-of-pull (LOP),
which is the distance from the trigger to
A U G U S T 2 0 1 7

the center of the butt stock's base. If your
LOP is correct, your face should naturally
position 1½ to 2 inches behind your hand
on the pistol grip.
The standard LOP is 14 to14½ inches.
Shorter shooters might have to cut the
stock; taller people might need to add
spacers to make it longer.
Consider this example. I'm 5 feet, 8
inches tall and my son-in-law is 6 feet, 3
inches. My shotguns are cut to fit my 14½inch LOP. But my gunstocks are too short
for him, so it takes him longer to mount
them and put the bead where it belongs.
But when I slip on a recoil pad that
adds over an inch of length, he gets on
them a lot quicker and breaks the birds
more frequently.
An old-school way to measure your
LOP is to bend your arm 90 degrees and
put the butt into your elbow pocket. Then
see where the trigger aligns with your
index finger. If the trigger is within the
first digit of your index finger, then you're
pretty close.
But large biceps or chest muscles, or a
longer neck, might throw off this measurement, and lead to more LOP fine tuning.
Nonetheless, it's a good place to start.

Bead & Barrel
Drop-at-heel is the distance from the
stock's heel up to the extended horizontal line of the rib. This determines eye
alignment with the rib looking down to
the bead.
If you can't see down the rib, then
you'll adjust to see it and tend to shoot
low. If you see too much rib, you'll tend
to shoot high. I also have found that if drop
is too low, the comb hits my face a little
harder during recoil.
Average drop is about 15/8 inches.
Drop-at-comb determines how you
view the bead in relation to where your
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Pennsylvania Game News - August 2017

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