How to lead a target when shotgun shooting

Good day .

I'm Rod Pascoe and welcome again to double S AA TV .

Coming to you today from the Cecil Park Play Club .

Today's topic is all about lead .

Now , lead is the technique we use to place a string of shot in front of a moving target .

So the shot and the target come together at the same place at the same time .

Now I'm joined today by Paul Miller who most of you will know as the shotgun writer for the Australian Shooter magazine .

Good day , Paul , good day , Rod .

Good to be here .

Now , explain to us what are the factors that affect lead ?

Well , look , there's probably three things that affect lead .

That's the speed of the target , the distance of the target and the speed of the shotgun shell .

Now , when you're out in the field hunting , you don't have a lot of time to work out the lead .

But here on the skeet field , we can practice and calculate the lead that's required .

That's right .

They're very constant target , skeet .

You've got a high house and a low house and those targets are thrown in the same way every time .

So depending where you're standing on the skeet cloud , you could be looking at targets that are crossing you or coming towards you or going away from you .

Now , if you think of the widest targets you're looking at about a meter or so of lead .

So calculating the lead is something that you learn by trial and error .

But ultimately , it's a technique that you learn and you can practice over and over .

But the way you apply the lead fire the shot and follow through is a very much tried and proven technique .

Absolutely .

It is .

And a quiet loud is the perfect place to practice that .

So the three methods we're going to look at today .

The first one is swing through .

The idea here is that you start with the gun behind the target , you sweep through the target , pull the trigger , follow through and hopefully you break it .

It's essential that you follow through .

Let's have a look at that .

Oh , now let's look at that again .

Slow down .

Oh , who the next method to talk about is pull away .

The idea here is we match the gun to the target and we pull away in front of the target to establish the lead fire the shot and follow through .

Let's have a look at that poke .

Now let's look at that in slow motion .

Oh , so the last method we're going to talk about today is sustained or maintained lead .

The idea here is you bring the gun in front of the target .

Maintain a lead , pull the trigger and follow through .

Let's have a look at that Pope .

Now let's look at that again .

Slow down .

The other time to use sustained lead is on long crossing shots at sporting plays and five stand .

The difference here is that these targets are thrown in an incredible number of different ways and angles .

So a lot more mental pictures of lead need to be developed , which won't happen overnight .

The other advantage of sustained lead is that it's easy for a beginner to understand when we say mount the gun , stay in front of the target , pull the trigger target , shooting is great practice for shooting in the field .

In fact , field shooters always find themselves shooting better when they're after ducks , foxes or rabbits .

After practicing on clay targets , some crossing targets require really long leads with any of the three methods we've talked about .

One thing is for sure , you must understand and master the concept of lead otherwise you're going to miss .

Wonderful .

Thanks very much .

My pleasure .

Thanks Paul .

Well , I hope that's given you a bit of an idea of what's involved with lead .

The double S AA five stand discipline .

It's a really good way of practicing your shotgun skills .

We hope to bring you a few more tips in future episodes .

But for now , from the Cecil Park Clay Target Club , thanks for watching double S AA TV .

And we'll see you next time .