Point of Impact. What does that mean?

Whatever sort of person I am, I seem to become extremely interested in things very quickly. Fascinated by them even. Whether it is a trait of introversion or something else embedded in my personality, I really don't know.

It all stems from my last blog post about high shooting trap shotguns that people use for DTL clay shooting. I've heard percentages mentioned and shooting inches or feet below a target, which I know is true. I understand that a shotgun with a high stock and a low rib will require a greater gap between the front bead and the target than a lower stock for example. Not satisfied with this I began to look at "Point of Impact". POI has really stoked my geekyness! The centre of pattern above a horizontal line at 40 yards.

Representation showing how as your head gets higher, so does the POI at the target.

As a start point and as an example of what I mean. If you have a flat shooting sporter that has your head in a position that your eye is looking straight along the rib of the shotgun at the bead. If you place the bead at the centre of a 'cross-hair' on a pattern plate or large piece of paper and pull the trigger, there should roughly be the same number of pellets above the a horizontal line as below it. So 50% above the line and 50% below. This is what is known as a 50/50 POI. 

Representation of a 50/50 POI

Now, I know, and it is generally accepted, that the vast majority of trap guns shoot 'high'.  But how high is high?

I have said before that I can lift almost any gun sitting on a gun rack at my club and have a pretty good idea, from how much of the rib I see, how much of a gap to leave between the target and the bead to break a clay. In saying that, I am more comfortable with flatter shooting guns than I am with very high shooting guns. These require much more guess work from me personally.

One phrase I've heard at shoots is people saying that their guns shoot 100% high. What does that mean? Well, in the scenario I mentioned before about the sporter aiming at the crosshair and half of the pattern being above the horizontal line and the other half below, in the case of 100% high, all of the pellets, 100% of them, will be above the horizontal line at 40 yards.

Representation of 100% High POI

I then did some searching online and came across mentions in various online forums etc about people setting up their shotguns to shoot up to 150% high. Krieghoff for example have a version of the Trap Special call the 'Pro Trap Special' that can be set to shoot 120% high.

That is where I started to get confused. What the hell does 150% high mean? Surely nothing can be higher than 100%? Right?

It didn't take much searching until I found a very useful graphic on the Browning website about POI and how this roughly translates in real terms.

If we go back to the sporter shooting a 50/50 pattern and look at it from a trap gun view point, for every increase of 5% of the ratio above, the centre of the POI rises by an inch and a half. So the centre of a 55/45 POI would be hitting 1 1/2" above the horizontal line of the cross-hair at 40 yards with the bead in the same place as for the 50/50 firing gun.

That would leave the ratios and corresponding heights as follows:

POI                  Height above centre in Inches

50/50                                      0
60/40                                      3
70/30                                      6
80/20                                      9
90/10                                     12
100% High                            15

If you expand that further into some of the really high figures mentioned:


POI                  Height above centre in Inches
110% high                             18
120% high                             21
130% high                             24
140% high                             27
150% high                             30

Those last numbers scare the bejesus out if me!!! 

I completely understand that these last set of figures and heights are not even thought about for DTL shooting and are used more for Olympic Trench and Olympic Double Trap.  However, sometimes when I say to people that their guns are shooting very high they look at you like you have two heads. 

I would think, or believe, that most trap guns for DTL would shoot between 60/40 and 80/20 POI.  I have really only come across one gun that I would say is in those scary numbers I mentioned above and it is a Perazzi MX2000.  I would honestly say that it is shooting 120-130% high and is a real pig of a gun to shoot for me personally.

Now, is it possible to test how high our guns shoot.  Of course it is. I'll be the first to admit that it is almost 10 years since I last shot at a pattern plate or tried to see where a gun was shooting.  The last time I did so, I was swapping about between two trap guns almost every week.  At the time I owned a Beretta 391 Semi Auto Trap Gun (wasn't I popular on the DTL lines ) and I had just bought my Miroku 3800.  Whichever one I picked out of the cabinet that morning, the first thing I would do at the ground when I arrived was to fire a few shots at the pattern plate to get an idea where they were shooting.  It probably didn't make any difference but it was just something I liked doing for myself and my confidence.  

I'll hold my hands up again and admit that I have never pattern tested a gun or cartridge. A lot of people swear by pattern testing but it is not something I have never tried.  With the costs of cartridges changing so much, it is very hard to pick a cartridge and decide that that will be the shell you will use for the rest of your shooting life.  You could go the same gun dealer the following week and he can no longer get your favourite shell so do you start pattern testing another?  I am just not that much into shooting these days to go to that trouble.  I know if I like a shell or not and will make it do me.

However, if you wish to pattern test a gun or particular shell,  shoot at a 30 inch circle from 40 yards and then count the individual pellet holes above the centre line and below, this will give a good indication of your POI.

I really don't like shooting at a pattern plate or large piece of paper from 40 yards if I am just looking to see where a gun is hitting.  From 16 yards, the ball of pellets hadn't separated much so they hit the pattern plate like a hammer leaving no question to where the shot was hitting.   If they were two inches above centre at 16 yards, this would leave them a good bit higher again at the distance where you would be looking to shoot a clay leaving a trap.

It would appear that others have thought something similar to myself. There is a lot of information available online and one I have only just discovered in the last day or two is "Point of Impact & Pattern Testing at 13 Yards" by Neil Winston.  It seems to be very interesting and well thought out and something I intend to try myself.  I'll report back on my results if I ever get round to doing a few tests.

So, what can you do if you discover your POI is to low or too high?

If your POI is comfortable enough for you then that's great.  If it's not, then too low is a lot easier to fix than too high.

Too low usually means your head is too far down on the stock.  If you have an adjustable stock then you can raise the comb a few millimeters until you can see enough of the beads or the rib to keep the bead below the target and break it.  There are other comb raising options available as temporary fixes and you can always get a fixed stock cut by a gunsmith and have it made adjustable.

Too high is a different animal altogether and can be a lot more difficult and costly to fix.  There are really only two options available if you have a fixed stock and rib.  You either raise the front bead or you take a few millimeters off the stock.  Raising the bead temporarily with a strip of wood is probably the easiest way to help with this situation.  It is just trial and error and trial and error until you get something that you feel comfortable looking down and shooting.  You could perhaps buy an aftermarket rib close to the height of the piece of wood. There are both fixed and adjustable aftermarket ribs available online.

Lowering the stock can be costly as the top of the comb needs to be taken down, reshaped and re-oiled after the work is done.  If you take it too low, the only option then is to have the stock cut and an adjustable comb added.  It could end up costing a lot more at the end of it all.

I suppose it is possible to have an adjustable heel plate fitted which might lower the gun overall.  I have never had any experience of these so cannot give any advice as to whether they would work or not.  The theory behind them seems to make sense in that you could lower, or higher, the entire gun but I just don't have any experience of them.
So, there we have a bit of a look at POI.  I hope to get a look at Neil Winston's 13 Yard testing at some stage and I'll post some results if and when I do.  I am completely happy as to where my gun is shooting as I look at the target but it will something else to pass a bit of time just out of curiosity.

DTL Shooting: Is the high shooting Trap Gun a thing of the past?

Is it just me or is there a bit of a shift in DTL shooting?  In the past, there were basically two main choices when choosing a trap gun. Beretta or Browning/Miroku.  Of course there have always been other brands available but these were basically the choices and the mainstay of shooting clubs throughout the UK and Ireland and probably still are today.

I am one of those annoying shooters who can pick up any shotgun sitting in a stand at any club and know where to point the barrels and break a few clays.  In saying that, there are many of them that I would not want to shoot a 25 bird line with or for any length of time whatsoever.  Some of them shoot very high.  A lot of these very high shooting guns are older guns.

What do I mean when I say a 'High Shooting Gun'?  Every trap gun is designed to shoot higher than a sporter or game gun for example.  Trap guns are designed to shoot at going away, rising targets.  A trap gun will have a stock that keeps your head higher so that your eye is looking more down onto the rib, rather than along it, and this then allows you a clearer view of the target as it rises.  What this means is that you should see the full target above the front bead of the gun as you pull the trigger.

Some trap guns shoot relatively flat and you can almost 'touch' the target with the front bead as you pull the trigger.  Others shoot extremely high.  The stock is high, you see a lot more of the rib of the gun and you have to keep the front bead a lot lower on the target.  In some guns I have shot, this could be as much as 2-3 feet below it.

Generally, I have found Brownings/Mirokus to shoot higher than Beretta. Most Brownings and Mirokus I have shot required you to see a gap of roughly six inches to a foot below the target.  I shot an old Miroku 3800 for years and shot some very good scores with it.  I still have the gun and wouldn't sell it.  Beretta, in general,  needed less of a gap between the front bead and the target.  However, some Berettas could have a high stock too which meant you could see much more of a gap.

Many people grew up and shot for years with high shooting guns with tight fixed chokes.  So much so that even now if they should buy a multichoked trap gun, they still use the tightest chokes in the box.

What a lot of people seem to forget, or just don't know, is that Down The Line (DTL) is a UK thing.  Yes, the Americans shoot ATA which is basically DTL with another name but in Europe, DTL is not widely shot.  So, when the Italian manufacturers make a Trap Gun, they have Olympic Trap in mind rather than our DTL.  Olympic Trap has targets almost twice as fast as DTL and the targets are shot a further distances than DTL so a good view of the target and tight chokes are essential for this discipline.  For DTL though, these guns can make things much more difficult for the average club shooter.

The first manufacturer that comes to my mind when I think of High Shooting, tight fixed choked guns is Perazzi.  I don't have a lot of experience of the brand but the few guns that I have tried for DTL, I found them to be very light and fast handling and shooting very high.  A super gun for Olympic Trap but less than ideal for DTL in my own opinion.

Don't get me wrong.  There are many excellent shooters at the highest levels of DTL who shoot extremely good scores using Perazzi.  Many of these shooters though will have custom made stocks made so the gun shoots where they want.  For the club shooter though, it can lead to difficulties.

You buy a new Perazzi for the best part of £10k so the last thing you want to do is to start lowering the stock so that you can get the bead closer to the target.  So, you try to shoot targets with a two foot gap between the target and the front bead.  A lot of the time, you will be able to manage.  A nice calm day and nice smooth targets, you can get away with keeping the distance between the target and the bead.  On a more unsettled day though, it only takes a gust of wind to flatten or rise a target by a few inches and it can be extremely hard to compensate for it with the gun and can result in dropped targets and frustration.

There seems to have been a bit of a shift in recent years.  More new manufacturers have entered the trap gun market and it seems that new ideas have come along with them.  I say, new ideas, but these are ideas that were probably only available in the top ranges of guns.  Krieghoff for example have had the 'Trap Special' available for years.  A High, adjustable rib and stock means that the Point of Impact can be adjusted for different trap disciplines and to the users requirements.  Perazzi released something similar in 2010 with an MX2000 with either 3 point or 8 point rib adjustments that meant the gun was basically a 'shoot everything' gun that could be set flat for sporting or adjusted for trap.  I shot one of these guns recently and couldn't believe that there was a Perazzi I could shoot with.

The shift I spoke of earlier has come with the introduction of other brands like Blaser and Ceasar Guerini.  Even entry level guns like Bettinsoli now come with adjustable stocks and ribs to make them more user friendly.  The established brands of Browning and Beretta have had to cater for this market too and there is a DT11 ACS (Any Competition Shotgun) available from Beretta and Browning released a version of the ProTrap with an adjustable stock and rib.

A friend of mine has a Ceasar Guerini with a fixed rib and adjustable stock and it is one of the easiest guns to shoot that I have used.  It is relatively flat shooting and you can touch the target with the bead. If the target rises or flattens, it is much easier to touch the target rather than trying to judge a gap.  This appears to be the trend these days.

I was talking to a very good DTL shooter one day and he was talking about the standard of shooting now compared to 15 to 20 years ago.  He was talking about the registered shoots and saying that the scores now are so much better and you need to be regularly scoring 297 and above, out of 300, now to give yourself any chance of making the International Team.  He said in the past that scores of 290-295 could hve been enough to make the team.  He reckoned trap technology now meant that the standard of targets was a lot better and better targets meant higher scores.  This could be true.  However, I personally think that the scores have risen since more people have started shooting with flatter shooting guns.

My own shooting has got much more consistent since shooting much flatter.  I was always capable of shooting 25 straights with the Miroku but there was always a line of 19 or 20 not too far away either.  Shooting now at the 'arse of the bird', there are far fewer lines with missed targets.  They may not all be 25 straights but those four or five birds I was missing before, I am now getting with the second barrel.  A line of 25/71 is a lot better at club level than 21/63.

I am very much a person who believes in making things as simple as possible and shooting is no different.  I am not saying that everyone should rush out and get rid of their trap guns and buy sporters for DTL but please don't fall into the trap of thinking a trap gun has to shoot very high for you to shoot well.