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.
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