The Best Shotgun for You

By Teresa Milner

Ed Wall Media

Our first shooting experiences are often with someone else’s gun. It might be borrowed from a friend, on loan from a youth shooting league, or passed down from a parent. But these early shooting experiences aren’t always great. You might leave the session with a sore cheek and shoulder or frustrated because no matter how hard you try, you aren’t hitting targets consistently. Your pain or frustration is often the result of using the wrong kind of gun or a gun that doesn’t fit. That’s why learning to shoot with the right gun can make all the difference.

We caught up with some experts for advice on how to find a gun that is a perfect fit for you. Gil and Vicki Ash run Optimum Shotgun Performance Shooting School and have been coaching shotgun shooters for more than 30 years. They also offer customized gun fitting services, and they are passionate about shooting and ensuring that the sport is fun for people of all ages.

Gil says many young shooters are handed a gun that is too long, too heavy, or has too much recoil. That poorly fitting gun, combined with an incorrect shooting stance, often results in a sore shoulder and a shooter who quits the sport in frustration before even really getting started.

The Benefits of the Right Gun

Having a gun that fits your frame and your needs won’t automatically make you a better hunter or competitive shooter, and it isn’t a substitute for correct form or practice, but a poor-fitting gun can hinder your performance and make your time in the field downright miserable. Think of it this way: Steph Curry’s shoes don’t make him one of the best basketball players in the world. That comes from time, effort, repetition, and coaching. But he’ll play much better basketball wearing high-quality sneakers that fit him well than he would in hiking boots that are three sizes too big.

Finding the right gun starts with understanding some shotgun basics, including the different types of guns and actions, and the benefits and drawbacks of each.

Recoil

Recoil (also called kick) is the backward motion of a gun as it is fired. That is what you feel when you shoot and what can hurt your cheek or shoulder or cause you to flinch. “The first thing is you don’t want to get hurt, so you want a gun with light recoil when you start shooting,” Vicki says. “Sometimes those guns that are passed down through families have a lot of recoil.”

Type of Gun

Shotguns come in a few different types, including field, competitive shooting, and tactical designs. Field guns are made for hunting. Competition guns, or target guns, are designed for competitive shooting. They are generally heavier than field guns and have design modifications to reduce recoil.

“Field guns are lightweight. They are made to be carried a lot and shot a little,” Gil explains. “Target guns are heavy. They’re designed to be carried very little but shot a lot.” A heavier gun helps absorb some of the recoil. “There’s no tradeoff for weight and recoil,” Gil explains. “Lighter guns have more recoil.”

DougSteinke.com

In addition to having a shotgun that fits properly, young shooters also must develop the strength to mount and hold the gun with the right shooting posture.

Shotgun Actions

Different types of shotgun actions have different benefits. Break-action shotguns “break” open at the receiver to allow you to load and unload shells. They are highly reliable and easy to care for. A single-shot break-action gun has one barrel and carries only one shell at a time. These guns are lighter than double-barrel guns but must be reloaded each time after firing.

Over/under shotguns also have a break action but have two barrels, one stacked on top of the other. These guns can have a separate trigger for each barrel or one trigger and a switch to change barrels. Because they have few moving parts, over/under shotguns are incredibly reliable. Many of these guns can last for generations and hold their value well.

Side-by-side shotguns are also break-action guns, but their two barrels are right next to one another. They are more expensive to produce and not as common as over/unders in competitive shooting.

Pump- or slide-action shotguns hold several shells in the magazine. The shooter manually ejects each spent shell and chambers a new one by sliding the gun’s forearm back and forth. They are lighter than double-barrel guns, highly reliable, and relatively inexpensive, making them a popular choice for beginning hunters.

Semiautomatic or autoloading shotguns also can hold several shells at once. When you pull the trigger, the spent shell is ejected from the gun and a new shell is chambered automatically. You can fire multiple shots more quickly than you can with other action types. Gas-operated autoloading guns produce less recoil than other types of shotguns but, because of their complex design, they require more care and maintenance. Semiautos are also more expensive than other shotgun types.

Gauge

The most common shotgun gauges are 12 and 20. Others, like the 10-gauge, 16-gauge, 28-gauge, and .410, aren’t quite as popular, and ammunition for these guns can be harder to find and more expensive. Generally, the more common the gauge, the more affordable the ammunition will be.

Vicki and Gil start their beginning shooters with 28-gauge over/under shotguns, and they say a semiauto also makes a great gun for beginners because the design helps to minimize recoil.

“If I had to recommend a gun for a youth shooter, it would be the Benelli 28-gauge semiautomatic,” Gil says. “It weighs about four pounds, so it’s light enough for smaller-framed shooters, and it’s not going to kick very much.” Gil adds that a 20-gauge gas-operated semiauto will typically be light enough for youth shooters to be able to handle correctly.

Michael Peters

Semiautomatic shotguns are a popular choice for many waterfowlers. They are fast-shooting but tend to be more expensive than other shotgun types.

Shooting Stance and Posture

“You can’t expect someone to learn how to shoot a shotgun if they don’t have the strength to hold the gun up for more than two or three shots with the right shooting posture,” Gil explains. That correct shooting posture and strength, Gil and Vicki agree, is absolutely critical to everything else you’ll do in shooting. “If you’re standing incorrectly, there’s no way a gun can fit you correctly,” Vicki adds.

“Your cheek should be level with and in front of your shoulder pocket with an equilateral triangle from your right hand to your right elbow to your shoulder and back to your right hand,” Gil explains. “That’s critical. Your weight should be on your front foot, and the top of your spine should curve slightly forward.” Gil says you should have about one-and-one-half to two-and-one-half finger-widths of distance between the thumb knuckle of your right hand and your nose.

“Until the shooter has mounted the gun enough and handled the gun enough to build up the strength in their front-hand arm and shoulder to hold the gun up for 15 or 20 shots, there’s no way you can actually fit a gun,” Gil explains. That means doing some work first. “Mount the unloaded gun repeatedly,” he advises. “Use a drill, like our three-bullet drill.” That drill, Vicki says, focuses on maintaining target acquisition, but it will also help you build up your core shooting muscles. You can see Vicki explain this drill by searching “Three Bullet Drill” on YouTube.

A Modification Worth Having

A customized gun might sound extravagant and expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. It starts with choosing a gun that makes sense for your skill level, strength, and body type. Then you can modify it to fit you perfectly, often for just a few more dollars.

The result should be a gun that makes you want to shoot more and gives you confidence in your ability. And when it’s time to pass that gun down to the next generation? Well, you’ll know it will probably need some different modifications for the next person in line.