I taught trapshooting for many years and found that when my students grasped and instituted this skill, their improvement increased exponentially. And oddly enough, I found getting over this hurdle was easier for the inexperienced over those with years of shooting under their belts. No bad habits to break and no established muscle memory to overcome I’m guessing.

Just went and shot trap this morning, kept my eyes open, imagined I was playing hockey (hand eye sport), and shot better than I have before. Seriously love this channel. Thank you.

I am nearing 85yrs and my grandfather taught me over 80yrs ago to shoot both eys open. He had to shoot from the hip because of a should injury and I have seen him drop two driven partridge out of a covey a number of times. Firstly get your shotgun fitted worth the expense then DO NOT LOOK UP THE BARREL but look at the bird and your shotgun will respond as if you are pointing your finger. You only have to judge lead.  I still shoot driven game here in the UK and average 1-3 shots.   Put it in the pattern.

I'm pretty green at shotgun sport shooting but I learned exactly this.  I really don't even bother aiming.  In fact I don't think about it at all.  I figure the spread of the shot should cover my margin of error.  No one's called me a bad shot.  I find people on this side of shooting are extremely friendly and supportive.  I've been told by several old timers who are good at it that I'm severely handicapped by using a pump and that I should buy an Over/Under.

damn linus tech tips went to another level

Every time I get into the stand for a round of sporting clays I always remind myself to “look at the bird” all the way through the trigger pull.
It absolutely helps to pre-condition your thoughts to focus on this only.
Your body will instinctively know what to do with the gun to execute the shot.
This is why I love wing shooting the most. I do all kinds of recreational shooting, but nothing is a challenging and fun every time you pull the trigger than wing shooting!!

Best explanation of this I've heard.  Makes sense.  Shooting rifle almost exclusively over the last several decades makes it difficult to break the habit of aiming.  I'm thinking practice with this technique will develop the coordination to pull it off.

Richard Alden Knight's book "Mastering the Shotgun" has a great concept that works very well; act as if the shotgun is a broom and you are sweeping the "bird" out of the sky.  As always, don't sweep to it; sweep through it.  Especially good technique for teaching newbees for live game.

Both eyes open & correct stock position on the shoulder so when you look down the barrel your eye is level with the barrel rib & aim bead.

I am a quite experienced rifle shooter and recently I bought my first Shotgun, a Winchester Select. I have to state I also made the mistakes with aiming on the clays (Trap shooting). I just hit 2/10 and I have to confirm, it is a complete different kind of shooting than rifle shooting on tragets.

I might be late to the party, but that was the clearest and most actionable explanation of "point" vs "aim" I've heard. I've struggled to understand that concept for a long time, and this made it so easy to understand - and practice!  Thanks so much.

Could you do a video comparing ported and non ported chokes for loudness, patterning, recoil, and such? Determine if the ported chokes have advantages over non ported or if they are more of a marketing gimmick.

Yup, 100%. I learned this on my own growing up shooting trap, skeet and doves. This kind of shooting is a lot more about reflex and ballistics than actually aiming.

I agree with everything except only 10% of shooters actually point where they are looking. Eye dominance and cross dominance is a huge problem for shotgun shooters. Vision is also a huge problem, some shooters are seeing blurry flares or aspirins and the top shooters see saucer or plate sized defined targets. Vision also affects balance which is hand I coordination. Love this channel.👍

The best trapshooting instruction I ever received was to forget everything I knew about rifles and start over. Get the right stance. Don't aim at all. Swing with the arc of the clay slightly faster than it's moving, while focused on the clay so that the barrel and front bead are almost blurred in the foreground, the whole time gently taking up the trigger slack, until when you're about four feet ahead of the clay squeezing the trigger almost incidentally while concentrating on smoothly following through with the motion of the gun.

I’m pretty inexperienced with shotguns, and toward the end of a shoot I realized I was pointing rather than aiming, and hitting way faster and better.  Lots of shooting definitely helped, and some guns definitely suited me better than others.

Being left eye dominant (20/15 vs 20/20) and a right handed taught shooter keeping both eyes open has been an interesting endeavour. The one thing that did help for sure was just focusing on the target and not looking at the bead. This has improved greatly, but I’ll still do a quick glance at the bead and back to the bird for stretch shots (50+yards); no guarantee on if both eyes are open or not. All I know is birds do go down at 50-70 often… I try not to think about it. though my 100% preference is decoying them or flushing them and taking the shot at 20-30.
This video is really good advice.

Man I just saw you at shooter round up in MN and after getting back to OH I bought a shotty! Cant wait to use it. You and your son are awesome!

Another great pointer. I think one of the starting points for shooting both eyes open, has to be,,, gun fit. AND, patterning your shotgun. Patterning with both eyes open starts to give you confidence by knowing where your scatter gun shoots. Guys like Steve, don't seem to have that issue, as he can shoot any shotgun, however, 95% of us need to follow a path and steps to success.

This is one of the first things that I was told when I went skeet shooting for the first time (so my first time shooting moving targets).