Customer Reviews

Robert Churchill's Game Shooting: The Definitive Book on the Churchill Method of Instinctive Wingshooting for Game and Sporting Clays

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If Robert Redford was going to make a wing-shooting movie in the genre of A River Runs Through It, Bagger Vance and the Natural, it would be based on Robert Churchill. No one in wing shooting is more the equal of Bobby Jones in golf, Charles Ritz in fly-fishing or Babe Ruth in baseball than Robert Churchill.

All of these people modestly taught their sports as a natural result of instinct. There have been changes in equipment in all areas since the 1920s and 1930s, but there has been no change in fundamental techniques.

Finally, if you read anything in this book more than once, be sure it is Chapter 11 on the Rules of Shooting.

Always find out if you are "standing on ceremony" for the day. In sophisticated company it is again like golf. It matters far less how well you shoot than how well you behave. Hunting is a universal pleasure. Regardless of social class, shooters are true gentlemen.

There is always variation in the local rules, but these are the universals in Churchill's eyes:

1. Safety is always first.

2. Keep your gun broken.

3. Never ever shoot over your hunting partners.

4. Always shoot pest birds and rodents for your host.

5. Get close to your game for a clean, instant kill.

6. Never shoot a grounded bird.

7. Don't be a whiner! If you miss take your medicine.

8. Be a real sport. Operate with style, be a pleasure to be with.

9. Always keep the trigger finger to the side of the gun.

The Churchill methods is based on proper fit, mount and shoot. The shooter prepares the gun in a proper ready position for the game, sees the target with both eyes, then raises the gun to a solid shoulder/cheek mounted posture -- firing occurs at the instant the gun is mounted.

Aiming is discouraged in the Churchill technique. At wing-shooting schools, serious skeet shooters, on average, perform more poorly than novice shooters coming to the intuitive method for the first time.

When you go to practice, go to a sporting clay facility such as the Orvis Schools in Manchester, VT, Sandanonna, NY, West End in London, or Purdy in London. There are also fine schools near Paris, Madrid and Lisbon. In Spain or Portugal live birds are the most common practice targets.

Read this book from cover to cover then sign up for a wing-shooting school and spend a day or two on sporting clay courses. Then reread the book at night.

Good shooting.

Excellent book, If you are just starting to shoot shotgun this is the Book to get.

This is a classic book on wingshooting and will remain as one forever. It should be a part of the collection of any wing shooter.