Gun Show or Gun Mount?

Posted On: 06-28-2021

Over the years I have witnessed a wide variety of so-called gun mounts.  I have seen guns pointing to the sky, guns swinging in all directions and recently more of the crouched over, gun broken, and then closed after the mount.  It is a good show indeed, but much of this is for show and not really a part of an efficient pre-shot routine. 

Many coaches though provide the basics that includes lifting the gun parallel to the ground, bringing it back to the shoulder and then connecting the check to the comb.  Nothing fancy, but something reproduceable over and over and over.  Note here the gun does not connect to the shoulder until it is raised, not before. 

Great shooting is being able to reproduce a solid gun mount that allows your eyes to release from the barrel (hard focus) and move outward to the target area as soft focus.  The gun will follow our eyes, but only if we can consistently mount the gun repeatedly with our eye down the barrel.    

Behind footwork, changing gun mounts to be accurate and repeatable, can be difficult to accomplish, I often see even after some coaching a return to the old mounting habits.  Perhaps the root of some shooting problems, but when done is a manner that is always the same shooting always improves. 

There are many things to look at after a gun is mounted.  Where is the eye, what is the cant, how far back is the shooters nose to the knuckle of their trigger thumb, comb pressure and where the gun is placed in relation to the shoulder.  Add in elbow position, and foreman grip and you have plenty of variables constituting a good gun mount.  Please don’t overlook these but let’s get back to the basics.  Lift the gun parallel to the ground, bring it back to the shoulder and contact the check to the comb.   

One has to remember the gun mount is only a part of the pre-shot routine, as we include many portions of the routine before pulling the trigger.  What is the important take-away is a repeatable, efficient and consistent gun mount, but also one that allows the shooter to not become fatigued by extraneous movement. 

Efficiency is so important to good shooting simply because over the course of 100 rounds we need to mount an 8-pound object totaling to 800 pounds by the end of the competition.  Couple that with the two to four seconds needed to prepare to shoot and you have from three to six minutes of heavy lifting in competition that has to be efficient, simplified and capable of never eroding over the course of competition.

Bottom line – get your gun mount simplified and repeatable!

David R. Vaught, Ph.D.

Executive Director