I grew up learning to lead with my shotgun. I read everything that was written about how far to lead. Finally I went or see Lucky McDaniels for instinct shooting lessons. He told us to forget lead and just keep going with the bird. Do you try to measure your lead?

See the bird, shoot the bird. Don't over think it.

That's what Lucky told us. He said that we should think as if the shotgun was a baseball bat, tennis racket, or a golf club. Just pick your sport. Forget your gun and concentrate on the target.

Yes. If I measure my lead, I'm gonna miss a lot. I like to shoot from low gun so I don't have time to measure.

Bill,

I am no shooting instructor so let the flaming begin. I think "instinct" shooters are still leading the targets, and for the sake of discussion think of skeet station #4, standing perpendicular to the target's flight path. It is just simple math. Even if you swing your gun as fast as the target, and then squeeze the trigger while moving at the same speed, it still takes time for the shot to reach the target. With that said, I shoot best with a low gun, instinct, and with follow through, shooting as I pass the target. Over the years I have gotten better at estimating target/bird speed and flight path.

Please check my math:

Target is 20 yards away or 60 feet
Shot travels 1200 fps or .05 seconds to reach the target out at 60 feet
Target is moving at 55mph (like a fast dove) or 80 fps
In .05 seconds, or the time it takes the shot to reach a 20 yard distance the target will cover 4 feet.

In any event, the lesson sounds interesting. Did you find it beneficial?

It changed my life.
It's difficult to explain. You still lead but the lead is unconscious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_McDaniel#Students


Students

While his shooting technique is often categorized as point shooting, the key characteristic of his technique is a split-second point-and-shoot move. He taught approximately 100,000 people, mostly bird hunters and law enforcement officers, his method of shooting. The bird hunters included ex-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry Ford II, John Wayne, Bill Oxner, Audie Murphy, and key executives of the Remington and Winchester firearms companies.

From 1967 to 1973, McDaniel was an instructor for the U.S. Army, where he instructed infantrymen in instinctive shooting with the service rifle in jungle or urban warfare. The Army employed his training course for some years under the program name, "Quick Kill".[1] Beginning in the late 1970s, McDaniel taught combat shooting at Mitchell WerBel III's facility, "The Farm", located in Powder Springs, Georgia, where a number of Israelis, among others, were trained.

I have good days and bad days wing shooting. When I am consciously trying to hold a certain lead are usually my bad days. When I let my point and shoot instinct take over I usually do a lot better.

I grew up looking at the pumpkin on the post. I always used my sights. It was during the big war. You couldn't get shotgun shells. I always looked down my barrel. I thought other shooters were just aiming quicker.

Techniques will teach you to shoot better, but the best baseball players will still be the best shots.

http://www.livestockweekly.com/papers/03/11/20/scrollins.asp

But quail were the order of the day. And over the next several hours, Annie pointed 14 coveys; eight were bobwhites and six were blues. And while the shooting wasn’t a perfect game, it was an above average display of shotgunning. Ryan carried an over/under .410 and Mr. Wells toted a 28-gauge over/under. On one particular covey rise, each downed two birds, which is about all you can expect from a double-gun. The record as far as I’m concerned is shared by my colleague Billy Higginbotham and running buddy from high school Rodney Heflin, who each downed five bobwhites on the wing in two successive shots. And I’m not taking their word for it (especially not from these characters!); I witnessed both incidents.

"Those dogs are ‘Hoovers’; they don’t miss a thing," was Chuck Ribelin’s remark on our quail hunt on the Rocker last season. Doc is mostly relegated to being a short-reliever these days (she’s nine years old). But she remains a "Goose" Gossage for short relief. She relies on Annie to be the Ozzie Smith of the duo, and Annie fits the bill. A good bird dog not only finds and points the birds, but they also work equally hard to find downed birds, especially the cripples. Doc and Annie made some incredible "grabs;" we lost only one bird during the entire day. A day without a lost bird is like a perfect game; a statistic that nobody can relate to more so than Ryan (he holds the Major League record with seven no-hitters).

+1

I agree completely. The bird/clay gets in my head and I miss. If I let instinct flow, I get more hits than misses,

Head up or head down? Lucky taught head up. Never look down the barrel.

Shoot where you look - Leon Measures

Leon was who I learned instinctive shooting from. Great teacher. Is he still alive and teaching?

Sweese, you're pretty close, other than Low 3 and High 5 are the targets closest to perpendicular. It is often difficult to get people to understand that the true leads on a skeet field, except station 8, are all the same....it's the 'perceived leads' that we all talk about because that is what we see. The best shotgun hunters will be great instinct shooters, ask them how far they led a bird and they probably couldn't tell you....just great instinct. I've hunted with a few that rarely let a bird get by (I'm sure there are several in this forum too) but don't fare as well on the skeet field...simply two different pastimes and methods that work best for each. P_102