Every day is a great day to practice your shooting skills for the next hunting season. Have you tried five stand shooting?
If you are into clay bird shooting, you probably know a thing or two about trap and skeet shooting. Five stand is quite similar to other disciplines of competitive shooting but requires a great deal of practice to master.
Compared to other types of shooting competitions, five stand shooting requires little space. That makes it popular in gun clubs that lack space for overland bird clay shooting.
For quite some time, most of the attention has been on trap vs. skeet comparisons, and very few guides have been drawn up to help shooters hone their five stand shooting skills. As such, here are some useful five stand shooting tips that will help you shoot like a pro.
How It Works
As the name suggests, it involves five stands, each with a menu card with a series of clay birds that you will shoot. The menus are placed on or in front of each stand. The birds fly from six to eight different throwers. These throwers can be placed straight ahead, right, left, and even behind the shooter at specified yardages, different angles, and directions.
Just like in trap and skeet competition, the shooters take turns at each of the five stands, shooting three combinations each and then moving to the next shooting stand. The combinations vary for every shot. For instance, station six might make a single throw on the first shot, a double in the next shot, and another double in the third.
5 Stand Shooting Tips
Follow these step by step instructions for the perfect shooting stand on the range.
1. Holding your gun
The primary goal of five stand shooting is to hit the targets with every shot. However, this will never happen if you hold your gun the wrong way.
As a rule of thumb, always make sure that you align your eyes with the front sight of your shotgun and keep your cheekbone on the stock. Holding your gun this way will help you make more accurate shots and absorb the recoil without hurting your face.
2. Stance
When shooting, always ensure that your front foot is in line with your rear heel and that they both point toward your target. Also, remember to maintain a relatively narrow stance for faultless swing and good follow-through.
3. Muzzle angles
One of the most important, yet neglected, things in shooting competitions is getting the muzzle angle right.
After the clay bird’s release, focus on its relative position as you follow through with the muzzle. For maximum accuracy, always fire at 60 degrees from the pick-up point.
4. Aiming
One of the most common mistakes five stand shooters make is aiming directly at the clay bird when taking shots.
For the perfect shot, aim a few feet ahead of the target and anticipate a collision. If you directly aim at the clay bird, your shots will always land behind the target. The distance of your lead varies with the distance of the stand from the clay bird and the speed of the launch.
For instance, imagine that you have a clay bird launched across the kill zone at 50 feet per second. The distance between your stand and the bird is 200 feet, and your shot stream travels at 1,000 feet per second.
With this distance and speed, your shot will approximately take 0.2 seconds to hit the target. In those 0.2 seconds, the clay bird will travel a distance of 10 feet. Therefore, to hit the target, you will have to aim 10 feet ahead of it.
5. Shooting pairs of clay birds
When shooting pairs, decide on which target you’ll shoot first. It’s always a good idea to hit the lower or to trail the clay bird first unless you are super quick. By shooting the lower target first, you can use the gun’s recoil to your advantage as it automatically puts you in position to hit the upper clay bird.
6. Take a deep breath
It may sound simple, but with all the tension during shooting competitions, it can be very hard to stay put and relax. If you are tense, your muscles will be firm and won’t be able to react quickly and as smoothly, increasing the chances of missing the target. To relax, simply take a deep breath and focus.
Improve Your Five Stand Shooting at Windwalker
Windwalker Farms provide the best learning environment for all types of shooting competitions, including five stand, trap, and skeet shooting. You will also learn the best shooting stance for you, how to hit targets with consistent precision, and much more.
After that, you can participate in tons of shotgun competitions to test your shooting skills. Happy shooting!