Hi all, well I'm curious to see what you all say on this subject. Without the use of a proper fitting, which method is, shall we say proper for a self fitting LOP.

1) Crook of the elbow to your trigger finger

2) 1 to 1 1/2" from your thumb to your nose

I have hear both sides of the issue on the above methods. So.....what's your take?

All the best!

Greg

#1 is useful if you intend to shoot the gun with the butt in the crook of your elbow, otherwise it means nothing.(courtesy of JOC)

Otherwise, choose answer #2. I favor 1/2" to 1". It's a personal thing but many people who "need a long LOP" would need less if they were putting the butt where it belongs, in the pocket inside the shoulder muscle. Some put it on the shoulder muscle and some, way out on the bicep. This is wrong for many reasons.

Shorter than ideal is better than longer, so long as your nose isn't getting bumped during recoil. JMO, of course.
If you look at the pictures of the current sporting clays hotshots, nearly all of them have their nose right up very close to their trigger hand.

I'm with Jim but like 1 to 1 1/2. Elbow is no help realy as it dosen't take in the build of your chest. two gals could have the same arm lenght but one be a 32A and the other a 38DD.A good grip will fit both but the stock lenght and toe out will be different.

I think it might also depend on your mounting techinque and style of shooting ie: pass or dove in flight vs. approaching a dog on pint vs. working with a flsuhing dog- also climate and location- if I were hunting "Buurds" in Thomasville GA. with a fine LeFever Optimus 16 bore-I might want a tad longer LOP for that weather and style of gun handling than shooting divers on Long Island Sound in Dec. from a pitchin' layout boat. Also your body structure and preference in hunting gear-just MO of course, but I have studied the Limey style a la Ken Davies in the H&H videos and book-just because I beat-up old Fox and not a matched pair of Royal ejector grades doesn't mean I can't follow what works for our British cousins-- and in the SC segment Kenny-boy was shooting an American Ruger O/U 12 bore with the shiny Stainless Steel receiver alreadt!! RWTF

LOL!!

#2 sounds closer to me also. But, I can take a gun with a 13 1/2" LOP and get 1" of clearance and take a 15" LOP and get the same clearance if I want. "Stock crawling" is a secondary sport in some circles. A good fit isn't just about measurments and clearances, it's also about proper mounting and conformation.

If you're trying to fit yourself or another, or just want to learn more about the subject, I highly recommend Michael Yardley's book "Gunfitting". It's only about 100 pgs but packed with knowledge.

only last week i picked up some new book on shotgunning by a writer i'd never heard of. thumbed thru it and in seconds saw a half page pic showing how to determine the correct LOP by placing the butt in the crook of the elbow, etc. immediately put it back on the shelf as i didn't care about anything else that writer had to say.

i don't think either method is valid. you obviously don't want your thumb hitting your nose on recoil but there's way more to it than that. there are too many factors involved to boil it down to something that simple.

i love the way the literature described a benefit of my fabarms o/u: you can adjust the LOP because the trigger blade is moveable. no, you can't. no matter where you put that trigger, on a pistol gripped gun your right hand pretty much stays put and the "real" LOP stays the same.

there's only 2 ways to determine if a gun fits: shooting (empirical) and fitting (somewhat empirical but also somewhat theoritical). if you can hit with the gun, it fits. if you can't, it might not or it could just be you.

roger

I hesitate t post on this subject since it has sorta been beat to death and all. And, folks seem to get pretty riled up on this subject it seems. But, I disagree with all who posted so far to some extent.

The measurement from the inside of a 90% bend of the elbow to the distal joint of the trigger finger has been a traditional method of getting a STARTING measurement for LOP in many places for many years.

For me, that distance is 14.25 inches. It just so happens that 14.25 inches is a great LOP for me given normal clothing.

Now I am somewhat of a nut about gun fit. I shoot A LOT by most folks standards. And, I have shot a lot for many years including competitively in trap, bunker and sporters. Gun fit ultimately requires tinkering and trial and error to get it just right. But as a STARTING point, the inside of the elbow to the trigger joint is a better measure than any estimate method I know for the LOP.

Flame away.

Regards, Jake

I will disagree with what appears to be the New Wave of how to determine LOP. As far as I am concerned, the elbow method works pretty well. It's not perfect but then no ad hoc measure is perfect.

It only works if you shoot the gun from the crook of your elbow? Well, I guess the #2 method only works if you don't have a long nose or a short thumb.

I am somewhat of a nut about gun fit being far less important than most people seem to think. The human body is wonderfully adjustable and adaptive, especially within a 1" range. If you need a perfectly fitted gun to shoot, you're not much of a shooter.

Give Tiger Woods a 2x4 with black tape wrapped around one end and he could still outgolf any of us here.

Why is LOP the big deal? Kind of a range isn't it-summer to winter? More going on here--comb hgt cheek, thin comb or thick, cast or neutral, toe out, pitch, stance square to the shot or facing.

jack

IMO, Chuck came closest to nailing it. LOP, given in inches, is practically useless for predicting gun fit.

I have 11 shotguns that all fit me perfectly, as I define it. Which is to say, with the exception of my one trap gun, I can mount all of them from the low gun position, to shoot any target (game or clay) presentation with the gun virtually never dragging on my body or clipping my armpit on the one extreme, or hitting my nose with my hand on the other extreme. Each of the 10 guns will shoot exactly to POA with a 50/50 pattern from a dynamic mount. The LOP's vary from 14.25 - 15".

As a way to communicate, we define LOP as the distance from the center of the trigger to the center of the butt. But,as I said, this measurement in inches has little to do with predicting fit, unless you happen to be talking about one gun or guns with identical grip shapes.

Try this....make a fist and place it on the table in front of you. Extend the index finger until the pad just clears the middle finger. Imagine the distance from your index pad to your armpit. Now extend your index finger in stages from this position to full extension and see how that dimension changes. The same thing is at play when you grip a target gun with a tightly radiused pistolgrip and then a game gun with a straightgrip. They can have identical "LOP", yet one can be effectively too short and the other too long. The same is easily seen with guns (Beretta/Browning O/U's, for instance) that have 3-position triggers....moving the trigger definitely changes the measured LOP, but does absolutely nothing to alter gun fit.

The best LOP is not a number; it's the one, through trial and error with a particular gun, that is short enough to virtually eliminate mismounts and long enough to aid consistent eye placement and ,therefore, consistent shot placement. Find that length and you'll also have coincidentally prevented a sore nose.

if i remember it right, fitters at Perazzi had said that Bob Brister was xtrmly difficult to fit as he would adapt himself to the gun just shouldering it 2-3 times. which goes back to what i said: if you can hit well with it, it fits. even it if doesn't "fit" by the strict definition.

roger

You have to have seen Bob on the range with his wood rasp to understand his fitting style.New nice wood and out comes the rasp after a few shots for abit of fitting then a few more shots and fit some more.Bob was a joy to shoot with or just be around. Even saw a barrel he bent once when rasping for hours served no improvement.Yes the barrel was ruined but the gun didn't shoot low anymore.

My responses to the above, with the utmost respect intended.
1st paragraph, I agree 100%.

2nd paragraph, Ok, but doesn't really say much.

3rd paragraph, absolutely agree. Sort of like my main shooting buddy who believes you can change cast by adding an adjustable butt plate.

4th paragraph, "if you can hit with the gun, it fits". Politely disagree totally with that one. I can hit targets with guns from 13" to maybe 15" but that tells you nothing about how the LOP should be determined and proves nothing. I would be much more comfortable with the 13" LOP than the 15". For me, 14" works best.
AND, SURPRISE, SURPRISE! Just checked my guns using the crook of the elbow method and my 14" LOP guns fit that way too.
It's still not the best way to do it, IMO. Even though it may work sometimes. It's like using a dime to tell if a 12 ga. gun is choked full.

I believe he was looking for the quicky fit system not the proper fit one we all know about. The best quick way is ask for a tape and messure the stock. If its close to what you shoot go for it

i confess i've never once actually measured that distance. from the crook of my elbow to the first joint of my bent trigger finger is actually about 13.75". maybe 14" but not more but that's fibbing. i like LOP to be at least 14.5" and 15 is fine. straight hand guns 15 at least. i will also admit tho, living here, that i very seldom have occasion to shoot in anything more than a light jacket so bulky clothing isn't an issue. the last model 21 i had was only 13-7/8 over a non-original pad and i couldn't hit squat with it. the crescent arms i got from my dad is more shootable. my model 11 is 14" even over an non-original pad and it works fine. the curvature of the grip has a tremendous about of influence on what length really works. but out of about 30 shotguns (i trade a lot) over the last 3 yrs that i've been keeping track, the longer the LOP within reason the more easily i can hit with it and the greater the pitch the more i miss.

roger

Rabbit may be worth listening to?

Crook of the elbow has served me well, just as 1 1/2-2" from nose to knuckle is another, but they are just rules of thumb for LoP, and LoP is just one variable in a whole bunch of them. Proper fit is a complex subject, but can be as simple as "It feels comfortable, puts the rib centre and just under my eye every time, and I shoot it well, consistently".
RG

Well, I'm not Tiger Woods so I must not be much of a shooter. I like my guns to fit 'reasonably well'. I wish I were an expert shooter and could shoot anything well like Greg. Maybe in another life.

LOP is not the most important of the dimensions for me as long as it is in a range that doesn't cause me to hang up during the mount or have my nose smacked. Drop is probably most important to me.

Depends on how open my stance is and that depends on what I'm shooting at as well as what style of stock (trap, sporting, game) and what the weather is (jacket or no?). I should add that all stocks touch my cheek first and my shoulder then tucks in behind the stock.

Agree 1000%!

Also agree with Jack/Salopian.

JC

Two cents more thrown into this discussion shouldn't hurt. When I'm trying to help someone determine their proper length of pull I watch them mount their gun (assuming they are starting from a low gun position). If they can't bring their gun to their shoulder without first pushing it away from their body, then the present LOP is too long. We work backwords from there.

Disciplines like American skeet & trap can accomodate a slightly longer LOP because they allow for pre-mounted guns. All FITASC and most game shooting is done with an unmounted gun, and you generally don't have time to suffer with a gun that you can't immediately bring to your shoulder.

Tom Knapp just likes them to go boom boom boom as he don't use the stock half of the time.

Rabbit's posts are always worth listening to.
LOP is, however, very important to me.
I can not imagine how pitch (too much or too little) would have much effect on whether you can hit with the gun or not. As long as you place the comb against your cheek pitch is mainly important only to give the butt maximum contact with your body for recoil reasons. It does not, as the myths say, have a great influence on whether you shoot high or low. If it did, people using the banana pads would shoot their toes off.

IMO, drop (elevation) and cast (windage) must be equal. It is a easy to miss a target to the side as it is to miss above or below. LOP is supposed to get the various body parts in alignment with the stars so they function harmoniously. Fit is to shotguns as sighting-in is to rifles and handguns. The objective is to have a stock that positions the involved body parts such that the gun can be shot more or less reflexively and expected to hit where it points. It should come as no surprise that one set of dimensions is unlikely to fit all guns for all shooting purposes over a shooter's life.

Good post, Hack. Maybe I think so because I agree with everything in it.

I do push mine out and bring it back in even with a normal stock.

I was taught to mount a gun like this and taught it like that for 12 years because all of my students wore a name tag.

I do not see any disadvantage if it is practiced sufficiently.

I do however, practice a lot before the season and regularly shoot old style skeet with my hunting gun.

It's pretty easy with a tight radius pistol grip (or extreme radius like Fred Etchens espoused) to have your wrist nice and relaxed and dominant and able to impart a bit too much control to the aft end. Means sliding the butt strait up and then the muzzles tend to seesaw below the target track. Even with a semi-pistol, let alone strait grip, my wrist is sort of "bound up" or locked. Vertical slide up the body isn't as easy but even if it is, at least it makes the elbow lead to ensure a nice high shoulder pocket. Add a little more LOP and the butt will hang up if you slide, so you do the bayonet thrust first and then back in the pocket and supposedly muzzles don't dip. Hasn't made me a great shooter but that's the theory I subscribe to and the one I try to practise. The Brit gunfitters love that coins on the rib (barrels) trick. I use Susan B. Anthonys.

jack

I'm like Tom Knapp. I don't worry about it. I can shoot just about any gun that is within reason as far as LOP is concerned. In fact, the thing that is more important to me is that I mount and hold the gun the same every time. Since I have started shooting skeet, I try to do this. I wrap my fingers around the front of the forearm in order to keep the gun against my shoulder when I shoot. And in order to mount the gun the same every time, I just touch my nose with my thumb when I mount the gun. This way I have the same sight picture every time.

Like the man said, low gun and "benchrest" (registered American) skeet is different animals. Worse than low gun (which can be just off the cheek, in the armpit) is International which gives good odds of anticipatory movement and timing/mounting mistakes because it's a long way from the vest stripe to the shoulder and the delay doesn't help one little bit.

jack

I spoke to Larry DelGrego last week; he said there are two types of shooters. I forgot the names, but one is the type who pushes the gun away from his body as he brings it up then shoots as the gun comes to his shoulder, and the other is the type who brings the gun directly up to his shoulder and shoots. According to him, the frist type of shooter wil need a longer LOP and is less sensitive to LOP as the second type.

i disagree that pushing the gun away and bringing back during the mount is wrong. after reading of that method in i'm pretty sure Greener's book, i tried it and it really works well. gun never hangs up. as far as a shorter LOP goes, one could hang up the heel of a gun with any length of pull if he held it in too close. once the movement is learned it isn't a bit slower and lop becomes even less an issue.

i'll agree that pitch shouldn't have anything to do with where a gun points but i once got curious about why some of my guns just seemed to take an awful lot of work to hit with and i went thru an exercise with every shotgun i had at the time and the only thing consistent among the ones that took a lot of work was a far greater amount of drop. i can't mathematically reconcile that in my mind but the trend has continued thru every gun since then. it could just be coincidence in other factors but it's been too constant to ignore that any gun that has a lot of pitch, i either can't hit with or have to work very hard at it, regardless of any of the guns other dimensions. and that's using pasture trap as a baseline; if you miss much at pasture trap, something's wrong.

roger

You may also have it backwards, Greg. If people use a gun with a shorter LOP, they only have to put it directly to their shoulder. And if they bought a gun with a longer LOP, then they have learned that they have to move the gun away from their body when they mount the gun. But the same person might always bring a gun straight to their shoulder- they just happened to buy one with a longer LOP.

Jimmy - I went back and re-read what I wrote and it is the same as what you are saying.

Just to clarify - I never said the method of pushing the gun away from your body before you bring it to your shoulder was wrong; I said that if you have to do that to mount your gun then the LOP of that gun is too long.

Even if the LOP is correct, that method is not one that I prefer because it requires an additional movement to obtain a proper gun mount. I believe that the more proficient and efficient you are with your gun mount the more targets (or birds) you will hit.
In some disciplines (live pigeon, particularly Columbaire) I don't think you have time for anything but the most efficient gun mount. If someone says they shoot better doing it the other way then that's what they should do. The bottom line to any shooting system is to answer this question - By doing this am I shooting better or not?

I'll throw two cents in on pitch while I'm here. Pitch, in and of itself, has no efect on where a gun shoots. I shoot with some guys that can break more targets shooting from the hip that I can with my best gun mount. Since the gun is not on their shoulder what possible difference can the pitch make? (i.e.,the Tom Knapp example given earlier).

Having said that - it all comes back to the gun mount. If the pitch isn't right you are more likely to improperly mount your gun. If you don't have enough pitch you are more likely to catch the heel of the stock on your shoulder, and if not corrected, you will shoot high. Reverse is true with too much pitch, you may catch the toe and shoot low. Again, this really doesn't apply to to disciplines where a premounted gun is allowed. It is most applicable in disciplines where you have a fraction of a second to acquire the target, mount your gun and kill it.

I think the theory behind the 'move the gun away' method is that it is instinctive; you are essentially beginning to track the target with the gun from the get-go. While bringing the gun directly to your shoulder may be more efficient, it probably detracts from what is going on in your brain. i.e. 'get a lock on the target'.

Greg:

No arguement. Some techniques work better for some shooters than others do. Whichever method makes a shooter shoot more effectively is the one the he should use.

In some disciplines (live pigeon, particularly Columbaire) I don't think you have time for anything but the most efficient gun mount

Unless something has changed both of those disciplines are shot premounated. I have only shot columbaire.

Another aspect in which I may be the only subscriber in the world is "slightly longer LOP kicks less".

i thought pigeon and columbaire were shot high gun. or pigeon at least.

one thing i like about pushing the gun away is the movement once learned is the same regardless of clothing. if one develops a habitual gun mount in the summer wearing a t-shirt, a change of seasons can induce a problem until the mount or the LOP is adjusted. with texas weather being what it is, i've gone from t-shirts one week to an army field jacket with liner 2 weeks later and not had to re-adapt. the biggest factor in speed is habit - the things you do that do not require concious thought.

roger

Some shoot it high gun, but a lot don't. The ones that don't shoot some form of modified low gun, not as low as FITASC or International disciplines. The ones that don't shoot high gun do not do so because they feel they can pick the bird up quicker by not doing so. Again, it's a matter of what works best for the individual shooter.

I'm the last one that should be espousing any method, but this struck a chord with me. I have found that i have very little need for a shorter lop in the winter, even with quite cold temps and appropriate clothing to sit knee deep for hours after breaking ice off a duck puddle. I'll start my bird season in a t-shirt and finish when others say it's too cold to ice-fish...so this makes sense to me.

People gasp when I tell them I just stocked my new fox at a bit over 16"...but from the crook of my elbow to the crook of my index finger is 16.5" and it shoots 55/45 patterns dead on. Did I just put a stock on that's too short?? Hope not Being that this is not a "normal" measurement and is usually the most off of the other stock dimensions by far, I certainly find LOP to be the most critical measurement on most off-the-shelf guns. Having finally settled on a fit that works pretty well for me, now I can get to the business of truly improving my shooting as my consistency is dramatically improved.

Seems to be some confusion here about what pitch is. Your second paragraph started out talking about pitch and ended up talking about drop. The two have nothing to do with each other.

More confusion here, at least to me. Not enough pitch would make the toe likely to catch. Too little pitch would make the toe longer in relation to the heel. Too much pitch would make the heel catch first.
This is assuming more pitch means farther down(muzzles farther from the wall)

Well, for heavens sake, don't anyone start talking positive and negative pitch. Jim is correct that a short-toed gun is going to stick its muzzles further from the wall than a short-heeled one if you go by the old up against the wall rule. I'm nearly sorry I even cheeped about pitch. A gunfitter told me that "most people are accomodated by 5 to 7 degrees positive pitch" which I take to mean that a very large angle taker-offer (long armed adjustable bevel or protractor against a strait edge with the strait edge on the rib and second arm or protractor against the butt) will generally give a reading of 83 to 85 degrees included angle between the two. I measured a bunch and sure enuf most of mine were about 4-5 degrees less than a right angle. May be some trapshooters who adopt the exaggerated bend to the front like Elmer Fudd and need a long toe to get contact up and down the "leaning" pocket, which is still consistent with what Jim says about full contact.

jack

Addendum to above: you will note that your door jamb or wall and floor are assumed to be normal to each other and you just get an eyeball sense that the angle between butt and rib is less than that when you use the comparing with the world as you hope it is method. Trigonometrically speaking, if that's possible, muzzles couple inches off the wall at 28" distant from the breech (or whatever) is just another loose way of saying the included angle is less than 90 degrees on any gun with positive pitch. If the breech and muzzle touch, pitch is zero (right angle). If the muzzles touch and the breech don't, the pitch is negative, the toe is relatively long and looks like it is, and if you can shoot it, good for you.

jack

I've installed a lot of pads on a lot of guns for myself and unless the stock is a Monte Carlo, cutting the butt at 90 degrees from the comb gives me good pad to shoulder contact and shoots comfortably. This is true assuming the comb has a usable amount of drop for me. I couldn't care less what the actual pitch turns out to be. It has no bearing on where the gun shoots(high or low), IMO and IME.

Jack & Jim, wouldn't you say that pitch has more to do with banging your cheekbone
or not than anything else?

JC

I've noted that some guns with little pitch (near 90 degrees to the sighting plane) will drop off my shoulder after the first shot, causing an incorrect mount for the second shot.

Assuming Jim doesn't shoot parallel or reverse-combed guns, the cranking down (bend) of the stock insures that his 90 degrees to the comb cut achieves pretty much the same result as the angular mensurator types. Different animal from normal to the sighting plane or rib. Don't need more confusion.

Big fast loads from the top barrel of an o/u always sting me. I have no theories about the effects or efficiacy of correct/incorrect pitch except that the butt will sheer on the flesh with either too much toe or too much heel. I haven't made a study of which hits you harder under the cheekbone but I would guess too much heel is the worst for this.

jack

I wouldn't. I would say, as I have may times over, that pitch is important primarily to get maximum contact between the butt plate or pad and your shoulder pocket.

What I was saying was that people know to push the gun away from them when they mount it because they know if they don't it will brush against/hang up on their chest because the LOP is too long to mount it properly and they don't want to lop off the end of the stock. They don't mount all of their guns that way. They just know that on a few, they have to.

Jim, "pitch" and "drop", typo in second paragraph. was talking about picth both times.

and like i said, i can't reconcile that making any sense. it's just that when i did a deliberate study on 18 or so guns - sxs, o/u, auto, pump - the only dimensional factor in common among the ones that i didn't feel i shot well was lots of pitch.

last week i shot a crescent arms 12 i got from my dad that had real close to zero pitch but way more drop than i normally like. so much pitch it tended to slide down off my shoulder as someone else noted above. yet in spite of all that it was very easy to hit with.

it did occur to me there's one other factor in the seasonal adaptability of the push-away gun mount. while this does make a common gun mount work regardless of clothing worn, it can change the point of impact because the shooters cheek will be further down the comb line in winter than summer. like lowering the rear sight on a rifle. the straighter a stock is, the less significant this is. i've coincindentally noticed i don't like stocks with lots of drop either.

one of the easiest guns to hit with i've had in recent years was an ithaca import perazzi mx-8 monte carlo stocked trap gun. that particular gun is what really got me to paying attention to dimensions. i used to just shoot what i had and never gave it a thought.

roger

I agree with most that it is fairly easy to adapt to various lops my guns range from 13.75 to 15 without any real problem just a little practice. I have game shot with all of them and the 13.75 and 15 were 2 that I had most luck with. I agree that in MOST cases a little pitch change does not effect me much but I do have a 16 ga Francotte o/u that had severe pitch that caused the gun to shoot high I retrimmed (about 1/2" at the toe)the stock to reduce pitch, it then shot about 6" lower and basically 60/40 on the paterning board.
The one thing I can't seem to adjust to is a heavy trigger pull over 6 lbs is murder on me I end up flinching.
Jeff G.