doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Barrel length and perceived lead

Robert Churchill would say 25" barrels are what you need and he would sell you some. I like longer barrels. A friend shoots nothing but 34" barrels but he could shoot anything well. It's about balance and personal preference IMO.

eeb, I was just about to bring up Churchill. Thanks! He played mind games with perception, short barrels, and the Churchill rib.

Stan, an outdoor writer named L.P. Brezny used to live in the Twin Cities. There were places where it was legal to hunt waterfowl fairly close to "civilization", but Brezny often had to deal with guys in uniform checking to see what all the shooting was about so early in the morning. So he developed something called the "Metro Barrel" (eventually Hastings made them) that was REALLY long and screwed onto a regular shotgun barrel. Then Federal developed some sub-sonic steel loads to go with it. The darned thing sounded about like a .22.

Anyhow, Federal hosted a bunch of outdoor writers, and we got to try it out. The Metro Barrel, surprisingly, did not add a lot of weight. Straightaways were OK, but swinging the thing really felt odd. But as long as that barrel was, perceived lead on a crosser would have been reduced to about nothing, assuming that theory is correct . . . although there is the issue of the greatly reduced velocity of those sub-sonic loads.

good thread...

+1

There is no physics or geometry that will explain that unless you are a one-eyed shooter and shoot the gun like a rifle. Two-eyed shooters do not to my knowledge see the gun and set leads. For them the concept of "sighting plane" does not exist.
It all looks the same to me whether I shoot 27", 28", 30", 32". or 34" barrels. I just shoot the target. For fast target games like OT setting a lead is just not within the time realm of a human and I doubt that anyone does that.
YMMV

I'm with Stan. The tracks are the same distance apart.

Avoiding the bird-target-bead relationship debate, the perceived lead does change with a longer barrel ie. that thingie on the end of the barrel that we are NOT looking at is farther from our eye

The above pic also demonstrates why the top of the rib appears more "U" shaped as the barrel length increases.

It's all because the eye itself is round. It the eye were rectangular then there would be no perceived difference at all.

I'd like to hunt rabbits along the brushy sides of that railroad right of way!...Geo

Sorry Stan, but as a victim of a K through post-grad education in the great State of Missouri I learn best with pictures

Here's the physics
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/202251/why-railroad-tracks-seem-to-converge

That pic is an excellent analogy that demonstrates what I meant, Drew. Thanks. And that also is the written explanation I was seeking.

Charles, I am a two-eyed shooter and I most definitely see the gun when I shoot at anything moving/flying. I also see lead, every time. I do not think of it in terms of feet, or inches, but my brain has stored up thousands of mental pictures of that gap that exists between the bead, which is in my subconscious vision, and the bird I just killed. It remembers those distances, or gaps, and when it sees the same presentation again it tells the muscles where to put the bead in relation to the bird. To make a couple of points clear, I never look at the muzzle or bead, and the bead is not essential for good shooting, but in absence of a bead there needs to be something at the muzzle for reference, if only a rib.

I do believe the brain learns to use the apparent width of the muzzle as a reference to lead, especially when, for some reason or another, it is harder to determine distance to a bird by triangulation, which is how I understand that the brain determines distance. That is why it is so hard for a one-eyed shooter to dominate sporting clays or FITASC, distances vary so greatly, which in turn so greatly affects lead.

SRH