I have asked this question before, and never really gotten an answer that made sense to me. I know a number of very knowlegable people who claim that Pitch is for comfort only, and has no bearing on point of impact...Michael Yardley's book seems to suggest this, and that is the only treatise on the subject I own. One person I know and respect says he just cuts his stocks off at 90 degrees to the comb.

However, I keep hearing people say that Pitch is an important factor in fit. The naysayers always drown them out, but I would like to hear from someone an explanation of how pitch is correctly determined, how it affects fit, and whether and how it affects the point of impact. I'm really only interested at this point in those who believe pitch IS an important element of fit beyond mere comfort, so if you don't think it is please bite your tongue until others have had a chance to weigh in. Anyone out there want to take a stab at this?
Thanks

I think pitch comes into play when you have a larger chest,or are a women.I am a larger guy and have a bigger chest.When my stocks are cut at 90 degree's i shoot higher.That is because the heal of the butt is resting more on my chest that the top of the butt.This makes the top of the butt move in a little with the recoil.making me shoot a little higher.I like to cut my stocks at about a 7 degree angle to the rib line.(the line straight across the top of the gun that is level with the rib,from end of barrel to the butt.)This lets the butt rest evenly in my shoulder.I then dont have the problem of shooting high.

YES, The PITCH of the butt stock is very very important if you want to hit flying targets with a shotgun. It is just as important as any other dimension. The shotgun has got to stay on your shoulder and in the pocket so you can keep your head, eye, steady on the stock as you swing/move the gun. Jent

Hi
For the most part I think if the pitch is not exagerated it does not affect you very much, but if the pitch is severe it can really affect you. I have a 16 ga o/u francotte that had severe pitch and when patterning the gun it caused the gun to shoot very high for me. I trimmed the stock to be more neutral pitch (about .75")and it lowered the poi many inches I think about 8"-10"(at 16 yds). That is my experience.
Jeff G.

"Most people are accommodated by 5 to 7 degrees positive pitch." --"Col." Glenn Baker

As with so many normative distributions, the majority can pick em off the rack and shoot em altho some may have the means to have someone else agonize over why or why not. Keeps you from scratching up the drywall, fumed oak wainscotting, or whatever, with the front bead.

jack

Thanks Pawnbroker and Jeff, that's what I was looking for--I'm starting from an assumption that it does have an effect and am wondering exactly how to quantify that effect.

Am I underdstand you a gun that is long in the toe/short on the comb (positive pitch?) will cause you to mount a gun a tad "higher" in order that you get full contact with the butt, and therefore will shoot a bit higher? And that conversely a gun that is longer in the comb/shorter in the toe will cause a slightly "lower" mount in order to get full contact with the butt, and cause you to shoot a bit lower? This would explain why a trap gun might have a longer toe...?

If so, how does one differentiate between when you need a pitch change and when you would be better off with a change in comb height? I suppose you could achieve the same result either way? However, how does a fitter arrive at an "ideal" prescribed set of measurements for a bespoke gun, i.e. how does one prescribe one over the other?

Thanks

Edit: yes, I know that I have better things to concern myself over--I'm just trying to understand this 99% as an academic excercise.

Hugh Lomas (Hugh G. Lomas Gunmakers) once gave me a really good explanation for pitch. I don't remember the details, but if you send him an e-mail, or dial him up he will put it all into perspective for you. You can google him for contact info.

The gun he restored and set up for me fits like a glove.

Chicago Mike

(David Furman) Which Yardley book are you speaking of? My understanding of his writing's is that pitch has less effect on tightly held pre mounted trap guns where they use two beads set in a figure eight pattern. But, I understand less every day! As far as gun fit that covers all types of shooting, I think he is the most knowledgeable I have ever read. I think all your questions are answered in his books. He is one of the few who fit a gun and have you hitting without demanding you use his style of shooting. On the shotgun stocks I've had made pitch has had much more effect than comfort.
Tom Dulin

Too little or too much pitch causes an uneven distribution of the linear force of recoil. If the pitch is off you will experience felt recoil more at the top or bottom of the pad than if the surface of the pad was more evenly distributed on the shoulder. Also, with improper pitch, the recoil can cause a pivot effect on your shoulder when the shell goes off so that the stock rises into the cheek increasing your felt recoil on your face and putting your gun out of position for a quick second shot.

Lastly, inproper pitch promotes improper gunmount, which will affect where your shot pattern goes.

FWIW

Hack

Proper pitch is achieved when you get maximum contact between your shoulder pocket and the buttplate or pad, for best distribution of recoil. If your cheek is properly on the comb, pitch will not affect your impact point(high or low). 100 years ago, before people discovered the cheek should be placed on the comb, pitch mattered much more. If it was important now, people using those "banana" pads would shoot their toes off. JMO and JME

Jim:

I agree with you.

Hack

I am going to try to illustrate my experience with an exageration.
Imagine that your stock was cut or angled at a 45 degree angle from the heal to the toe (I know nobody would ever do that. if you mounted that gunstock it would point high in the air because the flat of the stock would be in your shoulder and that is at a severe angle. That is an exageration of what I found on a svererly pitched gun that I had and fixed. At 1st when I would mount it lots of rib visable due to the pitch, it is now the gun I shoot the best of my guns.
Jeff G.

If your cheek was on the comb, the gun would not be affected by the pitch. It could not point "high in the air" unless your cheek went with it. The amount of rib visible is also dependent on where your cheek is, not on the amount of pitch. Both situations are dependent on the comb height, not the pitch.

I respectfully disagree, but do understand what you are saying and see your point. I think you could overcome the dramatic pitch with radical head / neck angle (to be level with rib).
I agree with you on most normally pitched gun stocks it does not come into play.
Jeff G.

Interesting, and makes sense to me at least in theory. I went back to check, and found I had remembered a bit differently than what I read...here's what Yardly has to say in "Gunfitting":


It seems to be saying essentially the same as others here have detailed, but although I did not find it just now he does go on to say that others who have tested this have not found that it makes much difference, especially with a premounted gun.

Would different styles of shooting cause one person to be more susceptible to being affected by pitch than another?

David: An exagerated lean would require a different pitch than an upright stance

That also makes sense, but what I was getting at was whether different shooting or mounting styles would affect whether one persons actual point of impact is affected by the pitch of their stock, while another person is not affected by changes in pitch beyond comfort?

We may soon be having some discussion over the application of the words positive and negative to this issue. I thought negative pitch was when the gun put its butt on the floor, its front bead on the wall, and its breech stood away (in other words an included angle between bore or rib and butt of greater than 90 degrees BICBWBT. Probably should be left the way it is above as "positive" denotes some benefit and I think an included angle less than 90 by a few degrees is what most of us (laymen, fitters, charlatans) consider salutary to good mounting and shooting. I have no idea at all how "dowager hump" trapshooting postures work but it would appear full pocket contact might be achieved by a different whack to the back and then still not work very well to anchor the gun in one place (if the surface of the pocket and the butt are in sheer than I'd think movement of the butt downward would sure raise the POI) BWDIK.

jack

I agree with Jack. Positive pitch is down, negative pitch is less than zero, or up.

I think that fits with the above?

Positive pitch=down pitch=breech touching/muzzles away from wall=heel long/toe short=shoots lower if you buy the argument that pitch effects POI.

Negative pitch=pitch up=bead touching wall/breech away from wall=toe long/heel short=shoots higher if pitch effects POI.

Right?

This is confusing to talk about.

A lot of old rules of thumb and expediency (gauged balls to the lb)seem somewhat unusual in this day of precision mensuration. Sticking the old smoke pole up agin the house (the try square of architectural rectilinearity) is like that and words that imply value judgment don't help much either. Probably up and down pitch are more fitting in that they imply a slight depressing or raising effect on elevation of shot. Can someone explain the severe pitch on a Win 73?

jack

You mean your house isn't perfectly plumb? (**GASP**)

Yeh, I guess Ollie Winchester probably lived in a flood plain.

jack

The fact that they called it "pitch" pretty much explains what it does to your shot pattern...pitches it up or down.

I've always heard negative pitch was pitch down at the muzzle. Bottom line is I have found that about 1 1/2 inches negative pitch (using 28 inch barrels and a 14 inch lop with normal drops) fits me best. Parkers with DHBP's seem to have this. LC Smiths and SSBP Parkers seem to have much less, usually 1/2 inch to 0 in my experience. A gunsmith/gunfitter helped me with a Smith once by loosening the buttplate screws, putting a 1/4" thick piece of folded cardboard under the heel, retightening the screws and having me mount the gun while he faced me head on (I know, made me nervous too). It made all the difference in the world. Before, I was having to compensate for the shallow pitch in order to line my eye up. After, the gun just seemed to drop into place. Its an easy experiment, try it for yourself. FWIW

I have read the that down pitch tends to push the stock up into the face on recoil. I guess that up pitch would tend to let the stock move down on on recoil. If so, that could be good for trap shooters, as they fire a lot of shells in a short time span at rising targets. Requirements might be different for trap doubles and bunker shooters, as they need to stay in the gun for the second shot.

If the targets were always high, as in driven incoming, then up pitch could be more comfortable than neutral or down. Shooter would not have to band back as far to keep full contact on shoulder.

Yup, it is a fine line between minimizing face slap and keeping the gun on your shoulder for the second shot. Those with backgrounds in competitive shooting find the second shot with the gun firmly planted is extremely important. Many competitive shooters in two shot games treat the butts of their shotguns with all manner of sticky materials. Field shooters and poor shooters seem unconcerned about such details.

Jack O'Connor, who was an acknowledged authority and respected shotgun expert when Michael Yardley was born, said this, on page 160, of The Shotgun Book: "Actually the function of pitch is to keep the gun comfortably at the shoulder. If the stock has zero pitch or even up pitch, the butt tends to slip down under the armpit and the gun tends to shoot high. If there's too much down pitch, the butt tends to slip up and throw the shot low". IMO, he could have stopped after the first sentence as the last two are suggesting extreme pitch conditions, I believe. The first sentence is the relevant one. My best shooting buddy, who is a much better shot than I ever was, or will be, claims an instance where adding the thickness of one piece of cardboard between the pad and the wood, at the heel, fixed a high-shooting gun. I don't believe that, for a minute, but if it worked for him, it's OK by me.

Jim, I can't claim the knowlege that I initially tried to find when I posted this--which is how to DETERMINE the correct pitch for something more than just comfort--but I will say that when I was doing patterning with a pattern-stock in preparation for duplicating it I tried cutting the butt perpendicular to the comb. However, I never got the results I was looking for, as my results tended to be somewhat erratic and it made it quite difficult to make adjustments to the stock and correlate them to the pattern board. I went back and re-measured some guns that I shot well, and based on that I finally got more CONSISTENT results when I adjusted the pitch so my stock was a bit longer in the toe. I still find this element of fit to be one that perplexes me more than the rest since I really just stumbled onto what works for me, but I have come to believe that pitch DOES play a role in determining correct fit more than just comfort, albeit it seems to be a variable that merely aids in consistency of mount or in "allowing the other variables of fit to do their job", rather than DIRECTLY affecting POI. I believe cast at the toe to be of similar importance, just for example--it doesn't affect where my head sits on the stock, but it does allow me to get the most out of the rest of my fitting work and based on the improved consistency that results it does have an effect on where the gun hits. I'm pretty tall and have found that I shoot much better and more consistently with a stock that's quite a bit longer than normal--perhaps this makes me at one extreme and possibly more likely to see a difference than others?

This is my very rudimentary understanding of it, at least for today--in short that the correct pitch affects comfort but also is an aid to a consistent mount. I remain very unschooled in this, but that's my story thus far and I'm sticking to it. (for now)

I'm surely not suggesting that the simple 90 degree butt cutoff that works for me applies to anyone/everyone else. If you're one of those way forward leaners, surely you'd want to toe a bit longer(less than 90 degrees from the comb). If you're a straight up or worse yet, backward leaning, rifle shooter, you'd likely be happier with more than 90 degrees from the comb. However, in all cases, the most significant thing you are accomplishing is to achieve maximum contact between the butt and your shoulder pocket, IMO.

Generally, I would agree with what Jim Legg posted. However, from repeated experience, both personal and with students, I sometimes find determining additional factor(s). Specifically, sensitive places on shoulder resulting from injury, deterioration, operation, etc. Sometimes it is toe of stock that digs into sensitive area(s), sometimes it is buttplate hitting sensitive area(s) harder (and angle of butt/pitch might need to be different), sometimes it is roundness of buttplate, sometimes curvature of buttplate. All this can get very personal to individual and result in one gun being much more/less comfortable to shoot than another, which, in turn, can affect one's hit%.

Because I and most folks I help shoot are using old doubles with hard buttplates, lace-on recoil pads with adjustments to thickness and shape of inserts, as well as PAST recoil sheilds or similar protective devices are essential means of compensation. Still, sometimes shooter has to find that "right" gun for him/her. Seldom is cutting stocks on these old guns an acceptable option.

Niklas