I pondered giving this article the title, “Yes, You Can Miss with a Shotgun” but decided to go the affirmative route. Having just spent three days teaching a Martial Application of the Shotgun course combined with some pistol training, I have thoughts.
From a personal standpoint, my first experience with a shotgun is likely to be very similar to many of those my age. On our farm we had a single-shot, break-action, Harrington & Richardson 20 gauge, with which I harvested rabbits and squirrels in the fall and took out the occasional pesky groundhog threatening my mother’s garden in the summer. Such a tool was a perfect fit for a teenager living in the country, particularly for a first shotgun.
Of course, I was dying to get my hands on a pump-action shotgun as soon as I could squirrel away enough money and turn eighteen. I had my eye on a Winchester Model 1300 Defender on the rack at the gun shop in Wooster, Ohio. The gun had traditional hardwood furniture and a deep blue finish. Being a Defender it had a full-length magazine tube which held seven rounds of 12 gauge ammo. Compared to the single-shot 20 gauge, it was a true “man’s gun.”
When I carried the Winchester to the counter to make my purchase, the shop owner advised me, “If you’re just going to practice, you can use birdshot. But, if you are going to use it for real defense, you need these.” He had already reached under the counter and set two 5-round boxes of 00 buckshot in front of me. Not being one to question my elders, after I filled out the paperwork, I paid for both the shotgun and the buckshot.
I knew how to run a pump gun as my best friend and I used to borrow his father’s JC Higgins 12 gauge he got from Sears. The JC Higgins was a bit different from the Winchester, but they were similar enough.
As you’d expect, being a self-taught shotgun shooter, I proceeded to practice by blasting away at 2-liter soda bottles filled with water and the occasional cardboard target. Naturally, I discovered that the cardboard only lasted about one magazine tube worth of shooting. This was way before I had access to or could afford steel targets. Sadly, like many young men, I needed money for a car payment or something and sold the gun a couple years later.
Even while I was a United States Marine and carrying a Vietnam-era Remington 870 12 gauge shotgun during my patrol duties with the MarDet, our training was actually more of a fam-fire. We were taught how to load and unload the guns, how to operate them and make them go bang, but what you’d refer to as genuine training was sorely lacking.
When we received our new Mossberg 590A1 shotguns, we once more went through the process of learning how they functioned and operated, but our fam-fire with the new shotguns consisted of perhaps ten to twelve rounds of 00 buckshot. That was it.
It wasn’t until a few years later, while in the police academy, that I truly was able to participate in a thorough fighting shotgun training course. While we focused most of our attention as cadets on our service pistols, we fired somewhere in the neighborhood 100 to 150 rounds of 12 gauge ammunition, including birdshot, buckshot and slugs. It was in the police academy where we learned that the average 00 buckshot pattern, fired from a cylinder bore gun, spreads about ½ to 1 inch per yard.
Our instructor set up paper targets at various distances to demonstrate that for us. For example, taking a 5-yard shot with 00 buck was going to produce a pattern of nine holes that’s 2.5 to 5 inches across. Our instructors admonished us, “Yes, you can miss with a shotgun.” Each year after the academy, I was required to show proficiency by qualifying with the agency’s patrol shotguns.
Another notable training course that I enrolled in was the Gunsite 260 3-Day shotgun program. That would have been noteworthy on its own, but it was held the first week of December and we were blessed with large, fluffy flakes of snow which only occasionally come to north central Arizona.
Blasting away with fighting shotguns as the snow piled up around our boots made for a memorable experience. Several years later, I was once more back at Gunsite for a shotgun course, but this time it rained on us. I preferred the snow.
Martial Application of the Shotgun
Over the decades, I’ve participated in the sporting use of shotguns as well and been schooled in the sports of trap, skeet, sporting clays and 5-stand. An important lesson to learn from the various shotgun sports is yes, you can miss with a shotgun.
As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, I just finished teaching a Martial Application of the Shotgun course. Naturally, as the name would indicate, this training program focuses on using a shotgun as a defensive tool and fighting with a shotgun in your hands. Coincidentally, one of my students last week arrived with a Winchester Defender shotgun. His was the modern SPX version with a pistol grip, but it was nice to see my old friend again.
With four decades or so of experience in the fighting shotgun world, I believe I can safely say that I have encountered, at one time or another, 99 percent of the mythology and misunderstanding that surrounds the combat shotgun. When it comes to perpetuating mythology, it’s safe to say that Hollywood is the number one suspect.
Movie Mythology
Whether good, bad, or indifferent, when we consume movies and television, particularly those that are presented as dramatic or “based on real events,” we’re brainwashed into believing that what is portrayed on the screen is true or at least a representation of reality. When was the last time you watched a movie or TV show and the actor shooting at another actor with a shotgun missed their target? Never? I’d venture to say that the last action movie you watched where a bad guy (or unfortunate good guy) was shot with a shotgun resulted in the recipient being blown off their feet and thrown backwards. In my lifetime I would say I’ve seen that on the large or small screen about five hundred times.
Let’s face it, most people have very little real experience with 12 gauge shotguns from a training perspective, particularly with OO buckshot. The average person who owns a shotgun for home defense has never taken a training class. Therefore, whether conscious or subconscious, the mentality becomes, you can’t miss with a shotgun and the anticipated response is that a single round will launch a home invader right out the window.
A Beginner’s Tool?
Another issue that we need to address is the assumption that a shotgun is a beginner’s tool and is less complicated and easier to use than, say, a carbine for home defense. Having a conversation with a good friend yesterday who happens to be a 20-year veteran of the US Army Special Forces with numerous combat tours, he said, “Brother, people think running a fighting shotgun is easy. It’s actually the exact opposite.” He laughed and continued, “A freakin’ machine gun is simpler.”
A different friend, one who has trained literally tens of thousands of students in the martial use of firearms, was fond of reminding his students, “People think a shotgun is an amateur’s tool. It’s actually the tool of professionals.” Another friend and trainer, Bill Davison of Tac Pro Shooting Center in Texas opined, “A fighting shotgun is like a big ol’ Rottweiler. It’s mean and vicious and it’s always hungry. If you aren’t shooting it, you need to be feeding it.”
Enjoyable and Eye-Opening
We teach all manner of martial use of firearms; handguns, carbines, long range rifles, etc. Ours, as well as the experience of all of my peers in the training world, has been that the fighting shotgun courses are the most lightly attended.
Nonetheless, those students who do manage to put aside the mythology and misunderstanding, park their egos, and attend a class come away with two universal realizations; first, wow, that was really fun and secondly, it was an eye-opening experience.
The reality of the world in which we live is that there are very few ranges in the world that are set up to accommodate true fighting shotgun training. Every community has a sporting clay or trap range. They aren’t hard to find. A genuine combat shotgun training course requires reactive steel targets and an instructor corps that’s well-versed in the use of such facilities.
One typical response from graduates of martial shotgun training is, “I’ve never fired that many rounds or performed that many drills.”
The Takeaway
What should be obvious by this point is that a two- or three-day combat shotgun course provides the participant with two realizations that are extremely important, but difficult to come by. They leave with a real, genuine sense of confidence in their own abilities. Such can only be achieved by a dedicated immersion in the training and willing participation. Also, they depart from the training with true understanding regarding the capabilities and limitations of the tool. No longer will they be fooled by the mythology and misunderstanding portrayed by Hollywood or spouted in conversations on the internet.
If you own a home defense shotgun, you owe it to yourself to push away the nonsense and get yourself into a training class that focuses on employing the tool as a true fighting instrument. As always, the choice is yours to make.
Paul G. Markel is a combat decorated United States Marine veteran. He is also the founder of Student the Gun University and has been teaching Small Arms & Tactics to military personnel, police officers, and citizens for over three decades.