OK, I won't tell you about our range in the pasture. 8^)
Practice doesn't make perfect- practice makes PERMANENT. You need to practice the right things, unless you want to 'groove' bad habits into muscle memory. Learn the right things to do with a defensive shotgun, and practice those things.
SAFETY FIRST. SAFETY LAST. SAFETY ALWAYS. Be safe. Stay safe. Safety has to be reflex. Or you are not safe to be around when you have a gun in your hands. Not safe for yourself. Not safe for your family, or neighbors, or innocent passersby. Learn the Four Rules. Live the Four Rules. Do that FIRST. Take a Hunter Safety Course or whatever equivalent your state offers. Doesn't matter how old you are. Do it. Then live it.
Almost anything you do that gets you trigger time with the shotgun you use for HD is good for familiarization. Once you know how to administratively load, prepare to fire, fire, fire again, make safe and unload the gun safely, you've done what you need to do as far as that set of lessons is concerned. That's the beginning. That's the early part of the journey to knowing your gun as if it were a body part. You can spend weeks or months doing these things, it doesn't hurt, You need not rush things. It takes time.
A lot of us learned these things over a period of years while we were growing up, at the hands of eagle-eyed fathers, uncles, grandfathers, or other various assorted Old Men. They never let us make a mistake and get away with it. They kept us in line and taught us well.
If you didn't ever have any Old Men of your own, the best substitute I can offer you in the here and now is Robert Ruark's book
The Old Man And The Boy. Buy yourself a copy and read it several times. It's still in print, in paperback, and doesn't cost a whole lot. It's worth it, I guarantee you. It won't teach you one thing about home defense directly, but you'll learn a lot you need to know. And if you ever get over towards eastern NC where Ruark grew up, PM me and I'll take you and show you that little yellow house. It's still there. And still yellow.
You need to learn to shoot the shotgun first. Stationary targets, clays, doesn't matter what. Learn to shoot, by learning to safely perform the steps I listed above (load, make ready to fire, fire, fire again, make safe, unload). If you want help with that, the NRA has a lot of instructors across the nation teaching basic classes. Give them a look at
http://www.nrainstructors.org/CourseCatalog.aspx and see if there is an instructor near you.
Once you learn to shoot, THEN you need to start learning to fight with a shotgun. Clays, plastic jugs of water, paper targets etc. don't shoot back. They don't attack you with guns or knives or clubs and adrenaline or drug-fueled rage.
The best way to learn to fight with a shotgun is to get training from someone who's very good at it. But before you go for training, you need the basics- you need to be absolutely, reliably, dependably safe in all aspects of your gunhandling. And you need to know how to shoot your shotgun safely. You can learn those things on your own and if you ever get to a serious gunfighting class with a professional instructor, you can concentrate on learning what that person has to teach you. If you are not safe on the firing line, you WILL get kicked out of a class, with no refund. If you go in not knowing the basics, you won't get what you should have gotten out of the class, and you'll slow down everyone else's learning too.
Everyone always complains that classes from 'known' professionals are too expensive. Except for people who have taken them... . Professional instruction cuts the time spent on your learning curve way down. A pro will catch stuff you're doing wrong that you didn't even know about, and set you straight. A pro will teach you things you'd never know you needed to learn if all you did was go out by yourself and blast targets.
And best of all, a pro will build your skills over time, all the while adding more and more and more pressure on you to perform. Gunfights = performance under pressure. No, nothing that happens on a flat range can equal the stress of a gunfight. But good training is as close as you can get without someone bleeding. I'm convinced most shooters let their egos get in the way of going to classes taught by professional trainers. They say it's too far to travel, it costs too much, it isn't worth it. I think that's nonsense. I think most people are scared of looking bad in front of a class of other shooters and a respected professional trainer.
I'd rather look like a ten-thumbed idiot on a flat range in front of a class and learn something (and I have done just that), than to have my life on the line and make that same dumb mistake for the first time. THAT is what good training is for. They call it "stress inoculation" in some places, like law enforcement and the military (
http://www.frontrangetraining.com/pages/killology/stress-inoculation/ ).
If you want to get an idea of what professionals do in class, watch their videos. Louis Awerbuck has a good one, though what he teaches has changed a bit since that one was made. As he says- "The state of the art is a moving target." I've heard Clint Smith's shotgun video is good, though I haven't seen it yet. The Second Amendment Foundation just sent out Rob Pincus'
Fundamentals of Defensive Long Guns, and it's very good, though not exclusively focused on shotguns.
But most of all, give yourself time. It takes time to learn this stuff. Don't rush it. Learn the right things in the right order, and learn them well. The secret of the real professionals is that there are no advanced techniques- just a mastery of the basics. Learn the basics well and they will serve you well.
Stay Safe,
lpl
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Robert Ruark book -
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bo...696&ourl=The-Old-Man-and-the-Boy/Robert-Ruark
Louis Awerbuck video -
http://shop.paladin-press.com/product/40/25
Clint Smith video -
http://fmgstore.stores.yahoo.net/thradeshdvd.html
Rob Pincus video -
http://www.imakenews.com/eletra/mod...issue_date=F&issue_id=000381423&lid=b11&uid=0
The feeling of accomplishment is greater when you break clays with one of those guns than a Superposed.
