By first working with the try gun, Tate was able to determine that I did pretty well with the stock dimensions of my 20-gauge Beretta Model 471 Silver Hawk. As I had suspected, the culprit was the fact that the gun had cast-off. Pulling the buttstock off of my Beretta, Tate adjusted the stock until it had cast-on instead of cast-off. In other words, the buttstock was bent slightly to the left, and my dominant eye lined up perfectly with the gun's sighting plain.

One of the things I enjoyed about working with Tate was the fact that after he adjusted my Beretta, we retired to the clay-bird range to see if it improved my shooting. Obviously, I wouldn't know what the measurements and adjustments meant. What I could understand was if I began to break more birds. And that is exactly what happened after Tate adjusted my shotgun. In fact, not only was I breaking more birds, I was centering the vast majority of them. Instead of breaking into pieces, the clays were powdering, indicating a more direct hit.

American shotgunners are beginning to understand the importance of being measured and fitted for a shotgun stock. A professional fitter will adjust your existing shotgun stock if possible, and he will also provide you with a list of your personal stock measurements. This way, the shooter has the ability to have other stocks adjusted, or he can provide the proper measurements if he is having a custom shotgun built.

Once a shooter has a shotgun stock adjusted, his other guns are just not going to feel quite as good. For example, my other two favorite shotguns are a 28-gauge Ruger Red Label and a 12-gauge Ruger Gold Label. You can bet that both guns will be going out to Tate for a little tweaking and adjustment in the very near future.

Just because a gunsmith owns a try gun doesn't mean he really knows what he is doing. I would want to spend a day of fitting and measuring with a pro who really knows his job. And the professional gun fitter should have no qualms about providing you with references.

Finally, shotgun fitting is not just something those English guys--the ones wearing those funny short pants and shooting those delicate, little double guns--think they ought to do. It is useful to any shotgunner, regardless of his choice of gun or his favorite shotgunning sport. It will do you just as much good in the duck blind as it will on the sporting clays range.

As I said before, I really don't understand the exact meaning of all of Tate's little measurements and adjustments. It could be mumbo-jumbo for all I know. What I do know is that after the session, my gun fit me better, I broke more birds, and I broke them more cleanly. That's the kind of results I can understand.

My favorite shooting coach said it best, "Guns are like shoes; they should fit you."